Previous work suggests that traditional political behavior diverges as a consequence of race within theUS context. This study expands upon past findings by analyzing whether traditionally understoodcauses of such differences are influential in online political behavior as well.Individuals may point to the digital divide as determinative in the differences in internet behavior, usingthe argument that varying levels of SES lead to differences in internet access and social capital;however, Jackson (2009) finds that this is not the case. Analysis of the motivational, affective, andcognitive attitudes with respect to the internet yields a number of differences independent of factorsthat produce the digital divide, namely access to the internet. For instance, Jackson finds that blacksuse email at a greater rate than whites and are more likely to use the web to search for personallyrelevant information.This effect brings the ramifications of the apparent demographic preponderance of Whites on theinternet into question.Moreover, socioeconomic status and education have traditionally defined the differences in politicalbehavior among different racial groups within social science discourse (Verba and Nie 1972; Wolfingerand Rosenstone 1980; Verba, Scholzman, and Brady 1995). This is conceptually sound, but SESimpacts voting behavior in different ways for Blacks and Whites (Liu et al. 2009), suggesting thatdifferent social and political processes are operating for the two groups. The interplay of these socialand technological factors brings the question of political behavior online into question, prompting thepresent study. In order to accomplish this goal, I analyzed the internet module of the GSS Survey from2000. This year is convenient both because of data availability and the absence of any effects of theObama presidency. I conducted logistic regression analyses of race variables on visiting politicalwebsites, and I controlled for a number of variables that are influential in political decision making. Ifound that African Americans were most likely to visit websites to obtain political information. Thisfinding will aid in predicting political action within the net environment.
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