Practicum-Sasha

On Thursday I began researching for my practicum topic of Minority Groups. I have decided to focus specifically on Latino groups. When I started searching for how Latinos spend their time on the Internet I found that only 56% of Latinos actually use the Internet (2007). This was a bit discouraging but I found the statistic to be very interesting. The article I read that shared this specific stat explained that due to language barriers and a lower level of education, Latinos stray away from using the WWW. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Latinos-Online/01-Summary-of-Findings.aspx I also learned from this article that just 1 in 3 Latinos that speak only Spanish go online with Mexicans being the least likely group of Latinos to spend time on the Internet. All in all, I learned that Latinos are less likely than whites to have Internet connection at their homes but that it is popular for Latinos to connect to the communication system through their cell phones to stay connected.
After, I found on a more recently updated website that 68% of Latinos make final purchase decisions online. http://www.slideshare.net/dannely/hispanics-online-presentation. This statistic shows that the use of the Internet by Latinos has become more popular in the last couple of years. This website also shared that now in 2010 77% of Hispanic Internet users have an account on a social-network website with 7 million members of myspace indicating their origin as either Hispanic or Latino. I also learned that 68% of Hispanic Internet users spend their time online using instant messaging.
While I have not joined any social networking sites with a great Latino influence, I plan on becoming connected to the Latino community online by joining myspace. I plan on doing a bit more research as well to figure out other websites that capture the attention of the Latino population to be able to compare my experiences between websites.