How Social Media Affect the Social Identity of Mexican Americans.pdf

Introduction

As research shows, media can significantly affect people’s lives. Numerous research has

been dedicated to the effects of media, especially on how the media affect immigrants coming or

recently immigrated to the United States (Shinnar, 2008; Berry 1997; Mastro & Behm-Morawitz,

2005; Johnson, 1997). Sometimes the media are positive and it helps outside cultures to learn the

language of the culture they are trying to integrate into and helping cultures to understand the

culture they are residing in. But the communication media can also be negative: stereotyping, hate

speech, exclusion, etc. When these immigrants who have recently come to the United States hear

negative things about them immigrating there or about their culture in general, it can cause a great

deal of dissonance and disturbance within and cause them to question their identity (Shinnar,

2008), which in turn disturbs the process of integration, which, according to research, is the ideal

way for someone to reside in a new culture (Berry, 1997). Research in the United States has been

done to understand how U.S. media represent other cultures and the effects of this media on those

cultures within the United States (Batalova, 2008; Berry, 1997; Brennan, 2009; Croucher, 2011).

From newspapers to radio to television, there has been a great deal of coverage on how

U.S. media affect other cultures and races, but a new form of media have emerged in the past ten

years called social media, which has recently been scrutinized by researchers. Social media are a

communication platform that gives its users the ability to communicate messages,

specifically for friends, family, and colleagues. Social media allow one person to

communicate with thousands of people about their products, their feelings, or basically

anything (Mangold & Faulds, 2009).

In 2011, social media incited a nation to action when Egypt broke free from its oppressive

leader by using Facebook and Twitter to not only incite their own people into action but to incite

nations outside their own to protest and unite together (Prettyman, 2011). Social media can

revolutionize societies to do well and it can also make the voice of all people be heard. Social

media make it easier for people to connect to friends and colleagues (Sheldon, Abad, & Hinsch,

2011; Croucher, 2011). Researchers now are trying to understand the effects of this most recent

medium. With people interacting more online, there is more anonymity and openness. Comfort

levels of Internet users have risen because people do not have to fear the confrontation of face-to-

face interactions when they say something that goes against cultural norms (Ho & McLeod,

2008). This comfort and openness can lead to more racism and hate speech online on social media

outlets like Facebook and Twitter (Alexander, 2010; Brauer, 2009; Goldberg, 2011; Pitts, 2010;

Washington, 2010; Hughey & Daniels, 2013). Evidence that this is common and perhaps is a

problem is the number of law articles and scholarly articles that have been published on online

anonymity, online discourse, and social media and how to control harmful speech online (Wilson,

2001; Dahlberg, 2001; Scott, 2004). World leaders have felt the need to address the cultural

attacks seen on social media (Clinton, 2010). People are able to freely speak their mind on social

issues, whether socially acceptable or not. One common social issue that often populates online

news boards with negative comments is immigration in the United States. Some people are for

immigration but want stricter policies on legalizing immigrants and others want less stringent

policies for becoming legal citizens. Whatever their feelings, people are able to speak their minds

freely online, with almost no consequence for their actions. Research is now starting to explore

the discussion within these online forums in regards to social media.

Among the many immigrants coming to the United States each year, Mexican Americans

are the largest and fastest growing Hispanic subgroup in the United States (Guzman, 2001).

Mexican Americans are often negatively stereotyped in communication mediums and research

has been done in the past to try and understand what these stereotypes are. Some have found that

negativity can decrease integration and degrade the social identity of Mexican Americans

specifically and receiving cultures in the United States in general (Berry, 1997; Shinnar, 2008).

There is no current research that seeks to understand how social media affect Mexican Americans

(Shinnar, 2008; Passel, Cohn, & Lopez, 2011; Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005; Johnson, 1997).

It is possible social media may, in fact, help integration since it gives people the ability to

stay in touch with family and friends more easily, and possibly helps them to learn English. This

is because social media allows a person to be friends with anyone and to communicate through

many languages. If social media does these things then the ability to integrate and have a strong

social identity may advance. Social media may affect the integration and identity of Mexican

Americans both positively and negatively. But social media can also have negative effects on

identity, causing feelings of inadequacy, displacement and more. This thesis seeks to understand

how social media affect the social identity of Mexican Americans in the United States.

Literature Review

In this literature review, there will be six sections. The first will explore the significance

of integration and how it relates to acculturation. This section will also explore why integration is

ideal and what needs to take place in order for it to successfully happen. The second section will

further explain why integration is essential by looking at the social identity theory. The third

section will discuss how social identities are often negated by stereotypes in the media towards

cultures outside the United States and how those stereotypes can negatively impact the social

identity of those trying to integrate their culture with the United States’ culture. The fourth

section will explain what social media are and what they are used for. The fifth section will look

at how the Internet and social media affect other cultures through people being able to more

freely express their opinions. Finally, the sixth section will explain how to explore this new

medium and its effects on other cultures. This section will identify why we choose to research

Mexican Americans and how social media affects their social identity since they are the greatest

immigrating culture in the U.S. and because they are stereotyped in the media was chosen.

Communication and How it Affects Acculturation, Cultural Adaptation

As a person is born into a society and develops certain processes, habits, and behaviors,

they are socialized so as to fit in with those around them. When they are confronted with a new

social situation they have to change to some extent in order to live in the company of those

affiliated with this new social situation. This is basically adaptation, or change. Adaptation, in

regards to international migration, is where a person raised in one culture migrates to a new and

completely different culture and must adapt those two cultures in order to blend into their new

society. This is specifically called acculturation (Gudykunst & Kim, 1997).

It is essential to understand how communication mediums affect the adaptation of

immigrants into the United States.

Communication is the carrier of culture and social relationships. For foreign-born

immigrants and temporary sojourners, communication activities in general, and

interpersonal communication activities, in particular, play a vital role in shaping

their cross-cultural adaptation process. It is through engagement in social

communication activities of the host society that foreign-born individuals gain

insights and skills that are necessary for achieving a level of functional ﬁtness and

psychological health in relation to the host environment. (Kim & McKay-

Semmler, 2012, p. 375)

It was once believed in the U.S. that the best way for an immigrant to adjust to a new culture and

country was to completely immerse themselves in their host culture’s norms and leave their

native culture’s norms behind and assimilate. But some late twentieth century scholars now

believe that integration, a blending of the two cultures, is a better form of adjustment (Berry,

1997).

In order to understand the differences between assimilation and integration, it is best to

first understand acculturation. Acculturation is described as what happens when two different

cultures meet or cross paths (Berry, 1997). Acculturation tends to look at the effects on the group

that is being acculturated into a dominant society. Typically, there is a host culture/donor culture

and there is a receiving culture. The host culture is usually the culture with the social and

economic advantage and the receiving culture is looking to adapt to the host culture for various

reasons: economic and social advantages and congruity between the two cultures, etc. There are

things that will prevent the integration of the two cultures, such as how much and what kind of

contact there is between the two cultures, and what the advantages are for the immigrants

accepting and integrating into the cultures. There are four possibilities when the host culture and

the receiving culture meet: assimilation, integration, marginalization, and separation (Berry,

1997). Assimilation occurs when the receiving culture completely adopts the norms of the host or

dominant culture. Integration occurs when the receiving culture is able to adopt the cultural norms

of the dominant culture, but still maintains their native culture’s norms. With marginalization

both cultures are rejected. Separation occurs when the receiving culture rejects the dominant

culture’s norms in order to maintain their native culture’s norms (Berry, 1997). Assimilation into

another culture can be a good thing, at least compared to marginalization and separation, because

it gives the receiving culture the ability to take advantage of the social and/or economic

advantages of the host culture, but it can also be disadvantageous because the receiving culture

tends to leave its culture of origin behind. Integration would be the seemingly happy medium: this

is where a person is able to balance the culture they came from with the culture that they exist in.

Studies have shown that integration has significant benefits. Seeman (1996) researched

whether social integration was beneficial or not for a person’s health versus other acculturation

patterns. Her results showed that it leads to reduced mortality risks and a better state of mental

health. Berry, an expert and scholar in the study of acculturation said, “Acculturation strategies

have been shown to have substantial relationships with positive adaptation: integration is usually

the most successful; marginalization is the least; and assimilation and separation strategies are

intermediate.”

Berry goes on to define why integration is perhaps the best of the four:

In one interpretation, the integration strategy incorporates many of the other

protective factors: a willingness for mutual accommodation (i.e. the presence of

mutual positive attitudes, and absence of prejudice and discrimination-see later);

involvement in two cultural communities (i.e. having two social support systems-

see later); and being flexible in personality. In sharp contrast, marginalization

involves rejection by the dominant society, combined with own-culture loss; this

means the presence of hostility and much reduced social support. Assimilation

involves own culture shedding (even though it may be voluntary), and separation

involves rejection of the dominant culture (perhaps reciprocated by them). (1997,

p. 24)

The only way for integration to truly work is when the dominant society is open and

inclusive in its orientation towards cultural diversity (Berry, 1991). Research also shows that part

of assimilating and integrating is to not only try to understand the culture but also the language,

which is one of the key ingredients to understanding and adapting to the host culture (McManus,

Gould, & Welch, 1983; Stolzenberg, 1990; Nawyn, Gjokaj, Agbényiga, & Grace, 2012). The host

culture also must be accepting of multiculturalism.

Obviously, the integration strategy can only be pursued in societies that are

explicitly multicultural, in which certain psychological pre-conditions are

established. These pre-conditions are: the widespread acceptance of the value to a

society of cultural diversity (i.e. the presence of a positive “multicultural

ideology”); relatively low levels of prejudice (i.e. minimal ethnocentrism, racism,

and discrimination); positive mutual attitudes among cultural groups (i.e. no

specific intergroup hatreds); and a sense of attachment to, or identification with,

the larger society by all groups. (Berry, 1997, p. 11)

The theory of cross-cultural adaptation relates well to all of the aforementioned

information. This theory or process describes the communication process of immigrants.

According to Kim’s cross-cultural adaptation process there are four factors that work together to

facilitate or impede the adaptation process.

(1) Individual predisposition (adaptive personality, ethnic proximity/distance,

preparedness); (2) the environment (host conformity pressure, host receptivity,

ethnic group strength); (3) intercultural transformation (functional ﬁtness,

psychological health, intercultural identity development); and (4) communication

(host communication competence, host interpersonal communication, host mass

communication, ethnic interpersonal communication, and ethnic mass

communication). (Kim, 2001)

All of this being said, integration is said to be the ideal way to immigrate, but it is also a

difficult ideal to obtain when the preconditions listed above are not met.

Social Identity Lends More Reason to Why Integration is Ideal

Not only is integration seemingly the ideal because it allows a person to adopt their host

culture’s norms and still maintain their culture of origin’s norms, but it is important because when

any of the other three things happen (assimilation, separation, or marginalization) the social

identity of the person trying to integrate within their host culture can be negatively affected.

The social identity theory is a theory that looks at how a person sees himself or herself

within both their in-group and their out-group (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). In this thesis, the in-group

of the culture being studied is the native culture and the out-group is the host culture, or the

United States. Receiving cultures living in their host culture’s country need to be able to identify

with both their in-group and their out-group as positively as possible. The social identity theory

describes this, “Namely, if belonging to a certain group makes individuals feel good about

themselves, maintaining affiliation with that group and preserving its positive evaluation

compared to other groups will be very important to them” (Shinnar, 2008, p. 554). Research

shows that people need to have a positive social identity. A positive social identity, which relates

cohesively with the precepts behind integration, is:

(a) People are motivated to maintain a positive self-concept; (b) The self-concept derives

largely from group identification; and (c) People establish positive social identities by

favorably comparing their in-group against an out-group. Having a positive social identity

satisfies the individuals needs for inclusion and differentiation. (Shinnar, 2008, p. 554)

When a person does not have a positive social identity, these receiving cultures will cope

in three different ways: individual mobility, social creativity, and social competition (Tajfel &

Turner, 1979). In the case of individual mobility, the person will completely disassociate himself

or herself from their in-group and will solely favor the out-group assimilation. Social creativity is

where the person will try to find another out-group that compares more positively with their in-

group and social competition is where they will favor their in-group and try to disassociate

themselves from the out-group as thoroughly as possible (separation). If a person with a negative

social identity does either of these three things, it will negate his or her ability to integrate.

Mummendey and Schreiber support this conclusion by saying that in order to fight a lowered

social identity a person will:

In any situation, where a group is able to compare itself with another group on

some valued dimension, the group must attempt to differentiate itself from the

other toward the positively valued pole of that dimension in order to preserve its

members’ self-esteem, meaning that the person will try to stand further from the

out-group that persecutes it. (1983, p. 395)

Trying to socially stand closer to their in-group and further from their out-group would prevent

the integration of the two groups, which would also negate their social identity. Padilla and Perez

also noted something similar in their research, that the greater the discrimination of a person’s

culture that a person perceives from others, the greater the loyalty that person will have to their

culture (Padilla & Perez, 2003).

Having a positive social identity is essential to integration because a person cannot

integrate when his or her social identity is threatened because they either fight that negative social

identity by completely leaving his or her native culture behind or he or she will reject the host

culture completely.

Media’s Negative Influence on the Receiving Culture’s Social Identity

One thing that can greatly influence a person’s social identity is the media because the

media not only effects the perceptions of the receiving culture, but also the host culture. Racism

and hate speech in the media are not new, nor is the study of them and their effects (Hughey &

Daniels, 2013; van Dijk, 2000, 1997, 1992). Media include television, newspapers, radio,

Internet, magazines, etc. A great deal of research in the realm of communication has sought to

understand how the media portray other cultures and how these portrayals affect users of media.

U.S. media has within it many stereotypes of different cultures and races: Asians, African

Americans, Latinos, etc.

A study that sought to give insight into how Latinos were portrayed on primetime

television showed that Latinos are often shown significantly less than Whites, Blacks, and Asians

on primetime television (Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005). Rankings in this study are especially

low for Latinos considering how much of the U.S. population they represent. Latinos in Mastro &

Behm-Morawitz’ study were also depicted as being less professional and having lower paying

jobs (2005). Mass media subscribe to the thought process that if a culture is important then it will

be at the focus of mass media (Pember, 1987). And when Latinos are represented in the media,

they often receive negative coverage; an example would be Latinos always being shown in the

media as “the problem” (Rodriguez, 1997).

Fujioka conducted a study where he had a group of White students and Japanese students

rate how they thought African Americans were portrayed on television. The study showed that the

students thought that African Americans were portrayed significantly more negatively than

positively, especially in relation to Whites (2005). The media have been proven, time and time

again, to stereotype other races and cultures from that of the White, American culture (Maestro &

Behm-Morawitz, 2005; Hughey & Daniels, 2013; van Dijk, 2000, 1997, 1992, 1991). There is a

more recent form of media that has only been around for ten years or so: social media. While a

great deal of understanding has been gained as to how media, before social media, affected the

identity of other races and cultures, social media is still being explored.

The media can play a positive role in the integration of cultures into the U.S. Johnson

(1996) found in a study that she conducted with Latin American women that Latinas who

watched television fulfilled some part in Latinos learning needs, but she also found that Latinas

who watched English comedies had the highest acculturation stress.

Overall, minorities in general are highly “affiliated with and derive meaning from their

group incorporate societal bias directed at the group into the self-concept and this leads them to

perceive personal vulnerability to prejudice and discrimination. When high ethnic identification

exists, awareness of the group's condition stimulates a personal sense that discrimination might be

experienced individually” (Operario & Fiske 2001).

What is Social Media?

The United States is currently a technology generation, where almost everyone in the

United States can have access to the Internet and social media outlets. As of June 10, 2013, there

were 239,232,863 internet users in the United States and there are over 69 million people who

subscribe to broadband. Seventy two percent of adults in the United States use social networking

sites (Brenner, 2013). Ideas, thoughts and opinions are readily being shared on social media sites,

sometimes by uneducated, poorly educated, racist, or biased people (Johnson, 1997).

The Internet in general is a place where people can obtain information, ideas, and opinions

on any subject. It is a place where anyone can post any thought, opinion, idea, or fact without any

real geographical boundaries (Brennan, 2009). It is a place that makes communication quicker,

easier, and cheaper (Leets, 2001). After the Internet was introduced to the world, social media

soon became one of its largest assets and possibly one of its largest detriments. Social media give

a person the ability to not only post his or her thoughts to the world, but they also give a person

the ability to post his or her thoughts specifically for friends, family, colleagues, and other

associates to view. Social media give access to information from people considered to be

potentially reliable sources. The history of social media and its definition is not so complex. With

the creation of blogs, and online diaries, the use of Internet became more than just a place for fact

checking and emailing. The term social media was coined with the conception of social

networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

Social media differ from industrial media because they require almost no resources for

someone to publish. Businesses refer to social media as consumer generated media (CGM)

because they allow any individual to generate what they want to be in the media. Social media

allow “one person to communicate with hundreds or even thousands of other people about

products and the companies that provide them” (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). But the

communication goes beyond endorsing products and companies. Being able to share opinions on

any topic can also give social media users the ability to endorse their biases as fact and oftentimes

these biases are endorsed by societal leaders and journalists (Deseret Connect, 2013; Gillath,

McCall, Shaver, & Blascovich, 2008; Lewis, Kaufhold, & Lasorsa, 2010).

It is also relevant to note that social media have a quantitative capability, which means

that places like Facebook, Twitter, and Linked-In can tell a person how many friends they have,

and then break down the friends into social groups: age, schools, area, etc. But, while this has led

to interesting research and results, it is relevant to note that it does not matter how many friends

or connections a person has on social media, so much as how they feel they are treated within that

social network.

The number of peers (peer network externalities) and perceived complementarity

(indirect network externalities) are more inﬂuential on extrinsic beneﬁt

(usefulness) than the number of members (direct network externalities). This

ﬁnding suggests that the individual strongly believes that the breadth of his friends

using SNS is great or when complementary resources such as various supporting

tools, applications, and groups of social connections are diverse, the degree of SNS

usefulness is naturally higher (e.g., broader circle of friends and more

interactions). (Lin & Lu, 2011, p. 1159)

Social media on the Internet have given people even more opportunities to communicate

with each other from almost any location in the world.

For immigrants and sojourners, mediated interpersonal communication such as

email and the Internet can take on a particular signiﬁcance. The ease with which

non-natives can communicate with their family members and friends in the

country of origin raises the possibility that their use of mediated channels in

interpersonal communication with co-ethnics signiﬁcantly inﬂuences their

communication with members of the host society and, thereby, their adaptation

vis-à-vis that society. (Varma, 2007, p. 552)

This insight shared by Varma does not mean that mediated interpersonal communication

creates good communication between the native culture and the host culture, it merely influences

the communication more—which could have a positive influence or a negative influence.

Internet and Social Media’s Impact on Cultures and Their Identity

This section in the literature review consists of five parts. In order to show statistical

growth within these two communication mediums, the first part addresses how the Internet is

used and the number of people using the Internet and social media worldwide. The second part

addresses an effect of hate speech in social media and the Internet and how it theoretically may be

more unavoidable than ever before. The third part addresses the effect of being able to voice

thoughts without consequence. The fourth part addresses how disguised false information online

makes it difficult for users to distinguish between what is the truth and what is not. And the fifth

part addresses the failed attempts to control hate speech and false information online.

Growth and change of Internet and social media.

While social media is still a new and ever changing field of study for many

communication theorists, some research has been done in order to understand who is using social

media, what they are using it for, and what satisfaction they can gain from social media. But little

has been done, demographically speaking, to understand how other ethnicities use social media

(Correa, Hinsley, & De Zuniga, 2010; Mangold & Faulds, 2009; Witte, Frank, & Lester, 2009;

Wang, Huang, Huang, & Wang, 2009).

Croucher (2011) found that immigrant populations in various nations use the Internet to

reconnect with their homeland, strengthen community ties, retro-acculturate, culturally adapt, and

find intimate partners. Ogan and Ozakca (2007) found that, “for a group of Turkish workers who

had returned to Istanbul from the Netherlands to work for a Dutch call center company in Turkey,

mediated interpersonal communication helped to maintain ties with family and friends left behind

in the Netherlands.”

Croucher (2011), Kim & McKay-Semmler (2012), and Ogan & Ozakca (2007) agree that

social media and the Internet are effective ways for immigrants to keep in touch with their native

culture. But what other effects do social media have on immigrants in the United States? This

new medium is developmentally sound to study now, since it offers something new compared to

other communication mediums.

A critical factor in the development of a new medium is that it must generally

perform some additional function better than the existing media. For instance,

newspapers were more effective than town criers because they provided a method

of recording information; magazines developed because their quality of production

and national news coverage was better than newspapers; radio emerged because it

was more effective than magazines at delivering live timely content; television was

more effective than radio because it combined audio and video images; and the

Internet is better because it combines all these elements while adding the element

of interactivity, according to Meeker. (Kimmel, 2005)

Pfister and Soliz (2011) have discussed some of the changes that digital media, a close follower to

social media, have made.

Global turmoil prompts citizens to learn more about each other, and digital media

fuels intercultural communication on a scale and of a kind that is a significant

departure from the mass-mediated contacts of the last several centuries …The

technological advancements in digitally networked media and the exponential

growth in the public’s understanding and use of these media are leading to more

opportunities for interaction. Thus, digital media offer unique contexts. (Smith &

Soliz, 2011, p. 246)

Little research has been done to understand how social media have affected the adaptation

process within cultures, which makes this topic a rich area to explore. “To date, non-natives’ use

of interpersonal communication technologies has not been given due attention (Hernández, 2008),

particularly from the perspective of the broader context of the overall adaptation process vis-à-vis

the host society. Only a number of recent studies have documented that mediated interpersonal

communication activities play a prominent role in the lives of sojourners and immigrants” (Kim

& McKay-Semmler, 2012, p. 100).

It is essential to look very closely at the Internet and its effects on cultures and races when

trying to understand social media’s effects on other cultures. The Internet is a safe place to start,

because before social media became its own communication medium, the Internet was the newest

and latest communication medium.

In 1994, extremists had laid a foundation of websites and hate speech online, using it to

forward their own causes (Brennan, 2009). In 1998 there were law articles published with titles

such as, “Hate Speech Over the Internet: A Traditional Constitutional Analysis or a New Cyber

Constitution” (Weintraub-Reiter, 1998). Already the issue of hate online was being addressed and

lawsuits were starting to abound because of threatening, forceful, and hateful speech.

Out of the 944,678,035 people in the Americas, 488,005,400 have access to the Internet

and 322,417,860 use social networks like Facebook (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2011). In these

social forums, people can express their opinions, thoughts, and ideas in blogs, videos, and other

social media outlets like Facebook, chat rooms, and Twitter, etc.

Unavoidable hate speech.

Selective Exposure theory states that people have the ability to select and choose what

they view in the media that reinforce their existing views (Frey, 1986), but with social media,

there are often opinions that are disguised or unavoidably cultivated by those trusted as reliable

sources, such as friends, or the friends of friends. Lately, it has become extremely difficult to tell

who is an accurate source and who is not, when people can say what they want in the online

world anonymously and without references.

If the theory of selective exposure is correct, then the Internet and social media give a

person the ability to narrow their research to the things that reinforce existing beliefs, including

those stereotypes that were integrated into them from birth, and opinions that are forcefully and

memorably placed into their minds. For example, when an extreme series of events happen to a

person then those things may be more prevalent and pronounced within the person’s mind. Also,

things that happened recently may be remembered more clearly by a person (Frey, 1986). People

tend to be more forceful when they hate or dislike something than when they like it. This has

become prevalent in the online news world with the birth of comment boards. These comment

boards particularly relate to this research because they fit within the context of what social media

are, anyone can comment on them, although often times it requires having access to a social

media account such as Facebook. These comment boards are attached to a factual story, and

people are often able to post whatever they like on these comment boards, whether it is off topic,

hateful, vulgar, or factually inaccurate (Alexander, 2010; Brauer, 2009; Goldberg, 2011; Pitts,

2010; Washington, 2010; Hughey & Daniels, 2013). Selective exposure states that we have the

ability to choose what media we view, and to choose the media that reinforce preexisting beliefs.

The fact that these comment boards are attached to stories about social issues, stories that are

usually well developed and supported by authority figures and facts, can possibly cause the

immigrants reading these stories to feel cognitive dissonance because the comments are not

factual. Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort a person experiences when they hold

two different opinions on an issue (Festinger, 1962).

In this state of cognitive dissonance a person may experience negative feelings, such as

frustration and anger. If these comment boards make it harder for immigrants to selectively

expose and even cause some dissonance, the results may further negate the ability of immigrants

to have a positive social identity, since they may feel disconnected from the host. While a person

is able to choose the story they want to read, the often off-topic comments wedged within relevant

comments can lead to dissonance.

Arthur Santana, a doctor of philosophy student at the University of Oregon, wrote a

dissertation entitled “Civility, Anonymity, and the Breakdown of a New Public Sphere.” His

dissertation was completed by analyzing 22,000 comments from nearly 200 news stories in more

than a dozen online newspapers. In his analysis he found that online newspaper comment boards

that allowed people to speak anonymously and that contained news about immigration contain

“comments by those who support tough immigration laws and who express themselves with

emotionally laden, uncivil comments towards Latinos” (Santana, 2012). He claimed that his paper

demonstrated “that in their new role in creating a new public square of open discussion,

newspapers are sometimes creating forums for hate speech while also publishing content that is

perpetuating negative portrayals of Latinos. Findings reveal that a new public sphere created by

online newspapers, meant to promote democracy, is actually having the opposite effect for some

minority groups.” Hughey and Daniels reported in their study that after nine years of the

comment boards being up online, many U.S. newspapers are trying to find ways to handle

offensive comments, which includes disabling comments on their site in general. These

comments are perhaps making it harder to be selective.

Selectivity theories (Frey, 1986) offer three hypothesis: 1) Selective Exposure: we expose

ourselves to things that encourage our beliefs, things that do not create dissonance; 2) Selective

Processing: we also process those messages in ways that are consistent with our beliefs; 3)

Selective Retention: We remember things in a way that supports our beliefs. Research exploring

the role of selective exposure, specifically in social media, has suggested that using social media

may have implications on individuals' exposure to attitude-challenging information. So, having

the ability to be selective when using social media is more restrained. For example, recently,

younger members of the Mormon faith (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) have

searched the Internet about their faith, in order to understand its history. The information

presented to them seems factual and is presented with words that make their religion seem wrong.

Youth in many faiths have also found themselves stumped on their faith, because so many

websites tell them everything that is wrong with that faith, but fail to mention the things that are

right (Brooks, 2012). These online messages create in these youth a cognitive dissonance that

they settle by leaving their faith and beliefs. The struggle with online hate is not just faced by the

religious. It is a struggle that affects everyone.

With enough exposure to something, whether negative or positive, a person’s perceptions

change in ways they may not have initially preferred. Social media allow individuals to share and

be exposed to news via their social network, and social networks tend to include diverse people.

This provides an opportunity to encounter dissonant information, even when finding information

that supports your beliefs, because information, whether true or false, is endorsed by someone in

one's network (McLeod, Kosicki, & McLeod, 1994). Those who communicate through this

medium sometimes use it to propagate racist literature, symbols, and ideologies, while

simultaneously providing ways to discuss these ideas (Gerstenfeld, Grant, & Chiang, 2003). For

instance, when in a chat room that is specifically geared to a certain topic, people may go there to

discuss that topic with people who have similar feelings. But the topic could change; the

discussion could become negative, and stereotypes, misinformation, and hate could be exchanged

between two individuals who have learned to trust each other online.

Social media make it hard to distinguish the truth.

News sites have recently tried to control and moderate discourse on their stories. The New

York Times, Deseret News, and other newspapers have even asked that public discourse on their

stories remain respectful and nondiscriminatory (New York Times, 2011).

Social media have also given way to a whole new form of journalism called Citizen

Journalism (Lewis, Kaufhold, & Lasorsa, 2010). National news sites are not immune to the

difficulties of knowing what is right or wrong. One of the more recent scams is to report a famous

celebrity as dead on Twitter, and news corporations have believed the posted tweets and fail to

verify if they are factual. In 2011, there were reports of Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, and Britney

Spears having died. When Whitney Houston was found dead in February 2012, the first source to

report it was Twitter, but there were many people tweeting that they did not believe it to be true

(Richardson, 2012). People have found it hard to know what is right and what is wrong online.

CNN and other national news sites have made the mistake of posting a story on their websites

before checking its credibility (Leopold, 2012). For example, a waiter took a receipt that a

customer had given him and forged a note telling the waiter to get a better job. This story made

national news, but the whole story was a hoax and this was not discovered until days after the

story was published nationally. How many people ever found out about the error? Many might

still believe the story to be true.

The Internet is full of opinions and it takes experienced and educated people to maneuver

through the truths and lies adeptly (Daniels, 2009). It is hard for the average viewer to know when

something is factual or not, especially when the site is disguised to hide its hate or bias (Daniels,

2009). And it is probably even harder for immigrants to wade through the truths and lies in social

media and on the Internet because English is not their first language.

Anonymous and unchecked social media and Internet posters.

The once ostensibly unbiased realm of journalism has begun to change with the fast-paced

journalism that comes forth from the Internet, where sources are not checked or opinions are

interpreted to be facts (Deseret Connect, 2013; Gillath, McCall, Shaver, & Blascovich, 2008;

Lewis, Kaufhold, & Lasorsa, 2010). Once, journalists were trained specifically to keep bias out of

their articles. Now, many news corporations make it possible for anyone to write for their

network, as long as it is relevant and seemingly factual. Deseret News, a Utah newspaper, has a

program called Deseret Connect that allows anyone to write and send in news stories by people

who have no journalistic background and likely know little of bias (Deseret Connect, 2013). Also,

large news sites like CNN, ABC, and The New York Times make it so that anyone can

anonymously post comments on any of their articles. Sometimes the comments can be insightful

but other times they enforce stereotypes and unwarranted biases. This form of media, where not

only are articles written but people are able to comment freely on those articles, is a form of

social media, and while traditional media has great effects on cultures, social media may have

even more pervasive and potent effects (Gillath, McCall, Shaver, & Blascovich, 2008). Gaertner

and Dovidio said that racist comments and remarks were more pronounced when the situation

offered anonymity and lack of accountability, especially in group or mediated environments

(1986).

Under such circumstances, viewers’ egalitarian self-concept is protected both by

the vague media content as well as by the anonymity of the mediated environment.

Consequently, exposure may elicit both traditional in-group-favoring responses

such as stereotype adherence and more subtle race-based reactions such as

differential evaluations in qualifications. (Mastro, Behm-Morawitx, & Kopacz,

2008, p. 5)

Being able to post comments on any article, whether controversial or not, gives extremists

and other individuals, who may not even understand a story or its context—or in this situation

understand the people—the ability to post as they please. And even those who read it may not

have complete understanding of all sides of a story (Daniels, 2009). There is a feeling of

protection afforded to people when they are able to post comments anonymously. Being able to

say what you want to say, without the face-to-face threat of others could be seen as a benefit

(Sheldon, Abad, & Hinsch, 2011). Having no consequences for online speech promotes racism

and hate speech, because people can say what they want and not be called out by others for their

words. It may also be worth noting that people usually do not have a fear of saying kind things in

face-to-face situations, but the criticizing of others is held at a greater reserve in a face-to-face

basis, but this is not so with social media (Ho & McLeod, 2008).

The Internet can be an outlet for good. For the shy and withdrawn, the Internet could even

be an outlet for communication progression, helping such individuals share their thoughts and

opinions. It can also help other cultures learn other languages and cultures. But not everyone uses

it for good (Witte, Frank, & Lester, 2009). People are able to spew, anonymously and without

forethought, whatever they want online without any real repercussions.

Hillary Clinton spoke of the benefits of the Internet and about the ability to share peaceful,

political ideas anonymously and she also spoke of the threats that can be posted anonymously

online or posts online that can cause a disconnect between religions and other cultures (Clinton,

2010). There has been great concern over anonymous Internet posts. Typically people would be

concerned about what they say in social situations, but social media offer a different outlet for

speech, an outlet to express opinions without fear. When there are no threats a person can freely

speak their mind, without forethought (Krasnova, Gunther, Spiekermann, & Koroleva, 2009).

Often comments posted on national news sites that are not moderated can have the

potential to shape public expectations of online discourse (Citron & Norton, 2011). There has

been recent controversy over people publishing false information on the Internet, and large

corporations like CNN getting hold of that information and publishing it, only to retract the story

a couple of days later because it was not true. Often the false information published can be

harmful (Leopold, 2012). Cyber smearing (Wilson, 2001) is what most of the corporate world call

it when false information is posted. Wilson says there is a fine line between cyber smearing and

anonymous speech—one gives the freedom to be expressive and the other takes advantage of the

freedom of speech. While anonymous speech may add protection to yourself, to express an

opinion that you believe needs to expressed, there is a fine line as to whether that speech’s

untruthfulness and bias could be harmful (Wilson, 2001; Dahlberg, 2001; Scott, 2004).

While people may not believe the sometimes blatantly false statements about their race

that they read online, there are those who go to extremes and create websites that resemble factual

websites. These websites, called cloak websites by some scholars, tend to either take on the

appearance of an official website, or they disguise racist hate speech on their website (Daniels,

2009). The way people communicate online challenges social convention, especially in regards to

privacy, in the way people construct their social identity, and in the way people interact with one

another (Hargittai & Hsieh, 2011).

In regards to selective exposure theories and how those may effect integration of receiving

cultures into the U.S.’s host culture there are many potential scenarios. In Kimmel’s Marketing

Communication book (2005), James Fitchett mentions that there may be even more dire

consequences with social media, “Others envision a more dismal, even sinister role for future

technology, resulting in the infringement of civil rights, further exploitation of scarce resources,

and perhaps new and more complex forms of crime” (Kimmel, 2005).

No way to control social media without taking away critical rights.

Social media and the Internet are extremely hard to control. Judges and lawmakers have

tried to control racist, hateful, and angry speech to some extent but those attempts have often

failed. The Internet has allowed “marginalized extremist groups with messages of hate to have a

more visible and accessible public platform” (Leets, 2001). The law has tried to intervene

occasionally to address the offensive and hateful language posted online, but many people fight

any actions taken to control speech online by addressing the constitution’s promise of free speech

addressed in the first amendment. In past cases, it has been extremely difficult to truly define hate

speech and when it is noted as hate speech, the case is often thrown out because of first

amendment rights.

A man was recently threatened with a sentence of up to 60 days in prison (Cornwell,

2012) for posting offensive speech on his Facebook about his estranged wife, unless he

apologized daily on Facebook for a month about his comments. He’s now fighting to get the case

appealed, as it violates his freedom of speech. Trying to control all the postings by people who

are similar to this man would not only be expensive and time consuming, but in many situations

could be considered a violation of the United States Constitution.

Controlling and patrolling the Internet and social media is often ruled in courts as a

violation of free speech and many scholars suggest that sexist, racist, or basically abhorrent

speech cannot be penalized (Leets, 2001).

Some people fight online racism by trying to educate people on what their actions can do

and teach others how to respond to racist, hateful messages online. One research article suggested

that sites like Google and Yahoo! should address cyber hate by “adopting accessible and

transparent policies that educate users about their rights and responsibilities as digital citizens.

Intermediaries' options include challenging hateful speech by responding with counter-speech,

empowering community members to enforce norms,” (Citron & Norton, 2011) encouraging users

to be more informed and exploring all sides of an issue before believing opinions online that

claim to be fact.

A great deal of research has discussed the pros and cons of more control of the Internet

and social media, but with billions of websites, it would be hard to pinpoint the many racial, and

offensive websites that exist on the web. Whether control is introduced or not, there are cloaked

websites that tend to either take on the appearance of an official or well-referenced website or a

website that hides subliminal racial messages within its content (Daniels, 2009). It is usually

difficult to tell who has authored these websites and they have hidden agendas, many of which

include white supremacy.

One of the most well known examples of a cloaked website was “the Bush campaign,”

where someone made their site look legitimate by using a domain name similar to the real

campaign’s Uniform Resource Locator. Because it used the same images, reporters were taken in

by the website and were calling the real Bush campaign looking for clarification on policy issues

(Meikle, 2002). While law articles cover what to do or what has been done in regards to free

speech and social media, little research has been done to show the effects of what racist, hateful

speech can do to the minorities and receiving cultures it attacks.

Not only are websites cloaked, but commenters online are able to convey their racist

messages through coded language.

Coded racial language has long been used to convey subtle, yet potent, racial

meanings in ways that appear well reasoned and focused on the common good.

Newspaper comment fields engender specific types of coded language to fly well

under the radar of moderators, like in other surveyed virtual formats. For example,

young Facebook users often employ coded language or ‘social steganography’ to

hide the intended meanings behind posts and status updates from parents and

moderators. (Hughey & Daniels, 2013, p. 337)

In the end, it seems that very little legal action can be taken towards the effects of hate

speech, because the harm is mostly emotional, not physical, and the law has a hard time justifying

that (Calvert, 1997). Not only is there a good deal of protection of free speech online, but with

billions of opinions accessible to anyone, it would be almost impossible to truly control hate

speech. Attempts to control the Internet and social media, people hiding racism in their websites

and biased citizen journalism all illustrate the potential harm of social media.

Social Media and Effects on Mexican Americans

In order to understand the effects of social media on other cultures, it is relevant to study

another culture. Latinos account for 16 percent of the United States population. The 2010 Census

counted 50.5 million Hispanics in the United States; they are the largest and fastest growing

minority group in the United States. Immigrants residing in the United States account for 30.7

percent of all U.S. immigrants and one-tenth of the entire population born in Mexico (Batalova,

2008). Mexico is the closest Hispanic country to the United States and 66 percent of Hispanic

immigrants in the United States are Mexican. Mexican Americans are the largest and fastest

growing Hispanic subgroup in the United States (Guzman, 2001). It is relevant to mention within

this research that Mexican Americans are Mexicans who have come to the United States from

Mexico and become legal U.S. citizens.

Thirty two million out of the 112 million Mexicans in Mexico use the Internet (Miniwatts

Marketing Group, 2011). As of 2012, there are 38 million Facebook accounts established in

Mexico (Social Bakers, 2012). Mexico and Brazil are among the top 10 Facebook growth markets

and Facebook is one of the most popular online video destinations in Argentina, Mexico, and

Brazil (Fast Track Media, 2012).

The Mexican-born population in the United States was 11.5 million in early 2009. In the

process of integrating, Mexicans are not expected to relinquish their receiving culture in place for

the host (Buriel, Calzada, & Vasquez, 1982). They, in fact, still need that culture to identify with,

as explained by the social identity theory. As Mexicans are the largest immigrating race in

America, it may be difficult for them to identify with a specific group (Passel, Cohn, & Lopez,

2011). Trying to further oneself socially and economically in the dominant culture and maintain

ties to their culture of origin may prove difficult for Mexican Americans, especially when the

dominant culture posits negative connotations on their culture of origin. When they do not have

this positive identity they cope in three ways: individual mobility, social creativity, and social

competition (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). An example of this is that because the Latino culture has

long been judged second rate by many so-called modern cultures (such as the United States),

United States Latinos experience increased levels of pride for that which they can call their own

[their Latino culture] (Rodriquez, 1988).

Shinnar did a study that found that Mexican Americans tend to dissociate themselves from

their ethnic group, mostly because they wanted occupational advancement. Attitudes toward

Mexicans tend to be negative and stereotypical. Mexicans feel that dissociating themselves from

their culture would help them to advance in the workplace. However, because of skin color,

names, accents, etc., it can be near impossible to fully dissociate yourself from your ethnic group.

After conducting in-depth interviews, Shinnar found that many Mexican Americans did not try to

seek promotions in the work place because the Americans they worked for did not want them to

advance in the work place, mostly because of the stereotypes assigned to Mexicans (2008).

United States Mexicans and Hispanics, in general, are grossly underrepresented in many

forms of media. In television, they are underrepresented, especially compared to their proportion

of the U.S. population (Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005). When they are depicted on television it

is in stereotypical roles: comics, criminals, law enforcers, and sex objects (Faber, O’Guinn, &

Meyer, 1987; Mastro & Greenberg, 2002). These depictions are often unavoidable, especially in

regards to online media. While doing interviews, Leonard (2010) sought to understand United

States Latinos perceptions of cells phones, computer and Internet. A couple of the people

interviewed, when asked about how they used the computer, said they felt that they did not have a

choice about whether they access the good or bad things on the Internet. Instead they said they

found that as they technology to assist them with their daily activities they were usually exposed

to things that they would prefer to not to read or see in order to access the information they

needed.

Mexican Americans are stereotyped in face-to-face interactions, and in the media. Now

the question is, are they stereotyped in social media and how do those stereotypes make them

feel?

In this study the author processed and tried to answer the overriding question: How do

social media affect the social identity of Mexican Americans? In order to answer this overriding

question, three other questions that would lend to answering this overriding question were

identified. Overriding research question (RQ1): What do social media do to build or denigrate the

social identity of Mexican Americans?

Americans often say stereotypical and hateful words on social media; in order to

understand how this could affect Mexican Americans we must answer this question.

RQ1: What impact do social media have on Mexican Americans with the host culture?

Social media does give Mexican Americans the ability to network with people from

all around the world, including people from their native land or people in their current area

who share their culture.

RQ2: What impact do social media have with Mexican Americans and their native

culture?

Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets were developed in English and their

primary users are from the U.S. Does having U.S. native born citizens in a Mexican American’s

network cause any effects?

RQ3: How do Mexican Americans use social media to adapt?

Method

The method for this thesis is composed of three sections. The first section will discuss the

methodological approach used to answer my research questions. The second section will discuss

the execution of the research: participants, locations, atmosphere, instruments used, and

interviews. The third section will discuss how interviews were analyzed and coded and how

trustworthiness was established in this qualitative thesis.

Approach

Understanding how social media affect the social identity of Mexican Americans was

sought. There were some preconceptions going into this study: assumptions were made that social

media would create a greater connect for Mexicans to their in-group and a greater disconnect to

Mexicans’ out-group. It was also assumed that social media would engage and enhance the

language skills of Mexican Americans.

In order to test the research questions, Grounded Theory (Corbin & Strauss, 1986) was

chosen for this thesis because of its flexibility in analyzing and adapting to the data as it is

received. Grounded Theory often utilizes face-to-face, open-ended interviews with subjects. It

allows the researcher to use a guiding set of questions, but also allows the researcher to adapt

questions midstream as the data being collected suggests themes that may be more pertinent.

These adaptations continue until a point of saturation is reached and no new data is collected

(Corbin & Strauss, 1986).

Grounded theory aims to “develop explanatory theory concerning common social life

patterns” (Chenitz & Swanson, 1986). This research looked at the common social life patterns of

Mexicans’ Internet use, specifically focusing on their social media usage and how social media

affected them. Frequently, when researching a topic that has little or no coverage it is difficult to

identify specific theories that relate to it rather than stating a grounded hypothesis in the

beginning. Essentially, the research started from the ground up. Using grounded theory, specific

theories were identified from the data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

The grounded theory approach used in this research thesis helped to test the social identity

theory, along with the selective exposure theory, and cognitive dissonance theory in order to see

how these theories complement the results. It helped do this by seeing if any of these three were

present within the collected data. Guba, Lincoln, Glaser, Strauss, and Corbin considered grounded

theory to be more than just a theory for discovery but also a theory for verification (Guba &

Lincoln, 1994; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Corbin & Strauss, 1986). It was Glaser and Strauss (1967)

who said that grounded theory allows us “to discover what is going on.” The purpose of the

researcher in using the grounded theory is “to explain a given social situation by identifying the

core and subsidiary processes operating in it” (Baker, Wuest, & Stern, 1992, p. 1357). While

relevance and cause was established for the research she was doing in the literature review and

even proposed some possible effects, it was not possible to actually come up with enough

information to formulate answers in the beginning. Conducting interviews allowed for this type of

discovery.

Grounded theory was most applicable because no specific categories have been

established nor can they be until the data collection begins, which is a method of action supported

by the Grounded Theory. Many researchers use in-depth interviews or focus groups to answer

their questions. Shinnar, who interviewed Mexican Americans and sought to understand their

social identity, wanted to see how stereotypes shaped the social identity of Mexicans (2008).

Shinnar’s in-depth interviews reinforced and also showed new details (2008). As she conducted

the interviews, she found common themes and patterns that she later discussed in her paper. They

were themes that supported her research, since she was looking to understand the social identity

of Mexicans.

The initial sample does not need to be so specific. Hutchinson (1993) argues in favor of a

wide, diverse sample in that this ensures extensive data that covers the wide ranges of behavior in

varied situations. Lincoln & Guba (1994) make similar arguments. They advocate, since the

purpose of sampling will most often be to include as much information as possible, maximum

variation sampling to be the usual sampling mode of choice.

The Mexican Americans were asked open-ended questions that delved into whether or not

Mexicans have run into hate speech and other offensive language while using social media. There

was one overall question with three sub questions to seek answers from this research. Each

question had follow up questions that could be used in the interviewing process, as well as to

explain what needed to be understood.

Overriding research question: What do social media do to build or denigrate the social

identity of Mexican Americans? There were three other sub research questions that sought to

answer the main one. In order to answer these questions, the research asked those interviewed

specific questions to obtain answers to the main research questions.

There were three additional research questions sought to find answers to.

RQ1: What impact do social media have on Mexican Americans with their host

culture? Do you read the news online? What kind of stories do you read? What newspapers do

you read? How do you feel about the immigration stories you read? How do you feel about

stories you read written by Americans about your culture? How do you feel about the comments

you see online on your Facebook and on news sites about your native culture? How do you feel

about the American culture since coming to the United States?

RQ2: What impact do social media have with Mexican Americans and their native

culture? What language do you mostly use on social media sites? How do you feel social media

help you stay close to your native culture? How do you find other Mexicans in the American

community with whom you can relate? How do you feel about your culture since coming to the

United States?

RQ3: How do Mexican Americans use social media to adapt? Do you use the Internet? Do

you use English when you use social media outlets? How do you learn to write English? Do

social media help you with your English? Do you ever use social media to find answers to

questions about the United States culture?

Do Mexican Americans use the Internet? What social media do Mexican Americans

prefer? Do they read the news online? Do they read news about their culture? How do they feel

about the news they read in regards to their culture? Do they feel fairly represented in social

media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.? How do Mexicans feel about themselves? Do

Mexican Americans feel better as an individual and as a Mexican American since coming to the

United States?

Execution of Research

Participant selection.

Mexican Americans were defined as citizens of the United States, of Mexican birth, or

descent (Phinney & Devich-Navarro, 1997). Participants selected were found through the

Mexican Consulate and through community leaders—the author did not know any of the people

interviewed previously. All participants lived between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Utah County,

Utah. Participants were chosen this way—mostly due to monetary and time constraints and also

because of the large Hispanic population in Utah—200,000 out of three million people in Salt

Lake City alone. Participants were also required to be over 18 in order to meet the requirements

of the Institutional Review Board. Participants were also required to have lived in the United

States for at least five years, so that they would have had a chance to learn the culture of the

United States as well as some of the English language. Participants were also required to have had

some experience with social media and to have access to the Internet, since Internet access is

required in order to use social media.

Detailed description of participants.

There were 12 participants total. Six participants were men and six were women. Nine of

the interviews were done face-to-face and the other three were done over the phone. All

participants were bilingual, with Spanish being their first language. All interviews were

conducted in English, except for one. In that interview, the participant’s daughter acted as

interpreter. Participants were allowed to look at the questions before the interview and the

questions were offered in both English and in Spanish (See Appendices A and B). The

participants came from diverse backgrounds. Five of the participants were members of The

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was expected since Utah has a dense

population of Mormons. The other seven participants were either Catholic or did not affiliate

themselves with any religion. Seven of those interviewed have children, six are married, four are

single, and one is divorced. Ten out of the twelve interviewed were employed, one was a stay-at-

home mother, and the employment status of one was unknown. All of this is mentioned because

diversity is significant in this study. Saturation did not want to be found too quickly by

interviewing people who were too similar. Three of the 12 interviewed were community leaders.

Their real names were used in this thesis, but the other participants were given pseudonyms in

order to maintain their privacy. This also made it easier to follow the Institutional Review Board

requirements.

Everyone interviewed owned a computer and a cell phone, except for two who owned

neither. Everyone interviewed who had a phone was able to access the Internet. The two who did

not have access to a computer or a cell phone did have places where they were able to

consistently access the Internet. This is important to know because it could not have been

determined how social media affected the person if he or she did not have regular access to the

Internet through some medium.

Three participants were community leaders. Their full transcripts can also be found in the

Appendices.

Community Leader 1: Salvador Lazalde is the volunteer President of The Federation of

Mexico and is the manager at the Red Robin in Sandy, Utah. Lazalde has lived in the U.S.

for over thirty years. He came here in his early twenties. He has been using Facebook and

Twitter for almost a year.

Community Leader 2: Jonathan Puente is a representative of a group called Latinos in

Action. He has been in the U.S. for most of his life. He works with Latino students in a

Utah County high school.

Community Leader 3: Ana Lamb has been in the U.S. for over 15 years. She works for the

Mexicans National Federation. She travels often and her interview was recorded over the

phone while she was in D.C. representing Mexicans by lobbying for less strict

immigration policies.

Location and atmosphere.

Interviews were conducted in locations where the participant felt comfortable and open,

such as their homes, their church building, or their place of work. In most instances, it was

assured that the atmosphere where the interviews took place was comfortable and quiet, so that

the participant would be able to answer questions without distractions and to the best of their

ability.

Instruments.

In qualitative research the most important instrument is the researcher. The author

conducted all interviews. In all instances, the interviews were recorded with a digital recorder and

a video camera was used in three interviews. The interview that was done over the phone was

also recorded on a digital recorder. The digital recorder was started immediately after the

participant gave permission to be recorded. The digital recorder stayed on until the interview was

fully finished. This was done to ensure that recording did not end prematurely. All participants

gave permission to be tape-recorded.

Interviews.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted. There was a set list of questions that were

brought to the interviews. During the interviews these questions were followed up with other

questions, depending on the participant’s response. Participants were allowed the freedom to

guide the discussion. Questions were often tweaked after each interview, as topics began to be

established. Non-verbal cues were often noted through the interviews. Instead of just recording

the words, different responses were noted through body language and tone of voice. For instance,

the participant may have said something that does not necessarily appear too significant when just

the words are read, but if it is noted that the participant was crying when they said this, the words

can take on a whole new context. Noting these cues made it easy to identify more themes and

give more accurate meaning to their words (Legard, Keegan, & Ward, 2003).

Once finished, each interview would immediately be transcribed from the tape-recorder,

so that the researcher could make more notes, and keep the topics fresh that she had identified

during each interview. As questions were asked, responses were only a couple words long. At

first the author wanted to do more talking than she needed to, but she found that in order to

deepen responses, she needed to follow up with deeper questions that complemented what they

had said or she would follow up their response by asking for examples. Usually, this would

awaken a response in the interviewees and they would have more to share on the topics discussed.

Interviews were as short as 20 minutes and as long as an hour and a half. Most interviews were

over an hour.

At the beginning of the interviews, the participants’ responses were very wide and

general, but as the author entered into the tenth, eleventh and twelfth interview it became apparent

that the information from participants was repeating itself and that saturation had been reached by

the last interview.

Coding and Analysis of the Data

NVIVO.

Analysis was begun by using NVIVO (NVIVO, 2013), which the author had used in the

past and had been trained on. She already had a few themes identified because in qualitative

research, coding and analysis take place while the interviews are performed, but she wanted to

really dig into the results to see what else there was to be found in order to answer her research

questions.

NVIVO is computer software used for non-numerical unstructured data indexing, and is

computer software often used by qualitative researchers. This software allows for a rich analysis

of texts. After interviews were uploaded into NVIVO, analysis began by running a frequent word

search. This general search allows the user to see what words were used most. Often a researcher

will have to go through the list and identify what words are significant and what words are not—

words like “and, if, but, they, etc. are usually added to a “stop-words” list—meaning that those

words are not significant—so then a word frequency analysis is run, and “stop-words” are

excluded from the results. By running the Word Frequency Analysis, the author was able to see

what words were used the most, and this allowed her to identify themes more clearly. After

themes were identified, they were coded in NVIVO. NVIVO allows the researcher to put these

codes into different categories and gives the researcher a great deal more organization and the

ability to not lose information. This process makes analysis faster, and more consistent. Key

words were found that had synonyms. An example would be that by searching the word

Facebook, it could then be found what was said in regards to it.

The themes found and sorted for were: which social media outlet was used most, use of

Spanish or English online, what news sites were followed, stereotypes encountered online,

community involvement, culture and language connection to social media, what social media was

used for, connection to native land, and connection to host culture.

Establishing Trustworthiness and Reliability

It is important that trustworthiness was established in this qualitative thesis, because it

improves the credibility of the findings. There were several ways that trustworthiness was

maintained, NVIVO being one of those methods. Constant notes were kept throughout the

interviewing process. These notes included notes their non-verbal gestures. Using the interview

questions, answers were followed with more in-depth questions and then the results were viewed

from the interviews and conclusions drawn as to how social media have affected their identity as

a Mexican and as an American.

The Constant Comparative Analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used, which is where

the researcher constantly compares their notes from interview to interview and pulls out themes

and as the interviews proceed the researcher continues to adjust and adapt their interview

questions. This method is a part of grounded theory.

As the interview proceeded, trustworthiness and reliability was established by keeping

memos and notes that helped to identify categories and themes later on.

It is often harder to establish trustworthiness with qualitative research, since the results are

not generalizable and the process is more personal than quantitative. By taking careful notes, and

being aware of biases, a credible level of trustworthiness was established (Kreftig, 1991; Rubin &

Rubin, 2011).

Results

In the results section of this thesis, insight was shared into the research questions asked

before interviews and analysis began. The results from the interviews, which were conducted

between December 2012 and March 2013, presented a great deal of new information for scholarly

discussion. Many of those interviewed expressed positive feelings about social media in general.

They believed that social media gave them the ability to stay connected to their in-group

(Mexico), but when it came to how they connected to other out-groups (Americans, etc.) the

feelings shared were negative.

Participants often said that Facebook and other social media forums have helped their

English skills, helped them to stay connected to their culture back home, and helped their in-

group (Mexican) social identity—in essence social media have helped their social identity and

ability to integrate in many ways. However, negative feelings were expressed as well. Mexican

Americans often felt stereotyped in online news. They also felt hurt by things people have said to

them directly or about their culture online. They felt that the only news shared about them was

negative. They felt a disconnect from their out-group (Americans) and in many instances they

called themselves invaders or outsiders. The results are organized by each research question

asked and subcategories listed within that give further insight into answering that research

question.

RQ1: What impact do social media have on Mexican Americans with their host culture?

Representation in social media’s online news and their comments boards.

The researcher found that social media seemed to cause some cognitive dissonance in

those interviewed, and caused others to struggle with the stability of their social identity. They

often felt that their culture was not mentioned enough in the news or they felt that the only stories

that people want to comment on were stories where Mexican Americans did something unsavory.

Seeing these negative things online often made them feel sad and some said they had cried

from the comments made online. As mentioned before, it is extremely hard for a culture to

integrate when that culture is met with hostility from their host culture (Berry, 1997). It was also

harder to feel a connection to their out-group and easier to draw more closely to their in-group

when they sensed that online hostility. There were a lot of feelings shared from participants in

regards to how Mexican Americans felt poorly represented in online news—especially by people

who posted negative comments toward them on a news story’s comment boards—which is

another form of social media. Comments were shared from participants on the anonymity of these

comment boards, on common stereotypes assigned to Mexican Americans and many participants

felt that they were seen as outsiders. Over half of those interviewed said that they felt that their

Mexican culture was negatively represented online or not represented at all. The literature review

in this paper drew connections to the increase of anonymity and hateful speech, especially toward

Latinos (Santana, 2012). A few participants shared feelings about how they felt people were

sharing opinions online about Mexicans, opinions that they would most likely never say to a

Mexican American in a face-to-face situation (Ho & Mcleod, 2008). One participant, who has

been in the United States for over 15 years, expressed these feelings, along with the feelings that

not only do these words hurt Mexican Americans but they also affect Americans who have not

formed opinions on the subject of immigration.

Excerpt 1

So, now that we have more access to our cellphones, more access to express ourselves,

and without people really knowing who we are, kinda like anonymous, people just kinda

say it out loud or just type or say some hatred words and yes, that does, unfortunately

affect some people. I mean some people out there who don’t know how to make decisions

and they’ll read comments from there, from other people who are negative and

automatically those people will fall into and we are more prone as humans to go towards

the negative than the positive.

Another participant who has lived in the U.S. for almost 20 years, said something along

those lines as well:

Excerpt 2

Sometimes they don’t say it to the person to person, it is only said in comments and things

like that. They might say this and that on the Internet, but when they’re face-to-face they

don’t say anything like that.

In regards to the two participants’ comments about anonymity, this is not a new concept in

the realm of the Internet and social media today. There have been many law articles in the past

that have tried to find ways to prohibit anonymous speech and prosecute it because of the

potential harmful effects that it has (Wilson, 2001; Weintraub-Reiter, 1998). This issue of

anonymity has been addressed in the past as well, particularly in Santana’s research (2012).

Social norms are now greatly challenged by this latest medium. It is a cross blend between

writing and face-to-face communication. People’s written opinions were not so readily made

known in the public sphere when they were filled with hate speech, especially when those

opinions were ignorant or ill-formed and poorly written. In regards to face-to-face

communication, people were not likely to blatantly express hateful opinions. As shown by the

comments expressed in these interviews, social media have revolutionized communication and in

regards to anonymity there are next to no repercussion for offensive language. While anonymity

increases a person’s ability to express their thoughts and opinions and ability, encouraging them

to take more fully take advantage of their first amendment rights, having the ability to speak one’s

mind should come with some responsibility and consequence.

Seven participants also voiced concern that they felt they were not represented at all in the

media and on the few occasions when they were, it was negative. Latinos represent approximately

15 percent of the U.S. population now and to feel that their culture is next to never mentioned

within the news is some thing of consequence. Another respondent, a single mother of two

children whose business is mostly conducted online and has been in the United States for over 10

years, felt this way.

Excerpt 3:

I think in the news, in English news they don’t talk a lot about us. They don’t talk about

us in our culture and immigration problems.

Others shared similar feelings.

Excerpt 4:

They were mentioning about the news, a shooting happens and automatically, boom, they

title it “it was an American, it was a Mexican or it was a Russian, they automatically they

title you and after that all the people that are automatically hated, you know Chinese or

Japanese or Mexicans or Americans, automatically because they did the shooting we have

to hate all of them, we have to hate the race just for one person.

This of course is not unusual from studies done with other communication mediums who also

noted the same things, that the Hispanic population was poorly represented … when it was

represented. Jonathan Puente expressed the thought that in the beginning social media even tried

to keep the Latino population out of their networks, which, if true, would create even more of a

disconnect between Mexican Americans and their host culture. It might have been cause for the

disconnect that Puente felt many Mexicans had with social media. He cited that many of his

Mexican friends were a lot more immature or played games or used social cues that were

outdated.

Excerpt 5:

Why were most white people leaving Myspace and a big thing at the time was you could

only join Facebook if you had an e-d-u. mailing address. So they were saying is that a way

to keep Facebook white? You know like, a lot of people of color don’t have an e-d-u e-

mail address and then once they opened it up to all e-mail addresses, a lot more people left

Myspace and came over to Facebook. It’s interesting, you ought to look that up there’s a

lot of articles on how Facebook you can only join face book with an edu account. It kind

of kept it very white. Yeah, very exclusive, yeah. Yeah, there was a bunch of articles

written about how Myspace was the ghetto of cyber space, you know because that’s where

all the people of color, the poor people had their accounts cause they couldn’t get a

Facebook cause they didn’t have a edu. But that was how they compared it to walking

through the ghetto and getting harassed and there’s all these shady characters and you

don’t know who’s who.

Not only did Puente feel like some cultures were kept in the cyberspace ghetto, but another

participant felt that any coverage in social media about Mexicans was primarily negative. Hare

made the point, and others made a similar point as well, that when there is a shooting and it was

done by a Mexican then it gets immediate attention and people will read these news stories and

put stereotypical comments on their Facebook’s or on News site’s comments boards and will

generalize the actions of one Mexican to the whole race:

Excerpt 6:

Well, it depends what they, the news is about. For example my, she wasn’t my friend, her

husband works with my husband, what I talking about happened two or three years ago.

This couple has a daughter like mine, in that time. I not sure what happen, but she killed

her daughter and that was in KSL, when she got arrested and everything. I went to see the

news in KSL, all the people they are, you know you write there…yeah, comments. Most

of the comments were racist, they said stuff like, ‘even the Mexicans don’t love each

other,’ ‘they kill,’ ‘they kill kids,’ and ‘why did they come here.’? Most of the people

come here, because they want a better life.

A participant, who has been in the U.S. for five years, shared similar thoughts about only

receiving negative attention. With primarily negative attention focused on the Mexican American

culture, it can only be presumed that this would affect their social identity to some extent.

Excerpt 7:

I don’t know, every time I hear about Mexico it has to be something negative. Someone

killing someone, someone dealing drugs, um, and I mean they don’t have to but they just

don’t pay attention to the culture itself, they just pay attention to the bad things that

happen in the country.

Five of the twelve people interviewed specifically said that online news and news in general

misrepresented them. One participant, who has been in the U.S. for 17 years and is a

representative of the Mexican population, felt that the news was mostly negative toward Hispanic

people, and that oftentimes people would stereotype Mexicans, because of the negative stories

they viewed online.

Excerpt 8:

And its always just a hot topic but, ummm, it seems to be more negative than positive

because Americans they don’t want immigrants here and they don’t want, you know, they

don’t take the time to investigate or get to know the person without give them the title of

‘the Mexican’ or ‘oh, the Salvadorian,’ you know? They title us or automatically they

think something bad about us or you know, U.S. American if you have a bad experience

with Latin person at America they’ll start building up a hatred towards, um, Hispanics,

just because of that event that happened in your life, negative with that person and it just

varies. It seems to be more negative than positive and if Americans could really turn

around and see us.

Participants seemed to feel that Americans were swayed by the negative media they saw online,

or the stories about drug dealers or killings that occurred in Mexico or the United States. The

consistent finger pointing towards only the things Mexicans could do wrong, did not make them

feel right. A participant who has been in the country for over five years said,

Excerpt 9:

I think that because of the stereotypes it is quite negative. Yeah, it’s actually pretty

negative with all those drug dealers and stuff like that, but um I don’t know. I don’t feel

like Mexican Americans don’t have representation here, unless its negative stereotype and

then it turns around.”

While social media have made it possible for people to open up about their feelings on issues,

those feelings are not always welcomed, even if they are true or positive. As mentioned before,

there is little control that can be exercised online. The control is lacking, but the questions comes

to mind of how much can really be controlled in regards to free speech, namely first amendment

rights. Unless a person specifically mentions a place, a date, a name(s) and an action that they

plan to execute then there is next to no case that can be made for someone who has been offended

or hurt by racist or hateful comments online.

Many individuals interviewed shared the feeling that they wanted to be treated as an

individual, but because of their skin color or their accent that was not possible. Placing a person

within only one culture because of their skin color and not allowing them to adopt or integrate

within the other culture could possibly make their social identity more tenuous.

Excerpt 10:

Oh yeah, and I just think its funny and I just feel bad for people like that, that they are,

that they don’t want, that they get so carried away about a story that happened and they

start hating the individual, the race and you know, there’s nothing that we can and the fact

that I’m Mexican or that there are a lot of Mexican killers or want to hurt other people,

they were raised different from me, just because they are a bad person, just because my

neighbor is a bad person doesn’t make me a person, you know and you know,

unfortunately the comments are so negative, they’re always, I think people, or I think

media has made us so, or I think Facebook has made us so open, or because before the

twenty-first century you could never share your feelings or you know, you could never

stand up for yourself, said Beca Royce.

Before the twenty-first century, news comments came in the form of letters to the editor,

which were handpicked by the editor to go in the paper. But just one article can get thousands of

comments. There were a lot of negative words that showed up in the word frequency cloud

created on NVIVO (Appendix C)—the word frequency cloud shows the words that showed up

the most in all the interviews combined--words like negative, bad, and never. These words were

grouped together and were located closest to the words Hispanic, Latino, news, and Mexican,

which could illustrate that Mexicans really do feel negatively stereotyped by people and the news.

The researcher found that Mexican Americans felt that social media and its comment

boards made them feel hurt and feel like outsiders. They often felt cognitive dissonance, seeing

and being told that the U.S. is a land of opportunity and then coming to the land and not being

accepted, not being allowed or welcomed to partake of the opportunities.

Feelings hurt by other’s opinions expressed in social media.

Mexican Americans not only felt misrepresented or forgotten in online news and social

media, but they also felt degraded. Feeling bad about your native culture can cause a great deal of

disconnect and can weaken social identity, along with integration abilities (Shinnar, 2008; Berry,

1991).

Excerpt 11:

“It’s like after you see the news and TV and it makes you feel so unbelievable. It’s crappy

to see that and hear that. Sometimes I try to avoid it. They talk about depressing things

like kidnappings and rapes. They don’t say anything nice, pretty much.

Many of the participants mentioned how their feelings were hurt when they first read the

comments posted on online news stories or on Facebook and other social media forums. Some

expressed that they were able to move past those feelings of hurt but others expressed that those

comments, although they believed them to be ignorant, were still hurtful. A participant who has

been in the U.S. for 15 years said,

Excerpt 12:

And you get really offended, but then you realize that people just don’t know. A lot of the

comments there are really offensive but these people they have a different lifestyle, they

grew up here, things were a little different here, their judicial system works. But a lot of

Mexicans when they come up here and get a lot of those negative comments, those

negative feelings, they’re offended, they want to fight back but we’re the ones that are uh,

some people call it invading this country, uh, we’re the ones who came here, its optional

but you just deal with the good and the bad, you just deal with it.

One woman started crying when she began to talk about the comments she sees online.

Excerpt 13:

Most of the comments were racist, they said stuff like, ‘even the Mexicans don’t love each

other’, ‘they kill’, ‘They kill kids’, and ‘Why did they come here?’ Most of the people

come here because they want a better life.

Many participants mentioned that they wanted to come to the United States because it offered a

better life than the one they had in Mexico or because their parents wanted a better life for them

[Appendix G]. They were often saddened by the comments on social media sites, because

Mexican Americans were just seeking to live the American dream.

Excerpt 14:

You know, the thing to remember is…it make me sad,

a participant said, in regards to things she has seen on Facebook about her culture. Another

participant spoke of how hurtful the comments were.

Excerpt 15:

Do you mean if I’ve seen the comments? After having been in DC, here, but um, for

example in the beginning it was very painful to hear how people were referring to the

Hispanic community, like when they were saying we were stealing jobs and that we were,

uh, you know, destroying their country or living with those taxes that they are paying and

that and living with that and I didn’t have any answers. You can see that people, that they

are convinced they believe that it is true, but listening to all these stories that people have,

their struggling, you realize that these people don’t have anything and if they are getting

mad at them I just get so sad, they don’t understand how the immigrants suffer and all the

ignorance that is around and um it wasn’t helping me to know this from people when there

are people fighting or trying to get a better opportunity, so uh, being part of a change, I

think that has what has helped me to overcome those problems.

Two of the participants said that the comments were hurtful and they said if those who make the

hurtful comments had lived in Mexico, they would understand who Mexicans really are and why

they wanted to live in America. A participant said as much and began crying as she expressed

these thoughts.

Excerpt 16:

Instead of us focusing on the positive, it’s just the negative all the time…I mean, I have

cried a lot when there is negative comments like that, where people on the immigration. I

have a lot people I know who have come to this country, and I know they are illegal and I

can’t help them and I know that they are not bad people, but at the same time I know that

they are here to just provide for their families, because unfortunately in our country, in

South America and other countries there are governments that are not as good or

organized as we are. I mean we are way more organized in the United States. I mean yes

we are corrupted in our country, but every country is corrupted. You know, if, people that

they have so many negative thoughts, I want to send them to Mexico and leave them on

the streets of Mexico for a month or live in Central America, to see the conditions how

people live there, then I can guarantee you that their opinion of Latin Americans or any

immigrants will change cause they’ve had everything, I mean they have everything.

She also said that most of the Mexicans coming to this country just want to work and take care of

their families, but she often feels stereotyped online by some people in this country.

Excerpt 17:

In this country you get fired from you work and then the government will pay you to do

nothing. In Mexico or Latin America you don’t get those privileges, you will die in the

street the minute that they kick you out of their job. I mean, I would love to see all those

negative people that have all those negative comments go down there, go serve over there

and then you’ll change your opinions about any negative or any negative opinions that

you have. Go serve other people and I can guarantee that their mind will change. And that

what I will tell them, they are closed minded, they have lived in a place where everything

is given them in silver platter, they have never experienced being poor, they have never

experienced that not having food for not one day, but for weeks or being able to survive

on rice weeks.

The participants felt hurt from the negative comments in social media, especially those made on

news comment boards. Ana Lamb, a community leader, reads KSL articles a lot and finds that the

comment boards that discuss her country and political issues are often frustrating.

Excerpt 18:

KSL, that is where you read. First off they, I have Hispanic accent and when there is

something going on with the Hispanic community I look on KSL and pretty much

everyone agrees on those comments there that Mexicans have to go back to their country,

well, yeah there are a lot of Mexicans here in U.S. but not every Hispanic is Mexican, so

at the beginning I was like why do they say that and I was kinda mad at first, but

eventually, after a few years really you know, time, after all these years, they haven’t

learned that not every Hispanic is Mexican and I get frustrated and mad about that but

yeah, you can see every time something happens with a Hispanic person they say that and

now, I can see why they are saying that.

These hurt feelings from reading things online in the media and its users can cause the social

identity to suffer because reading messages that insult your core culture cause dissonance and

either cause a person to draw more closely to the native culture or can cause that person to

completely leave their native culture and adapt the host culture (Berry, 1991). And in some cases

it causes anger and violence. Their social identity is weakened when they see things online and

they continue to feel disconnected from their out-group, especially since their out-group insists on

pushing them away. These comments are hurtful because they directly attack who these people

are and where they come from.

Mexican disconnect from their out-group.

When one is not able to compare their Mexican American in-group positively with their

out-group this can cause a resistance within and Mexican Americans may disengage their ability

to integrate and maintain a positive social identity (Shinnar, 2008; Berry, 1997). Social identity

theory posits that when a race does not feel that they compare positively to a dominant out-group

that their social identity may be denigrated (Shinnar, 2008). In their interview, participants

typically felt that Mexicans were their in-group and that Americans who had lived in the country

for their whole lives were their out-group, even though the Mexicans interviewed were legal

citizens of the United States, who considered themselves to be Americans and were proud to be a

Americans.

Five participants mentioned how they felt they were considered invaders or how

Americans did not want them in their country and how they wanted to solve the immigration

problem by kicking them out. The word invader, as shown in Appendix F, was used six different

times within the interviews. The participants were often exposed to these negative messages

online and some of them reacted with feelings of cognitive dissonance, not sure where they

belonged in the scheme of cultures. Some felt that they were visitors in this country and should

just put up with some of the stereotypical things said about them. However, one participant felt

she was as much an invader as any other American, Mexican or otherwise.

Excerpt 19:

[In regards to online comment boards] You know they title us or automatically they think

something bad about us or you know, U.S. American if you have a bad experience with

Latin person at America they’ll start building up a hatred towards, um, Hispanics, just

because of that event that happened in your life, negative with that person and it just

varies. It seems to be more negative than positive and if Americans could really turn

around and see us, then we could and if the immigration problem was to be resolved, we

could helped the deficit that the United States has currently, if they were to give access to

a lot of people to pay taxes. But Americans see us as invaders. That we came to their land,

even though it isn’t really their land, so yeah. And we’re not and I think Americans are

just as much invaders as we are and I will take that as invader if a native American whose

says I am invader I will take that but Americans I will see that as…and sometimes we

focus on the negative all the time and if we were to focus on the positive and really turn

around.

As mentioned in the literature review, Mexican Americans relate to their in-group (Mexicans) and

when their in-group is stereotyped by the dominant out-group then according to Mummendey and

Scriber (1983), the Mexicans will feel a lowered social identity, which in turn will lower their

self-esteem. When a person’s social identity and self-esteem are lowered then that person will

seek to differentiate their in-group from the out-group they feel threatened or hurt by

(Mummendey & Scriber, 1983; Croucher, 2011). From comments made in interviews, there may

be some Mexican Americans suffering some lowered social identity when they are stereotyped

and receive negative attention in the world of social media.

Mexican Americans, when they consider their in-group to be their Mexican culture, will

more than likely not want to be connected to the dominant out-group, which will then dampen

their ability to integrate their two cultures. When Mexican Americans say they feel that

Americans do not want them in their country, then Mexican Americans do not feel like they are a

part of the United States (Padilla & Perez, 2003). This was mentioned quite often when the

participants spoke of the disconnect they felt from the American culture after they read the

negative comments posted online, on Facebook, and on news outlet comments boards.

Another example of this is that, according to the participant responses, the host culture

(United States) does not make the receiving culture (Mexican Americans) feel fairly represented

or welcomed into the host country even though they are both legal and documented or trying to be

so. The negative stereotypes voiced in social media may make it difficult for Mexicans to

favorably compare their in-group with the out-group, which according to Shinnar (2008) will

make it less possible for them to have a positive social identity. And it may be disheartening to

those trying to integrate their Mexican culture with the United States’.

Croucher (2011) presented the idea that, “Social networking sites have gained in

popularity among immigrants in many nations as a way not only to keep in touch with members

of their in-group, but also to foster relationships with members of their new dominant cultural

milieu.” This paper has examined those relationships and has found from the interviews that

Mexican Americans did indeed keep in better touch with their in-group. However, from a news

and social perspective Mexican Americans still seemed to have difficulties establishing a

relationship with the dominant culture.

Social media have just as much force, if not more, as television, newspapers, etc., since it

can provide everything the others can, along with a more real connection to other people, from all

backgrounds.

RQ2: What impact do social media have on Mexican Americans and their native culture?

Connection to Mexicans’ in-group.

As Croucher (2011) said, the Internet gives various immigrant groups the ability to

reconnect with their homeland and strengthen community ties. One very positive thing with social

media is that it gives Mexican Americans the ability to maintain their culture by being able to stay

in touch with family and friends in Utah and make connections in the United States with those

from Mexico. Most people use Facebook to stay connected to family and friends and Mexicans

are no different, but their connections usually span to more distant areas and cultures (Sheldon,

Abad, & Hinsch, 2011; Waldinger, Lim, & Cort, 2007).

Mexican American participants seemed to particularly like using Facebook to stay

connected to and integrated with their culture in Mexico by keeping in touch with their Mexican

friends from home online and by reading the news stories their friends in Mexico post on their

Facebook accounts. Those who have lived in the United States for the majority of their life have

been able to make connections with family in Mexico that they have never met. All participants

said that Facebook was what they used most often, and it was the one they used most out of the

online social media outlets. More than half of the participants do not even use any other social

media outlets.

One of the participants, a Mexican woman who moved here 17 years ago, is able to keep

in touch with her family and her husband’s family who are all still in Mexico by using Facebook.

Excerpt 20:

My family, his family they live in Mexico and I can post photos, they can see the photos.

In Facebook you can know everything. For example, we went on vacation in California

this past winter and they can see our photos. And they say, ‘Oh, I see you went to

California and had the time of you lives.’

Some Mexican Americans have even met up with friends and family they left behind in Mexico

that they either had not seen or sometimes even heard from in over a decade or family they had

never met at all. Jonathan Puente, a Mexican American leader in Utah County said

Excerpt 21:

You know it’s kind of funny, you make me think of my mom. She’s only been on

Facebook less than a year. And her friends, you know she’s a school teacher, and her

friends on Facebook are just her teachers but then she found all her childhood friends from

Mexico and you know, so all a sudden for like me like 20 people I didn’t know added me

as a friend and I was like, ‘Mom who are these people?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, that’s your

cousin, that’s your aunt, and that duh, duh, duh, duh.’ And you start seeing connections

that don’t think would have been there without social media you know like and she hasn’t

been on there very long but in a weird way it’s bringing her world. Now I’m chatting with

cousins I didn’t know.

One participant was able to connect with old friends from Mexico who had come to the United

States.

Excerpt 22:

And I could find two of my friends, one from high school back in Mexico. I found one

and she lives in Colorado. And I talk to her on Facebook, ‘Oh, nice to see you, nice to

know about you.’ And one of them came to visit us. Facebook helped us to find all our

friends that we haven’t talked to in a long time.

Facebook has also made it possible for community leaders to gain more involvement from the

community by making connections through friends of friends on Facebook and being able to get a

message out to many people in a fast way. Salvador Lazalde, a Mexican leader in Salt Lake City

who is in charge of over 10,000 Mexicans, said adamantly that Facebook has helped him to reach

a broader audience.

Excerpt 23:

I’ve [been] using Facebook for the last nine months. In nine months I have six hundred

friends already and when I have friends come from the organization I mean my Facebook,

I have, uh, Senator Robles, I mean I have people who work for the state … it is fast. You

do something and its right there. It’s really fast. You want to know something, ‘we are

doing meeting 4 south or whatever’ people do it right away. Now you get Internet on your

phone and now you can do serious messages on your phone. So, you can reply quick and

fast. E-mails you have to stay in your office or at home but Facebook, I mean it helps. I

mean you can do e-mail from your phone but Facebook, more people see it, people follow

it.”

It was Shinnar (2008) who emphasized that people relate best to their in-group and if they feel

connected to their in-group then they are more likely to have a positive social identity. Having the

ability to find family and friends on Facebook, who are not in the country, gives Mexican

Americans a stronger connection to their in-group and may improve their social identity and self-

esteem. Some participants, who had only been using Facebook this past year, are feeling that new

connection.

Excerpt 24:

I never did it, it never caught my attention. I heard of other people doing it, I saw my wife

doing it and it’s a really cool tool, it’s a really cool way to keep in contact with your

friends, especially with me when they live really far away. I just never got into it until two

months ago.

Community leader Salvador Lazalde has found that Facebook has made it possible for him to

connect his friends and others to the Mexican Federation and he is able to find out what is going

on back in Mexico and share it on Facebook. He was also able to connect with a family member

from back in Mexico that he had never met.

Excerpt 25:

That’s why when I talk about family, when you have people there, where you have then

you know they want to be a member of the club or the Mexican Federation but at the same

time, here in Utah my name, lots of people know my name because lots of time when they

see my name on Facebook they want to be my friend because they know what I am doing,

they know that I friend those people. Like Peter Carew, every one wants to be friend, like

everyone wants to be Luz Roble’s friend because who knows something, people they want

to be your friend. But right now I have friends from all parts of Mexico. I like it because I

want to know what’s going on there. If I want to know about my country and can go to my

FB, say what’s going on I heard this happened, and they know what’s going on. But once

again I need to be careful with people I don’t know, I don’t want to answer questions but

if they ask personal questions like the other day they say, ‘Who’s your dad? What’s your

name? What’s going on?’ I say, ‘Why do you want to know this?’ And they say, ‘Because

your dad have my last name.’ And then I say, ‘Oh its part of the family.’ They want to

know if we are family and then we start to talking and then we find we coming from the

same family cause of same last name.

The participants seemed to not feel a great disconnect from their in-group when they came and

lived in the United States. They were able to stay in touch with those from home and meet others

in the country who shared their native culture.

In Appendix C, word frequency cloud using NVIVO was made. As explained before, all

of the stop-words were deleted. Some of the most used words were “Facebook,” “know,”

“family,” and “friends.” This may show the connection that Mexican Americans enjoy having

Facebook to connect to family and friends and people they used to know. Being able to connect to

your in-group and feel positive about your in-group creates a stronger social identity (Shinnar,

2008).

Connection to the community.

All three community leaders often found that having a Facebook account and a Facebook

page for the groups they represent was very useful for communicating with different

communities. Salvador Lazalde, along with the other community leaders, has found that

Facebook makes it easier to connect with specific communities. Using his Facebook account and

the Mexican Federation’s Facebook page, Lazalde, who has been in the U.S. for 34 years, is able

to communicate what is going on in the world and he is able to keep track of what is going on in

Mexico, whether it is significant or not.

Excerpt 26:

Having a Facebook you get your information really fast. Most people won’t check their e-

mails anymore; they check Facebook or twitter. I don’t if you know what happened on

Saturday. An actress passed away in Mexico City, and this person was very popular, but

you don’t see e-mails, “Hey this person passed away,” you see Facebook, boom right

there. So I think that we don’t want it but Facebook is one of the richest to let people

know what’s going on. Once again, I am one of the people who didn’t want it, but I think

that is a new way to get information from people.

Lazalde uses Facebook to keep up with what is going on with his community back in Mexico, but

he is also able to effectively communicate with his Mexican community in Salt Lake City.

Excerpt 27:

I think so because it is fast. You do something and its right there. It’s really fast. ‘You

want to know something, we are doing meeting four south or whatever,’ people do it right

away. Now you get Internet on your phone and now you can do serious messages on your

phone. So, you can reply quick and fast, e-mails you have to stay in your office or at home

but Facebook, I mean it helps. I mean you can do e-mail from your phone but Facebook,

more people see it, people follow it.

Jonathan Puente, a community leader for the Latinos in Action, has found that Facebook is really

useful for getting in touch with the Latino youth.

Excerpt 28:

Do you guys know off the top of your head how many people are following us? [Puente

asks his students at Provo High School where he works for Latinos in Action]. Around

2000. And most of our, um, anything we put on, we mostly get around 800 views. So I

mean these kids are obviously on and on you know checking us out. So yeah we get that

with Facebook.

Facebook makes it very easy for these community leaders to communicate with a large

group of people about events they are having for Latinos/Mexicans in the area. It makes it easier

for Mexicans to connect with others from their country and be able to keep up with their culture,

but it also gives them the opportunity to meet and discuss what they feel they are missing in this

country. They are able to create awareness within the Mexican population residing in the U.S.

Puente said:

Excerpt 29:

Yeah, I know the thing is we get a bunch of questions. Kids ask us on Facebook like when

are you guys coming to this school or when are you coming to this school?

Messages are communicated more quickly with social media and Mexican Americans’ ability to

make connections with others from their culture in the United States happens a lot faster too.

Lazalde has been able to make connections with other Mexican American representatives in Utah

and the country in general.

Excerpt 30:

I’ve [been] using Facebook for the last nine months. In nine months I have six hundred

friends already and when I have friends come from the organization, I mean my

Facebook, I have, uh, Senator Robles, I mean I have people who work for the state. Only

half my friends from the organization. I mean Ben McLuchlen is a friend of mine. The

Mexican Federation is going to do that work.

Not only are community leaders able to connect to people in their area, but Mexican

Americans find that social media can give them the ability to make connections with their leaders.

One participant uses Facebook to keep up with what is going on with the Latino population in the

United States,

Excerpt 31:

Sometimes I get stuff on TV and Facebook. I listen to the radio. I can read some English.

Yah, sometimes he puts up both English and Spanish. Tony. J-y-a-p-i-a-s. You can ask

him questions on Facebook and make calls on the radio. Yes. Because I follow Twitter

and she’s a lawyer from California, her name is Jessica Lawigus. She talks about a lot of

stuff too and immigration. They, I follow her too. She has Facebook and twitter too. And

she used to show up at a show in the morning and speak Spanish.

Altogether, Mexican Americans in the interviews shared a lot of positive insights into their social

media usage, especially with the ability to connect to friends and family back home, but how does

this really help them integrate with their new society with which they reside? A male participant

who has been in the U.S. for around six years felt positive.

Excerpt 32:

No, no, we have our own network systems. First of all, it’s because we have big families

and because Facebook a lot of times will set you up automatically and it blows up just like

that, you have almost your contacts. At first I had 40 or 50 and then I go, ’Damn I have

200 of them.’ And the thing I am seeing is the friends of the friends we're friends. Ha ha

it’s beautiful.

While they were able to connect to their in-group community in the U.S., there was no connect to

out-group community. While some would question the need of this study because social media so

obviously makes it easy to connect with people, but it does not necessarily help them connect

with the right people, or with the people who will further their ability to integrate and feel

connected to the society with which they reside. Half of the Mexican Americans interviewed said

that they typically read and wrote in Spanish when they were online. A huge part of integrating

and connecting to the host culture is learning the language. How can they learn the language any

better if they are primarily using social media to connect with those that share their culture and

language and when they choose to forego using English?

RQ3: How do Mexican Americans use social media to adapt?

Learning the language and understanding the culture.

Berry (1997) said when expressing why integration was better than assimilation,

separation, and marginalization, that “involvement in two cultural communities” may be why

integration is one of the best methods for adjustment. One way that Mexican Americans and other

cultures can be involved in their native culture and their host culture is by having an

understanding of both languages. Social media, primarily Facebook, have helped to enhance the

English skills of Mexican Americans and it seems it has assisted some integrate their culture to

the United States. Facebook is primarily in English, although settings can be altered to Spanish.

Eight of the Mexican Americans interviewed said that their choice of language on Facebook

depended on their audience, although most of the time it was English.

When they were talking to friends and family in Mexico, they typically wrote in Spanish,

but when they were communicating with people in the United States they preferred to

communicate in English. Mexican Americans were able to integrate by learning English, but they

were also able to maintain their Spanish language by communicating in both languages,

depending on who they were talking to.

Excerpt 33:

I use both, because, like I have family from my husband’s side. They like to know what is

going on in our life so I use English. But for my friends and family in Mexico I do it in

Spanish.

For most of the interviewees, it depended on who they were talking with, or what they were

reading online.

Excerpt 34:

I read in Spanish when I look at how my hometown is doing. They’re going through a

hard time right now with the war on drugs and that’s really affecting where I am from, so I

read their news in Spanish because that’s straight from their newspapers. But, as far as

world news I read that in English.

Three of the twelve people interviewed said they specifically prefer to read and write in Spanish

online. A participant who has been in the U.S. for about nine years, said,

Excerpt 35:

Oh yeah, you know my people are out of States [Facebook reference] of course they do

everything in Spanish. Some people are in the United States but are just visiting a little

while, they have a hard time in Spanish culture. I translate for them, Spanish to English. I

prefer to use Spanish. If I have got Spanish friends, then I am going to use Spanish. You

can communicate better. It’s easier.

Participants interviewed used both languages online and are able to more effectually meld their

two cultures together, although even that can get a bit confusing. This is unique, since all of those

interviewed spoke Spanish as their first or primary language.

Excerpt 36:

They speak Spanglish. And then they say they don't understand that and I post something

in Spanish and they don't understand it, and so I told you. I speak Spanish but I speak

English and so, some people on Facebook I know can't even speak Spanish.

The majority of those interviewed shared feelings of how social media helped them with their

writing and grammar in English, but often said that they still did not have very many friends on

Facebook who were American. As mentioned before, most Mexican Americans use Facebook to

keep in touch with family and friends back home. One participant said matter-of-factly that:

Excerpt 37:

When I'm with English speaking of course it helps me with English. It helps you with the

typing, with grammar, you know, language and English, you know.

And social media helps some to enhance their reading skills as well. The need to be able to speak

English, in order to use social media, which is dominantly an English driven realm, may drive

some Mexican Americans to learn the language.

Excerpt 38:

Of course, it improves, helps a lot. Helps me to improve my reading. Actually when I

don’t know a word I look on the Internet and I can write better.

Social media can help Mexicans to quickly overcome that feeling of not understanding the

language, slang, culture, or English word definitions. Many of those interviewed like to use

Google Translate and other Internet applications to look up words they do not know.

Excerpt 39:

Of course, it improves, helps a lot. Helps me to improve my reading. Actually when I

don’t know a word I look on the Internet and I can write better.

A participant said through her daughter, who acted as interpreter, that she practices and

enhances her English skills using Google and Facebook on her phone. Those interviewed have

access to things like Google Translate via internet and can quickly find ways to understand words

they did not know. Social media and the Internet seem to offer a quick way for Mexican

Americans to get answers to their language questions.

Excerpt 40:

On the Internet I like to find the words I don’t know. I hear a new word and I like to know

what that mean. It’s like my dictionary. I like it because I don’t have to look through

dictionaries. I like to ask questions when I don’t know something.

Social media often force Mexican American to use both languages in order to connect with their

Mexican friends and family back home and with their American acquaintances in the United

States. This helps to further the integration process.

Excerpt 41:

Um, I think its one of the things that have been more helpful for me because I see myself

forced to spell things, so yeah, I can remember how to spell and learn new words.

One participant, who is currently spending a few months working in Mexico, said that he likes to

use Facebook to help him remember the language.

Excerpt 42:

Myself, personally, of course, I get to practice my grammar and then I get to practice, you

know, my English and my grammar. So, if I don't get over there [United States] I could

forget it, maybe not forget it, not practice it and just not catch spiderwebs and [deleted].

So, I like to keep it going and it helps it to maintain myself more fluid in that area of

communications.

Of course, there are those who admit that social media can be negative for building language

skills. Hermana Fole feels like Facebook and other social media sites are not useful for her two

sons, who were born and raised in the United States.

Excerpt 43:

My kids don’t see me doing that and so they’re not interested. They don’t like to go on

the Facebook. They don’t like it. And their reading is much better; their grades is much

better. And the kids now their reading and grades are down. People don’t do the full

sentences; you have to figure out what they’re saying.

Some participants said they liked to use Facebook and discussion forums, where they can

ask specific questions and get answers from people. This helped one of the participants to

understand American culture more fully. Ana Lamb said that when she first came to America she

had a difficult time understanding some of the cultural differences between Mexico and the

United States and she would often look online at discussion boards—a form of social media—to

learn about the differences between the two cultures.

Excerpt 43:

We have very strict norms in Mexico like say, you just to go out and eat. We don’t like

your kids, culturally, to throw food or like, my girls, we don’t like to go out without our

bows, their bows, so you know, they have to be well dressed like that and that’s how we

have strict norms. But with my husband, he is more laid back. He doesn’t care. So when I

was struggling with that I went online and like, I was reading about it, like something that

the Mexican culture and American culture are different, like they [United States] don’t

care how you dress.

Even though she’s lived in the United States for over a decade, she still uses social media

to get answers to some of the American cultural differences that confuse her.

Excerpt 44:

Well, you gotta look and go to Google also and you know, you go to Google and they

answer for something you don't know--go to the Google Internet forums is what he's

referring to. Oh yeah, I do it all the time--ask questions on Facebook.

Social media make the intermingling of cultures easier in some ways. As one participant

discussed his feelings about America, he admitted appreciation for the ability to be able to keep

up with both the American and Mexican cultures, no matter where he is in the world.

Excerpt 45:

I feel Americanized and everything I do is American. Do you understand me? Anything I

do is American. So, so anything I can do that goes with the system I know I'm not with

that [deleted] straight up, with the system and check how people can use your first and last

name as a weapon against yourself. They don't have a check on that. So, I make my social

network against the system. The social system that goes with the network, the good thing

about them I can be anywhere around the world and still be from where I am from, so I

can found out if my friends are having a good day or if someone’s been born. That’s

beautiful to me. No matter where I am in the world, I can get connected and start my own

little company. And I can pick it up anywhere in the world and start it just like that.

And some just seek to feel a part of something.

Excerpt 46:

There are some people who get on the Internet because they don’t know who they are yet

and want to feel part of something.

And this was said by a participant who came to the United States when she was sixteen and still

struggles to know which culture she identifies with the most.

Learning the language and being able to more fully understand the out-group’s culture, the

participants often saw the United States in a positive light, as a good country to live in. But they

did not feel so positively towards native born U.S. citizens.

Overriding question: How do social media affect the social identity of Mexican Americans?

In conclusion, the author would like to summarize these results by more clearly answering

the overriding question. There are several effects that social media have on Mexican Americans’

identity. The findings mentioned illustrate that it gives Mexican Americans a way to connect to

their in-group. No matter where they are in the world, they can use Facebook and online news to

keep in touch with friends and keep current on the things going on back home.

The negative comments posted on social media about their native culture, the stereotypes

addressed to them because of their skin color, their language, etc. has the potential to negatively

affect them. They have no connection to the U.S. when Americans do not make them feel positive

or good about their native culture or when members of the host culture post negative, racist things

online and in social media.

Immigrants are not able to integrate if they do not feel included within the American

culture. Many participants did not feel included in or inclined towards the United States when

they saw negative comments online. But Facebook does give Mexican Americans some ability to

integrate and strengthen their social identity within their host culture, because many of the

participants use Facebook in English and many of them say that using Facebook and other social

media outlets in English has helped them to understand the language and to understand the

American culture which is an essential part of immigrating.

Conclusion

The research done in this paper not only identifies that Mexican Americans are

stereotyped, to an extent, in all forms of media, including social media, but the results from the

study conducted begins to show that social media affect how Mexican Americans integrate. It

affects their social identity.

It was mentioned in the literature review of this thesis that research had been done to

understand why people use social media and that in the past few years researchers have started to

dig deep into the reasons for the effects of social media, especially on immigrants (Correa,

Hinsley, De Zuniga, & 2010; Mangold & Faulds, 2009; Witte, Frank, & Lester, 2009; Wang,

Huang, Huang, & Wang, 2009). Many researchers and journalists state that there is a great deal of

negative representation or poor representation of other cultures, including the Mexican culture,

online (Citron & Norton, 2011; Pfister & Soliz, 2011; Kim & McKay-Semmler, 2012; Croucher,

2011; Hughey & Daniels, 2013; Boyd & Marwick, 2011). And recall that Hernandez and Kim

said only recently has research begun to specifically highlight how social media affect the

communication habits and adaptation of sojourners and immigrants.

This paper represented the findings and added to the findings of other researchers, in

regards to social media and its uses and effects, especially on immigrant populations. Yes, social

media are used to create and maintain relationships with those geographically nearby and those

geographically distant (Croucher, 2011). Many Mexican American participants said their main

reason for using social media was to find out news regarding family and friends.

Yes, social media give Mexican Americans, and maybe other immigrants in the United

States, the ability to more easily learn English and understand the United States’ culture. They

were often required to have some ability at writing in English on social media forums. Mexican

Americans in this study felt that they were able to understand different social cues more readily

and by being able to look the meaning of words up on Google and having to read and respond to

Facebook friends in English, they learned to write and read a lot better.

This research makes a deep connection to the positive and lasting effects of social media,

but it also highlights the potential negative effects. Citron and Norton believed that the Internet

has the ability to shape public discourse online, including hate speech, if not properly moderated

(2011). Hughey and Daniels and Boyd and Marwick showed that newspaper comment boards

were full of racist comments when the story dealt with immigration (2013).

Coded racial language has long been used to convey subtle, yet potent, racial meanings in

ways that appear well reasoned and focused on the common good. Newspaper comment

fields engender specific types of coded language to fly well under the radar of moderators,

like in other surveyed virtual formats. For example, young Facebook users often employ

coded language or ‘social steganography’ to hide the intended meanings behind posts and

status updates from parents and moderators.

They pointed out the negative comments, and this research supplemented with the effects.

Mexican Americans were hurt; they were often brought to tears by the things they read on online

comment boards, on Facebook and other social media outlets. The majority of comments were

made by Americans who blatantly wrote that they did not want Mexicans in their country—legal

or not. These comments or postings often caused an inner battle within many of the participants

interviewed in this thesis, who spoke that they could not understand the strong hate focused in

their direction when all they wanted was a better life.

Masses of research have been dedicated to adaptation and to the understanding of

acculturation. This research shows integration as being ideal. As the United States has adopted

this adaptation as their ideal way for immigrants to adapt their cultures to the U.S., it makes it

hard for Mexican Americans to reach this ideal when their social identity can not identify with its

host culture and its native culture is insulted because they feel threatened or hostile about the

things they read online, as illustrated by the comments made by participants in this paper’s

research.

In summation, social media’s effects are far reaching and barely tapped. This research

shows that while Mexican Americans are able to use social media to stay connected to their

native culture, social media often creates an even greater barrier for them with their host.

It is also worth noting that this research opens the door for more research into how social

media fit into current communication theories and perhaps begins to identify new theories that

come from this new communications medium. One example from this research is selective

exposure theory that states that we choose to view the information that support our prior beliefs

most, but how applicable is that theory in regards to social media, when hundreds of unique

opinions are seen daily that do not necessarily reinforce any preexisting beliefs, but instead

challenge those beliefs. This research sought to understand how social media affect the social

identity of Mexican Americans. It did not generally search for a black and white answer either.

Meaning that the research was not done in order to understand whether social media affected

Mexican American’s social identity positively or negatively, but instead the research explored

potential ways it might affect their social identity. Answers were found, but it was not one way or

the other. Their social identity was both potentially strengthened and potentially weakened. It

cannot be denied that learning the language greatly helps with integration and in many cases,

social media reinforced Mexican’s language learning skills. They were forced to type in English

in order to communicate with their American associates and friends. Then again, many of the

Mexican Americans chose to use Spanish over English online. They also used social media as a

tool solely to communicate with those that shared their culture, which would not have been

beneficial towards assimilating, but could help to bolster their social identity in connection to

feeling close to their in group. But what really needs to be examined is their relationship with

their out group. Not only did they feel offended and deeply hurt by the posts and comments made

about them online by Americans, but they also were limiting their integration process by

connecting to mostly Mexicans on social media. Temporarily this solution may have bolstered

their social identity, but if they cannot communicate properly or feel accepted by their host

culture then this affects their job, their future relationships, and their social comfort. This research

did deal closely with the negative comments and posts online, not because it was meant to be the

main focus of this research, but because those that were interviewed were very forthcoming with

stronger and more negative emotions when they discussed their relationship with their host

culture online.

In summary, this research opens the door to discovering how social media affect its users.

It gives a glimpse of how people are more fully exercising their first amendment rights. In

summary, this research does not make a case for or against social media, but shows some of its

potential effects within general contexts.

Limitations

There are several limitations in this study, one of which would be for the researcher to

draw from a more diverse population, for instance, interviewing Mexican Americans on the East

Coast and West Coast and not just Mexican Americans living in Utah. Other limitations of this

study are that those interviewed did not have a lot of online media habits before they came to the

United States because most have been in the United States for at least ten years. This study could

be even better if interviews were conducted with several people who had not been in the United

States for over seven years, which is around the time computers and the Internet became a lot

more accessible and prevalent in the home. Another limitation to this study is that the majority of

the interviews were conducted in English, instead of in the participant’s native language, which

could have limited the participant’s level of comfort in disclosure. Questions could have been

narrowed down from social media to how Mexican Americans felt about online news stories and

the comments boards that accompany those stories.

Future Research

This research was a very broad look at the effects of social media on immigrants,

specifically Mexican Hispanics. It would be beneficial if this research could be extended to a

broader, larger audience of Hispanics in the United States, in order to gauge other cultures’

feelings on how they feel they are represented in the news in the United States and perhaps see

the differences between each culture and whether past communication mediums’ established

stereotype factors into this most recent medium of communication, social media. Other future

research could focus more clearly on the online news consumption and habits of Mexican

Americans and if and how they contribute to online news comments boards and discussion

forums.

It would be interesting to turn the results from this qualitative thesis into quantitative

research in order to apply the results to a generalized audience. It would also be interesting to see

if there is a specific online news site that Mexicans prefer, since seven out of the eleven Mexican

Americans interviewed in this study said that they read almost all the national news at CNN, and

to take the consistent results from this and build a quantitative study that could be generalized to

the Mexican American population as a whole. It would also be interesting to do a qualitative

study to find out why they prefer CNN to other news networks, in order to understand what

strategies CNN has incorporated to gain such an audience’s favor.

One other context that may be of interest for future research would be a greater look at

how social media are controlled. More research could be done on social media and the first

amendment. It would be extremely relevant to this research to further develop the conversation

with those interviewed to understand if they recognize that social media give a person greater

opportunity to exercise first amendment rights, to see if the U.S.’ values on media are understood

by Mexican Americans and other cultures. Future research could also delve into the

communications theoretical frameworks and explore how social media affect theories, if indeed it

does.

How Social Media Affect the Social Identity of Mexican Americans.pdf

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