The Digital Research Initiative
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1. A lot of minority groups use the Internet to showcase their culture--almost as a cross between an advertisement and a museum.

  2. Native Americans in particular have had trouble with con artists attempting to misrepresent them on the WWW. Some have created sites just to combat this problem--check out Redhawk's Lodge for an example. Also see the discussion at http://bioc02.uthscsa.edu/.aises/gst/mhx/chat/threads.html.

  3. Minorities also fight for their rights and interests via the WWW. Check out The Black World Today, which is a 'zine about African American political interests. Also, Saludos is a career-resource/job finder for Hispanics.

  4. It is important to note that it is just as easy to find the Klu Klux Klan's Homepage as it is to find any of the above references. It is almost humorous to see the KKK promoted as a nonprofit organization, and this site attempts to make the KKK seem "friendlier," although a few clicks into the site will bring out their real views.

    Also see Race Traitor, which promotes destroying the white race. For more Hate Groups on the Net, see http://www.vir.com/Shalom/hatred.html It is a directory full of Net Hate Groups.

  5. There are a lot of resources on the Net geared specifically for people with disabilities. Check out a partial list at http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Disabilities/

    Here is a site which offers a self-test to see if your website is accessible by disabled persons. It brings up a great point--when we have streaming audio, we should offer text alternatives. The same for video. These are important issues--deaf people especially have trouble with the Internet and multimedia.

    Also WebAble contains the "best directory available" of websites for people with disabilities There is a lot of information here about making the Web accessible to people with disabilities and that's going to be a very important issue.

  6. Please visit the Minority On-Line Information Service. It lists opportunities for minorities in the government and is very well done. Another job bank for minorites is the National Diversity Journalism Job Bank

  7. Misinformation about minorites is prevelant on the Web. See What happens when Japanese and Americans Meet

  8. KoreaDirect is a Yahoo!-like searchable directory of Internet Resources for Korean Americans.

  9. Here is an interactive "online community" for Asian Americans, who are invited to join.

  10. BlackLands is a little more "lingo-oriented" site. It is for African Americans, and has some controversial ideas about it--like a very strong interest in "Afrika" as the homeland. This site has had about 149,000 hits in two years--not too bad.

This site made by
eric
This site was created especially for students of the UNC School of Journalism's
JOMC 050 Class, and anyone else who may be interested.
For more information, please contactdaikat@email.unc.edu