How Black People May Or May Not Use Twitter
Sam Sanders, NPR | August 16, 2010

Whenever you have a news headline that starts with three words, “How,” “Black,” and “People,” someone’s bound to get upset.

Not to mention the addition of a controversial illustration — the little blue Twitter bird, colored brown, holding a smart phone, and wearing an oversized baseball cap, cocked to the side ever-so-slightly.

But Slate technology columnist Farhad Manjoo says he knew what he was getting into when he wrote, “How Black People Use Twitter.”

“I was bound to offend people with this article,” Manjoo says. “But I thought that it was kind of worth a risk to ask and perhaps answer some interesting questions.”

His question was why so many popular topics on Twitter, called hashtags, seem to come from blacks, specifically black youth. Manjoo says he made that observation by checking out the Twitter profile photos of tweeters taking part in the popular hashtags. (Read the full article)