13. Ethnic Group Experiences with Social Media: The Case of the Cherokee and Native Americans Facebook Group

This chapter probes how Cherokee and Native American identities have been compromised through social media networking, providing another dimension to ethnic ties in a digital world. It is an attempt to delve into indigenous identities through the different network exchanges about ethnic ties that have enhanced their belonging to a community of Native Americans, historically considered the first settlers in the New World long before the arrival of the white men. It seeks to shed light on indigenous groups in a changing world by examining All About the Cherokee and Native Americans Facebook public group. A corpus, consisting of a selection of items, notably paintings, drawings, and photographs, posted on the network, is analyzed to gain insight into social processes concerning how Native Americans interact with other internet browsers when exposed to such pictures. Marcus Banks’s approach is adopted in this chapter, following the tools provided in his work “Analyzing Images” in Flick, U, ed. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (Sage, London, 2014). The intention is to understand better how social media enhanced ethnic belonging among Native Americans in terms of their intentionality and the reaction of the different group members in terms of their comments and views. Particular attention is drawn to the significance of the different posts in strengthening ethnic ties among the Cherokee and other Native Americans. This chapter seeks to argue that the different items shared amongst group members have had a significant impact on indigenous people, strengthening Cherokee and Native Americans’ ethnic ties and reviving their pride in being the first inhabitants of the New World before the arrival of the white man. This is achieved by juxtaposing the various posts with the different reactions and comments by group members.