Thickett's sentiment was supported by a range of speakers at the conference, including keynote speaker Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the event chair Sunny Hundal, blogger and editor of online magazine Asians in Media.
Thickett (pictured, courtesy of Richard Cooke, Guardian News and Media) presented the results of an Ofcom study released this week, which suggests ethnic groups consume online media differently from the population in general.
The study forms part of Ofcom's 'Media Literacy Audit: Media literacy of UK adults from ethnic minority groups', commissioned to identify the different patterns of digital media use by the general population in comparison to the four largest ethnic groups in the UK: Indian, Black Caribbean, Black African and Pakistani.
According to a press release accompanying the report, the research suggested that 'ethnic minority groups are at the forefront of digital communications in the UK, with high levels of mobile phone, internet and multichannel television take-up', but 'many people from ethnic minority groups lack confidence finding content online and are concerned about content delivered on digital communications'.
While only 53 per cent of the general population have access to digital television, mobile phone and internet, Indian, Pakistani and Black African adults are far more likely to live in households with multiple device access (ranging from 62-65 per cent between the groups).
Traditional media consumption was lower for ethnic groups: 74 per cent of the general population regularly buy newspapers compared to only 38 per cent of Black Africans, for example.
Despite high use of the internet and online services, Ofcom said ethnic groups have less confidence and trust in using these services than the general population, with 69-83 per cent (ranging between the groups) of those studied saying they are confident when finding information online compared to 91 per cent of the UK population as a whole.
The researchers collected evidence from 1,200 people across the UK and also conducted qualitative face-to-face research, in which they interviewed a smaller range of people from ethnic backgrounds on their use of online and digital media.
Thickett acknowledged that there was a likelihood that respondents from ethnic minorities would be from a younger age range and from particular social-economic backgrounds (C2DE households). This would have an impact on the research, he said, but maintained the results were still pertinent.
Ethnic minorities in the under-45 age group, for example, are more likely to own a mobile phone and access digital TV and the internet (ranging from 64-73 per cent across the groups) than the average person under 45 in the UK (67 per cent), according to the report.
According to Trevor Phillips, whose keynote speech supported Ofcom's findings, the 'most avid consumers of new kinds of media [online and mobile] tend to come from amongst minority groups.'
"They're literally the most technically adept. They're also, by the way, the most worldly," he said.
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