I am experimenting with the use of course blogs. Students are required to post weekly reactions to the course readings and to comment on each other\’s posts. They are also blogging their assignments. This is something I have resisted in the past, but I was inspired by a few colleagues who have been doing this successfully for some time: Christian Sandvig, Eszter Hargittai, and Liz Lawley. I am extremely pleased with how the first few weeks have worked out. The quality of the posts seems high than paper versions I have asked for in previous years, I am not sure if it is comfort with the medium or the public performance aspect. I am also very pleased by the interaction between students built around the blogs, they seem more engaged with each other. On occasion I have even invited the author\’s of the articles students are reading to read and comment on the blogs, the students seem excited by it and at least one author reported back that he benefited from the comments students had posted. I\’m using Movable Type 3.32 with a few scripts that I have customized to make class administration a little easier. The course blogs can be found here: COMM 481: Social Networks (undergrad), COMM 410: New Media and Community Life (undergrad), COMM 866: New Media and Society. Student posts are recorded as trackbacks to each week\’s readings and assignments.
I have completed the first major paper reporting the results of the e-neighbors study. It is currently under review for publication, so I am not going to post a copy online just yet. However, if you would like an advance look, I would be happy to share a copy of the draft by email:
Title: e-Neighbors: Neighborhoods in the Network Society
Abstract:
This study examines in detail the specific contexts where Internet use affords local interactions and facilitates community involvement at the neighborhood level. Studies of Internet and community have found that information and communication technologies provide new opportunities for social interaction, but that it may also increase privatism by isolating people in their homes. This paper argues that while the Internet may encourage both home-centeredness and communication across great distances, it may also facilitate interactions centered near the home. Unlike traditional community networking studies, which focus on bridging the digital divide, this study focuses on bridging the divide between the electronic and parochial realms. Detailed, longitudinal social network surveys were completed with the residents of four contrasting neighborhoods over a period of three years (suburb, apartment building, gated community). Three of the four neighborhoods were provided with a neighborhood email discussion list and a neighborhood website. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to model over time the number of neighbors recognized, emailed, met in-person, and talked to on the telephone. The neighborhood email lists were also analyzed for content. The results suggest that the Internet use has already been adopted into the maintenance of neighborhood social networks. However, neighborhood effects reduce the influence of everyday Internet use, as well as the experimental intervention, in communities that lack the context to support local tie formation. Early adopters of the Internet and active users of the neighborhood email list built larger weak tie networks over time.
Proving yet again the lack of communication between computer science and the social sciences (or maybe just how slow social science flows to comp sci journalists), a recent article in PC Magazine questions why no sociologists have ever studied the Internet! \”Since the appearance of the desktop computer, very little academic analysis has been done on it and how people use it… We need real sociological research done by people who can handle it objectively, so we don\’t have to listen to the carping BSers blathering on about Web 2.0 or how folksonomies are so important to users and the future. That stuff is all made up and based on speculation and invention.\” *big sigh* I do not even know where to start with this one… [link to article].