\’Core Networks, Social Isolation, and New Media,\’ my paper with Lauren Sessions Goulet and Eun Ja Her, on how the Internet and mobile phone use is related to network size and diversity was published in the February issue of Information, Communication & Society. The article has been made available for free from Routledge. You can also view a short video of me discussing the paper and the findings.
This paper was the result of a 2008 survey of core social networks (strong ties) and new media use. Evidence from the 2004 US General Social Survey (GSS) suggested that during the past 20 years, people became increasingly socially isolated and their core discussion networks became smaller and less diverse. One explanation offered for this trend is the use of mobile phones and the Internet. This study replicates and expands on the GSS network methodology to explore the relationship between the use of new technologies and the size and diversity of core networks. The findings conflict with the results of the 2004 GSS, i.e. we find that social isolation has not increased since 1985. However, the current study supports the conclusions that the size of core networks has declined and the number of nonkin in core networks has diminished. Mobile phone and Internet use, especially specific uses of social media, were found to have a positive relationship to network size and diversity. In discussing these trends, we speculate that specific social media provide for a \’pervasive awareness\’ within personal networks that has increased the specialization of close ties. We argue that this same pervasive awareness provides for heightened surveillance of network members, the result of which is a higher level of perceived diversity within networks based on metrics that include political affiliation.
I have a new paper on the relationship between the overall diversity of people’s social networks, their use of social media and use of traditional social settings, such as churches, cafes, public parks, neighborhoods, and voluntary groups. The paper is coauthored with Chul-joo Lee (The Ohio State University), and my student Eun Ja (Jenny) Her and will appear next year in the journal New Media & Society.
This paper examines how the use of \“social media\†– information and communication technologies that are assumed to promote interaction, such as the mobile phone, social networking websites, blogging, instant messaging, and photo sharing – are related to the diversity of people’s personal networks. We find that a limited set of technologies directly afford diversity, but many indirectly contribute to diversity by supporting participation in traditional settings such as neighborhoods, voluntary groups, religious institutions, and public spaces. Only one Internet activity, social networking websites, was related to lower levels of participation in a traditional setting: neighborhoods. However, when direct effects were included, the total influence of social networking services on diversity was positive. We argue that a focus on affordances of new media for networked individualism fails to recognize the continued importance of place for the organization of personal networks. Networks, that as a result of the \“pervasive awareness\†offered by some new technologies, may be more persistent and diverse than at any time in recent history.
You can download a draft copy of the paper here.
The final version of my paper \”Internet Use and the Concentration of Disadvantage: Glocalization and the Urban Underclass\” is now available online from the Sage website. This article will soon appear in the print version of American Behavioral Scientist.
This is the first paper to report findings from the i-Neighbors.org project. This article argues that the literature on digital inequality — in its focus on individual characteristics, behaviors, and outcomes — has overlooked change within the context of where social and civic inequalities are reproduced. This omission is the result of a failure to explore the role of ecological context within the study of the digital divide and the role of communication within the study of collective efficacy. Social cohesion, and an expectation for informal social control at the neighborhood level, is a function of both ecological context and media context. Those embedded within settings where prior media, including the telephone and face-to-face contact, could not overcome contextual barriers to collective action, namely within areas of concentrated disadvantage; may now, as a result of local Internet use, experience reduced social and civic inequality. This article is based on the results of a 3-year naturalistic experiment that examined the use of the Internet for communication at the neighborhood level. It proposes a new measure of collective efficacy – in place of network measures or perceived cohesion – based on the direct observation of communication practices. The analysis includes a model of the ecological characteristics associated with neighborhoods that adopted the Internet as a means of local information exchange, and it provides a comparison of the content of electronic messages exchanged within areas of advantage and those of extreme poverty, unemployment, and racial segregation. Findings suggest that as much as the Internet supports social and civic engagement in areas where it is already likely to be high, it also affords engagement within contexts of extreme disadvantage.
If your library subscribes to ABS, you can download the OnlineFirst article. If not, contact me and I will be more than happy to send you the final version (or you can read an early draft online).