Social Network Blog - g16

Our "Social Network" surveys measured 20 respondents' weak tie access and strong tie discussion networks. Overall, I found interesting correlations between education and network size, spousal connectedness between married husbands and wives, age and new media utilization, and similar patterns on homophily and trends in relationship roles for neighbors, co-workers and members of groups in McPherson's writings. The social networks portrayed in my survey results support Wellman's rise of personal network communities.

Nine out of ten of my respondents aged 18-22 were currently full-time students, which offered no contrast for various education levels and no married respondents. I was able to survey three respondents in the 33+ cohort that had high school level educations or less, and their results contrasted with higher educated respondents provoked questions of class and SES effects on social networks that our survey did not directly ask.

For network size, my average respondent had 4.4 discussion partners, varying slightly by gender (males: 4.; females: 5.3) and age (18-22: 4.8; 33+: 4). My smallest reported discussion network consisted of 2 people, which was listed 4 times. These results do not comply with McPherson's median of 2.08 discussion partners or 25% of respondents with zero discussion partners in "Social Isolation in America." Hampton and Marin also contend that important matters discussion partners measure strong ties, and my findings are closer to their average of 4.8 discussion partners. My data also diverges from McPherson's, in that her 2004 GSS analysis had only 15.3% of respondents list four or five discussion partners. In contrast, 44% of my respondents listed four or five discussion partners, which probably is due to the unequal education distribution compared to the population at large for the GSS.

In my 33+ group, average network size for respondents with a high school education or less was 2 and 5.2 for respondents with some college or more. Depending on the role of their relationship, strong ties provide a wide range of resources and support, such as emotional aid, large and small services, financial aid and companionship (Wellman & Wortley). My results show a positive association between educational attainment and strong-tie discussion partners, thus hinting that lower educational attainment for adults limits access to support. The correlation between strong ties and recovery from heart attacks in Dicken et al's study also would support the claim that these respondents with lower education and subsequently less strong ties are at a greater risk for health issues problems.

My results on roles of ties in discussion networks strongly mirror McPherson's data in Table 2. 21% of the 2004 respondents in McPherson's study listed a parent as a discussion tie and 19% of my respondents did as well. McPherson's decline of group members in discussion networks (11.8%) and coworkers (18%) almost exactly equaled my results (11.25% group members and 18% co-workers). However, only 1.25% of discussion partners in my survey were classified as a neighbor, a smaller percentage than McPherson's 7.9%. However, our data may differ due to the tendencies for full time college students to not classify strong, nonkin ties in their neighborhood as neighbors.

There was no correlation of kin inclusion in discussion network and position sum; however, over 80% of our respondents had 1/3 or more of their discussion network comprised of kin, with the maximum being a 56-year-old respondent's 4 out of 5 members kin. Overall, women were more likely to kin-keep, with 47% of their networks comprised of kin compared to 33% of male networks. As opposed to McPherson's findings, not one respondent in my survey answered only their spouse for discussion partners.

Our survey presented a position generator ranked from descending occupational prestige with 15 positions similar to the randomized position generator Lin uses to measure weak ties. In terms of prestige in the position generator, Nan Ling measures social capital by extensity of positions reached, the upper reachability, and range of positions accessed. The average sum, also known as Lin's extensity, (with each occupation equaling 1 point) was 7.9, with slight variation by gender (males: 8; females: 7.8). There was no significant correlation of position extensity, upper reachability, or range to education or gender in my study, as opposed to Lin's findings of gender significance in upper reachability and range. For my lowest scores, a 22 year-old male scored a 1 and a 21-year-old male scored a 3; the 22-year-old who scored 1 on the prestige generator sum had 3 out of his 6 discussion networks as kin, hinting at a privatized network with little diverse access to weak ties and unique information. The 21 year-old with the position sum of 3 only had 2 discussion partners, neither which were kin. There was a slight positive association between age and position sum, as the average position sum for 18-22 was 7.2, as opposed to 8.2 for 33 years or older respondents. Our sample differed significantly (ours is more educated, composed of less married people, and younger) from Lin's Taiwan networks study, and my average extensity (7.9) was higher than Lin's 6.5. The most frequently accessed position was the lowest, laborer, an interesting finding that shows a common ability to downward reach for all respondents (which follows Milgram's assertions of reaching higher level gatekeeping managers in an organization for trickle down prestige reach). Our 15 occupation position generator differed from Lin's relationship-including position generator in Appendix A of "The Position Generator;" I would have liked ours to have randomized and interspered the prestige of occupations like Lin's did because I did observe some unease and self-consciousness of respondents during this section that could have affected the validity of embedded resources. I also would have liked the inclusion of Van Der Gaag's resource generator to distinguish potential access from actual use of weak ties as well as to ascertain the degree to which different support is coming from weak-tie acquiantances, friends, or kin.

In terms of distance, my results showed a difference in strong tie location according to respondent's gender. 11% of males listed strong ties that resided in their home or dorm compared to 21% of females, an indication that males' networks are not as privatized and feminized yet as Wellman hypothesizes they are trending towards. Males also had more far-flung, geographically dispersed networks, with 55.5% of their strong ties residing outside of their state and in the same country as opposed to 26.2% of female strong ties. Only one respondent,a male, listed a strong tie from another country. However these distant male strong ties may not be as global, as not one male of any age group listed any ties outside of their city but in their state, as opposed to 17% of females and the state category being the modal response for 33+ females.

Barry Wellman argues that new media technology complements instead of replaces face-to-face interactions in a non-zero sum milieu, and my findings support his description. The most interesting findings were in the age distributions and new media usage. 60% of 18-22 year olds use IM, as opposed to only 25% of 33+ respondents. Only one respondent in the 18-22 group used postal mail, and only one 18-22 respondent used the landline phone, as opposed to 62.5% (postal mail) and 87.5% (landline phone) in the 33+ cohort. The discrepancies in age and landline phone usage are most likely due to the transient residential status of the younger full-time students. E-mail and cell phone communication were adopted by all 33+ respondents with some college or higher educational attainment. However, communication medium differs in terms of frequency of interactions in age groups. The 18-22 age group had 530 face-to-face interactions, as opposed to 357 for 33+ age group, probably due to the older cohorts working status. The 18-22 age group had more interactions over cell phone (541 cellphone versus 530 face-to-face) with their strong ties in the past thirty days, a stark contrast to the mere 184 cell interactions (compared to 357 face-to-face) among the 33+ grouping. Younger people are integrating cellular phones into their communication with strong ties more than the older age group, of which 25% did not use a cell phone at all to communicate with a strong tie in the past thirty days. Overall, the lower frequency of contacts the older group had with their strong ties supports Kalmijn’s dyadic withdrawal hypothesis that "the older people are...the fewer friendship contacts they report."

Wellman and Wortley claim that "respondents rarely see their most active network members more than twice per week," which differs from my findings of heavy face-to-face contact for strong tie networks. In educational analysis, two out of my three high school-or-less respondents did not communicate with a strong tie using e-mail, instant messaging, or cell phone, and one of these had only face-to-face contact; indicating a possible digital divide for utilization of new media communication technologies according to education. My results agree with Baym et al.'s that college students use face-to-face interaction more than internet communication, but disagree with the authors that "participants reported using the internet as often as the telephone." (299) Cell phone usage was the most frequently used medium of communication among my college students, with a total of 541 interactions, slightly higher than face-to-face (530) and significantly higher than Internet (e-mail and IM 411 combined) My findings also concur with Chen and Quan-Haase's National Geographic study in which "e-mail was used more with friends than relatives." (Social Interactions 303) New media use is most frequently utilized when strong ties reside outside of the respondent's neighborhood. Wellman's evolved network communities must "actively maintain ties instead of just rely on solidary communities to do this for them." However, two of my male respondents actually had no contact with their nonkin, nongroup strong tie in the past thirty days across all mediums. This finding also opposed Monge's notation that frequency of interaction is an important element in establishing strong ties with others. Both of these unaccessed strong ties were designated as "advisors," thus perhaps indicating an institutional role.

In "Shared Friendship Networks," Kalmijn evaluated the "dyadic withdrawal" hypothesis that friendship networks get smaller as couples cohabitate and that tie networks between partners begin to overlap more. Although we did not ask respondents' relationship status, we can analyze the differences for non-full-time students who listed spouses versus those who did not. Respondents listing a cohabitating partner had larger discussion networks (4.6) compared to those who did not list a spouse (3), but these findings are probably affected by the 2 low education, unmarried outliers with small networks.

For the five respondents who listed a spouse in their discussion network, there was a noticeable difference in husbands' connectedness to wife's discussion partners and wives' less connectedness to their husbands' discussion partners. For the 36-year-old wife, her husband was especially close to 3 of her ties and knew the remaining 2 ties. For the 56-year-old wife, her husband was especially close to 3 of her ties and knew the remaining 1 tie. Neither of the two married women's husbands were strangers to anyone in their network. This finding agrees with McPherson's description in "Birds of a Feather" of young females' greater likelihood to delete tie choice to resolve intransitivity than males. (422) The high rate of spousal connectedness in these women's networks may also be related to their high rate of kin (3/6 for the 36 yr old and 4/5 for the 56 yr old compared to lower rates of 1/5, 1/2, and 2/5 for kin for married men). For the three married men, the 61-year-old's wife was a stranger to 2 of his 4 other ties, the 47-year-old's wife was a stranger to his 1 other tie, and the 54-year-old's wife was a stranger to 1 of his 4 other ties. Two interesting correlations arose in this analysis: All of the husbands' individuated ties, save for the 47-year-old's advisor, were co-workers, which harkens back to Elizabeth Bott's interesting finding on occupation and spousal joint networks. Another finding is that my 47-year old married male respondent's discussion network is an example of Granovetter's forbidden triad. He has two strong-tie discussion partners which are strangers to each other, which violates Granovetter's idea of transitivity among strong ties in networks. Overall for married respondents, women had denser networks composed of more kin than their male counterparts. These dense kin-keeping, privatized networks support Wellman's description of feminized personal networks. While they have high redundancy effective in the diffusion of information, they also lack Burt's weak tie structural holes that can bring unique information and access diverse resources to a network.

In "The Network Community," Wellman asserts that networks become more sparsely knit as people age. In my survey results, my results comparing the age groups (0.7 for know each other or extremely close in 18-22 age group and 0.68 for 33+) disagree with Wellman. There was also little difference in the density of male's networks and female's networks (.25 and .26 extremely close respectively) for my results. In his Toronto study, Wellman found a "density of 0.33, [meaning] that one-third of a person's intimates network have close ties with each other," and that "mean network density declined from 0.33 to 0.13 over a decade." (25) My respondents had more dense networks with a total average of .25 extremely close, .45 knew each other and .30 strangers. My findings do agree with Wellman that "extended kin is rarely supportive," as no respondents listed "other family" in their strong ties. Again, education level proves to be an interesting factor in social networks, and did negatively correlate with network density, as all three of my high school or less respondents had fragmented networks in which all ties were strangers.

We also measured status homophily, in terms of education, gender, and age of the strong ties listed in our surveys. I defined age homophily as within one year below, the same age, or one year above. In "Birds of a Feather," Mcpherson finds "22% of people have no cross-sex confidants," and cites a study by Marsden that found controlling for kin showed "considerable gender homophily." (423) In my 33+ group, no male listed a nonkin strong tie of the opposite gender; Wellman and Wortley claim that women provide emotional support, and my rsults reveal a dangerous trend of investing all emotional support into one vulnerable female kin tie. My results agree with McPherson that "gender homophily is lower among the young and the highly educated” (423), but I wonder if an option for including romantic partner as kin, would have eliminated many of the gender heterophilous friends in the 18-22 age group. McPherson states that "homophily on age can be stronger than any other dimension" and cites Fischer's 38% of Detroit male's close ties being within two years of their age. My results show strong age homophily for the 18-22 group (0.62), but this age homophily significantly drops to 0.09 for the 33+ group. Gender homophily stays consistent at an average of 0.68 for both age groups with no significant variance across the sexes. Educational homophily varies for my age groups, as the younger group had 52% of ties of similar educational attainment and the older group had only 32%. Two of my unmarried, high school-or-less respondents had 100% gender and education homophilous strong ties, and all were located within the same city, suggesting little geographic mobility. The 18-22 group had higher age and educational homophily than the 33+ group, showing the effects of institutional structures of traditional school classes in clustering age groups, especially since all but one respondent are full time students.

McPherson also found that increased education leads not only to a greater number of confidants, but also a lower proportion of kin. My results for males 33+ agree (0.5 kin for high-school or lower and 0.3 for college or higher), but my results for females does not correlate. McPherson finds a positive correlation between education and diversity of ties. Thus, the lower educated respondents not only have less access to strong social support, but also to the unique information and resources that diverse ties bring. When extending educational attainment to designate class distinction, my findings support Gladwell's statement that poverty can be measured by limitation of access to diverse connectors like Lois Weinberg.

In terms of survey design issues, I would have liked our name generator to include additional questions discussed in Hampton and Marin's review of generator options to ascertain type of support accessed from ties. I also found limitations in the survey design, encountering confusion with the exclusion of proper designation for ex-spouses, non-married partners, text-messaging, and appropriate characterization of residential location. Many of my respondents, especially those who reside in the suburbs were perplexed at the gap between "same neighborhood" and "same city," feeling that neighborhood meant a couple of streets away in the standard suburban layout and wanted a farther category for "same county." Perhaps there would have been a measurement of distance in miles instead of category, but I do understand the difficulties some systematically different respondents would have in measuring miles in their head. Elizabeth Bott wrote that "highly developed division of labor in an industrial society produces not only complexity but also variability" in social networks, and I would have wanted a question measuring the population density of residential location and another measuring economic function (white collar, service, creative class, stay-at-home mom) in comparing social networks.


Some interesting aspects of my survey results support Wellman's claim that in modern networks, "community has moved out of its traditional neighborhood base as the constraints of space have weakened." (18) Whereas Wellman found that neighbors comprise 22% of Torontians' personal networks, only one respondent in my surveys listed a neighbor as a strong tie. This does not bode well for proponents of "eyes on the street" social surveillance or local civic engagement. Also the very low numbers of people who listed discussion ties that were members of group gives credence to Wellman's rise of personalized networking replacing group-based mechanical solidarity thesis and Putnam's bowling alone thesis. The two respondents who did list members of group were both 18-22 males and had discussion networks that were heavily concentrated by these comembers (3/6 and 6/6). The two respondents, one with fraternity brothers listed and other with Mormon church members listed, also had very dense networks.

Granovetter uses weak tie linkages to show the bridging of diverse social networks, and Burt praises the accessing of unique information diverse weak ties bring. However the decay of place-based networks engendered by the decline of "third places" and technological advances, presents a danger for networks to become more inclusive and homophilous, which is not good for citizenry.

Our Small University Experiment set out to apply Stanley Milgram's small-world study to the social network of the University of Pennsylvania. Stevenson theorizes that the clear boundaries of a university would allow for greater completion rates than world-at-large studied. However, our Antonio Polley group had a traditional 25% success rate along the lines of Milgram's population study, but Susan Yoon's group had a phenomenal 80% completion rate. There are many possible structural reasons for this discrepancy, and other derivations and fulfillments from Stevenson's hypotheses and Milgram's findings on gender homophily, number of chain links, strength of ties, and occupational prestige. While my rationale for choosing my target Neil in Part 1 were all justified in bridging the gap into the Wistar Institute, it was not enough to reach the elusive Mr. Polley.

Stevenson explains that the "relatively clear boundaries" in organizations result in smaller number of intermediaries between the originator and the target and higher completion rates than small world studies of the population at large. While Antonio's completion rate of 25% is close to Stevenson's of 27%, it is not higher than a world at large study like Milgram's small world study of the United States with a 23% success rate. Susan's success rate of 80% does however support Stevenson's comments on the greater success of organizational small world experiments. Stevenson's results of 1.25 mean chain links for completed folders is smaller than our results (4.5 for successful Polley and 3.25 for successful Yoon), but our results are as Stevenson predicted, less than the 5.5 average for the population at large in Milgram and Korte's small world. For both of our groups, the mean intermediary links was lower for incomplete chains, which agrees with Milgram and Korte's results that over 30% of incomplete chains stopped by the third remove. However, my personal intermediary chain links of 4 is more close to the successful Antonio mean (4.5) than the Antonio failures (2.33). My incomplete chain must be an example of Milgram's importance of social distance versus physical distance in his circular failures which reached the Nebraska neighborhood but not the individual target.

Stevenson hypothesizes that "the longer the time at the university, the more likely a student is to initiate a successful chain of communication to a target" and cites many of the structural conditions that prevent freshman from creating successful higher prestige ties than seniors. Our Small University Experiment's methodology differed in that our folders were not distributed equally to freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, but we do see a pattern in years spent at Penn. Eleven of our originating alters have spent four years at Penn, 5 have spent three years at Penn, and 2 lucky people have spent five years at Penn. In our Antonio Polley group, the only two five-year students were the only two successful originating alters. It is also interesting that these two successful fifth year students bucked Stevenson's, Milgram's, and even McPherson's homophilous trends and predictions for success by passing their folders directly to individuals of a lower class who have only spent two years at Penn. As for the Susan Yoon group, 75% of the 4 year students were successful, and 100% of the 3 year students were successful. However these rates are hard to truly generalize because of our very small distribution (Is the difference in exposure between a junior and a senior that great? We did not have any freshman and only two juniors in this group). Also we cannot really draw conclusions from Milgram's experiments, which involved the population at large, instead of a duration-constricted captive population in the university organization. I am also skeptical because of the failure of my own folder. According to my returned postcards, years at Penn does not exactly correlate with success or occupational prestige. My senior status folder began with another four year student and ended with a staff member who has been at Penn for 21 years.

Stevenson's Hypothesis 2 states that "Small world folders are more likely to be passed within a class than between classes and occupation groups in a university." For both of our groups, the majority of student to student transfers were not class-homophilous and do not agree with Stevenson's hypothesis and results of no students passing a folder to a student of a lower class. 60% of Student transfers in Susan's group were to students in a lower class, as compared to 40% in the same class. Almost 57% of student to student transfers in Antonio's group were to students in a lower or higher class, as compared to 42% who remained in their class. As for affiliation, our results somewhat follow Stevenson's hypothesis as 65% of Antonio transfers were affiliation homophilous, but Susan's were an even 50% homophilous, 50% nonhomophilous split. Our results were not homophilous however in terms of transfers to people of the same department/major, which had about a 25% for both groups. This makes sense since both targets were outside of the Communications-dominating originating student field and our goal was to reach a heterophilous target.

Milgram also contended that completed chains are more likely to involve participants with higher occupational prestige and more weak infrequent relations than unsuccessful chains. For Milgram's infrequency of contacts in successful ties, our results showed an interesting quirk in the median time between transfers that may support Milgram's point. While incomplete chains in both Yoon and Polley groups and Polley completed chains average around 4 days, Yoon completed chains took an average of ten days between transfers.

Length at Penn usually correlates with increase in prestige, and thus more in-degrees and greater reachability than an individual who has not been at the university for as long or who occupies a less prestigious position. However, my personal chain somewhat refutes his findings, as my folder died with a staff intermediary who had been at the Wistar Institute for over 21 years. In Part 1 of this assignment: http://www.mysocialnetwork.net/blog/481/g16/2006/09/why_does_the_wistar_institute.html, I had hypothesized that my folder would "pass through staff primarily." This was prescient, as my chain did reach and end in the staff vicinity, from student-student-student-staff-staff. However, I also claimed in question 4 that my aim was to reach someone of high occupation prestige and network surveillance like a "manager" or otherwise "a gatekeeper secretary or security guard." While I did reach staff in the Wistar Institute in my aim to follow Milgram and Korte's "efficient occupational route," (102) I now think that my accessed staff Cheryl must be of lower occupational prestige than the "managers, officials, and sales-clerical personnel" (105) gatekeepers with "maximum surveillance" (107) of the institution in Milgram and Korte's study.

While Milgram's study did not use the same "very weak to very strong" tie continuum we used, he did break down ties as "friend, relative, or acquaintance." (65) In Milgram's Kansas study, 123 recipients passed the folder to friends or acquaintances, compared to only 22 sent to relatives. Our study differs in that an organization like a university has a constructed population where relatives will not be very likely to be included. Also, our study allowed for us to differentiate between friends and acquaintances and classify their exact degree of strength.
Although our two completed folder originators were absent on the day we collected data, their blogs for the Small University Experiment part 1 shows that R45 gave her folder to a strong tie, explaining that "as sisters in a small sorority, we have become very close to each other." G10's Small University Experiment Part 1 blog portrays her first intermediary as a weak tie. Our breakdown for both categories was more evenly distributed than Milgram's findings, and actually favored strong ties instead of Milgram's weakly categorized friends and acquaintances. Out of 18 originating alters (and counting my extrapolated blog tie information for the 2 missing Antonio completed folders), 5 were sent to either very weak or weak ties, 5 were sent to moderate ties, and 8 were sent to either strong or very strong ties. Strong and weak ties had an equal chance of success in Polley's group (50% both), and 50% of the successful ties in Susan's group were to strong ties with 25% each to weak and moderate ties.

My personal choice of a moderate tie (mixing both aspects of weak tie and strong tie) seemed to straddle the best of both worlds. Neil's characteristics of a weak tie allowed me to have relative access to Granovetter's unique non-homophilous ties and for him to act as Burt's structural hole to get my folder from a SAS undergraduate in the Sociology department to Neil's next tie and roster #3, a higher prestige graduate student in the target School of Medicine school. I also think that Neil's strong tie aspects allowed for me to trust him to continue on in the process, instead of ending the folder transfer, as happened with G33, the only originating alter in our group who picked a weak tie. However, these results do not generalize to Susan Yoon's results, with 2 completed weak or very weak ties and 1 incomplete very weak tie.

Stevenson's third hypothesis, which only 44% of his final links followed, states that small world folders will converge on faculty and staff before reaching the target. This is akin to Milgram and Korte's typical status descent for successful chains as the "target typically occupied a lower status than the person who occupied the final link." (105) The funneling effect found in sociometric stars like the Jones, Jacobs, and Browns of Milgram's study, and trickle down occupational prestige of final gatekeepers were not seen in our Small University Experiment. Only one final link, June C., out of 10 completed folders was used more than once to pass along the folder to the target of Susan Yoon. Five of the completed folders for Susan Yoon (3 faculty and 2 staff) had ultimate links of either staff or faculty members, compared to only 3 student final links. However, both of the 2 final intermediaries for the completed Antonio Polley folders were students. This contradicts Milgram's managerial findings, Stevenson's third hypothesis, and the results for Susan Yoon folders, and most likely mean that Antonio Polley has some direct interaction with students in both Wistar and the School of Medicine. Since he is a lab technician, he very well may work with current graduate students on research.

Milgram and Korte's study focused on crossing the racial divide, a challenge which in our experiment can translate to crossing the department divide. Their findings showed that these racial gatekeepers were predominently males of professional status. Although I had trouble exactly evaluating the administration status for Susan Yoon folders, two of her folders crossed the SAS to GSE departmental gap through student to student transfers, and two of hers crossed the gap by student to faculty, in direct opposition to Milgram's trickle down gatekeepers. There was no correlation to the male gender, probably due to overwhelmingly female chains.

Stevenson's final hypothesis claims that small world folders are more likely to be passed to members of the same sex. Stevenson's results showed both sexes were more likely to keep folders within their gender when crossing affiliation boundaries. Our experiment had similar results, with 7 out of 9 affiliation-heterophilous transfers being from female to female in Susan's group. For Antonio's group, three out of four males chose other males when crossing affiliation boundaries, but females split even 1-1 to other females and to males. For overall gender-homophily in a group 7/ 8 female originators trying to reach a male target, Antonio's results were similar for both completed and noncompleted chains: both categories' transfers were slightly over 50% gender homophilous, with an average total of 56.5% of transfers going from male to male or female to female. Of the 7 out of 8 folders that had gender heterophilous transfers (overall chain involved both males and females), only two of the folders had multiple gender switches, returning from female to male back to female or vice versa. Once the remaining five folders crossed the gender gap, they stayed gender homophilous until completion or disintegration. For Susan Yoon, there was more of a discrepancy in the gender homophily of transfers between completed (84.6%) and incomplete chains (100%), but overall still agreed with Stevenson hypothesis and Milgram's assertion that “Participants were three times as likely to send the folder to someone of the same sex as someone of the opposite sex.” Both of the two failed folders remained completely gender homophilous, but only 2 of the completed chains crossed the gender divide. This could be due to target's gender matching the gender of every single originating alter in the Susan Yoon group. There was no implicit need to cross the gender gap for any of the folders, as was necessary for the 94% of originating alters to reach the male Antonio. Our experiment's results mirror those of Milgram's first study, which found that females passed the folder to females 56 times, and to males 18 times.

The Stevenson study's target's prestige level (undergraduate dean of management) differed from my target's occupational prestige (lab technician staff), probably making the dean easier to reach. Stevenson's article goes onto to further describe the selection process, claiming the target was picked because he was "located in the building where most of the classes are held and would be easy to physically access." (3) This was not the case for my target, Antonio Polley, located in the physically isolated Wistar Institute. The ecology of the institutional space on campus definitely harkens back to Wellman's compelling privatization comments, as Wistar has its own separate dining cafeteria, preventing potential bridging interaction among other non-Wistar affiliated Penn individuals at the heterophilous Houston Hall or Wawa.

27% of Stevenson's folders reached their targets, which is similar to Antonio Polley's 25% success rate, Milgram and Korte's 22% (103) and Milgram's 23% (44 out of 160 in Small World Problem page 65). The true outlier here is the very high 80% completion rate for Susan Yoon folders, insinuating that undergraduates at SAS Penn have more structural access to faculty in the Graduate School of Education. Another main reason may be related to the gender breakdown of GSE and the SM, the overwhelming female majority of our class, and homophily of gender in folder transfers. Antonio is a male in the School of Medicine/Wistar, which is 52% male to 48 female: http://www.med.upenn.edu/admiss/2006_class.html
Susan Yoon is a female, like 17 out of 18 of the originating alters, and 78% of the students in the GSE: http://www.gse.upenn.edu/admissions_financial/classprofile.php
This gender discrepancy, along with the physical isolation of Wistar's cafeteria, the integrated nature of the GSE in other undergraduate student life (sharing faculty that also teach undergraduate sociology courses), and Susan's higher ranked role as faculty with direct contact with students as opposed to staff Polley (with less prestigious in-degrees) are all possible reasons why there were greater completion rates for the target of Susan.

Despite my folder's failure in reaching the target, I am satisfied with my transfer choice to the moderate tie Neil. My assessment of Neil's personal characteristics (male, Senior, Bio major) proved to be correct in that he had direct access to a heterophilous prestigous tie and successfully crossed the school gap from SAS into the School of Medicine.

"Chains of Affection" studies the interesting network of sexual relationship partners for adolescents participating in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The authors present realistic statistics in a long footnote on the first page, explaining the factors in adolescent sexual behaviors (short relationship duration, inconsistent protection, ignorance of their STD status) that cause adolescent STD acquisition to outpace all other groups. Bearman et al describe the four ideal types of infection, and throughout their research discount the emphasis on the core model of disease diffusion.

I enjoyed reading their research methods, and the audio-CASI technology seemed like a neat innovation to prevent any respondent wariness. The 90% response rate for students on the Jefferson roster was phenomenal. Jefferson High is described as "close-knit" and "insular;" and Footnote 19 explains that 75% of the students in relationships at Jefferson were involved with another student. At the urban public school, only 11% of sexually active students were involved with another student. What can these different selection patterns mean for homophily, disease spread, and social patterns in mate selection and mobility? Would a sexual disease spreading through a large heterogenous city be harder to control than one in a small, homophilous town? I would have liked for the authors to explain some of their descriptive variables plotted in Table 1 on Jefferson High demographics. Appendix A cryptically explains that the variable "attractiveness" means the "interviewer's assessment of student's attractiveness," and does not shed any light on the vocabulary variable either. Even though these two were not signficiant in the study, the subjectiveness is sort of disconcerting. I also had some hesitation when reading their operationalization of a sexual non-romantic relationship with qualifiers like "did not kiss, hold hands, or say that they liked each other."(57) I agree with the emotionless part but thought the not-kissing part would have confused many students; however, the authors report a "large number of sexual nonromantic relationships were reported." Figure 2 plots the relationship structures at Jefferson High, and the most connected male had 9 direct female ties, and the female 4 direct male ties. I was let down by the slightly anemic paragraph on "temporal unfolding" because I had been thinking during the whole article about the enormous problem of chronology in sexual histories and patterns for spreading disease. Overall their findings show the folly of relying on ego-centric mapping of social networks or the hypothesis of random mixing in observing the dense sexual partnership networks of Jefferson High.

The authors continue to explore partnership preference codes and attribute homophily in the Jefferson High network. Students tend to partner with partners who have homophily of sexual experiences, and this preference shapes a large part of the network structure but does not fully explain the spanning trees and the absence of redundant core cycles. Their hypothesis of a profane avoidance of dating the ex of your ex's current partner seems pretty relevant in the community at large, but data or statistics supporting their status loss deference would have given their argument more weight. However, I do think it is an interesting observation, explaining the lack of redundant cores and also showing the more complex behavioral and social regulations in sexual patterns. I agree with the study's conclusion of calling on a comprehensive approach to sexual education, instead of the tyranny of core-obsessed policy proposals.

Do you think the authors overlooked any of the reasons why these teenage networks were missing the cores that can constitute older adult sexual networks? Do you think these partner preference taboos are as strong in any constricted organization (like the high school, a central office, et cetera)?

In "Social Integration and Health" Cohen et al conduct the Pittsburgh Common Cold Study to determine why people with greater network diversity have higher host resistance. I really enjoyed the run-through of social integration theories, from Durkheim's anomie to Cohen's immune response to existential affirmation. I was surprised however that the words stress or neurotransmitter did not appear in Cohen's succinct description of hormone and chemical interaction. The methods section was a little unsettling; I do not think I would ever sign up for an experiment that exposed me to any type of disease, no matter how minor, or work on the mucus measuring team. Also, I am aware that they checked for baseline antibodies, but couldn't people with a greater number of social roles be more resistant due to prior exposure from all of their contacts? A la colonial and indigenous populations. I also found it interesting that all of the social roles were equivalent to one point. I would think the social interaction and support given by a spouse presumedly seen everyday at your shared home would be more of a catalyst than a member of a religious group seen at the minimum of 2 times a week. The study concludes that the diversity of social networks and roles promotes resistance, stressful life events has no independent effect (stress mentioned here countering its usual depiction in pop science), and that isolation is relatively dangerous for disease and health.

In "Lack of a Close Confidant," Dickens et al present their findings of a British hospital study that found myocardial infection recovering individuals who lacked a close confidant were more highly associated with a relapse/morbidity than the common belief of depression suffering patients. Since the mean age was 60, this reminded me of the Smith-Lovin findings on people putting all of their eggs in one basket for one close confidant (say a spouse), and as they age there are greater chances that this sole supraconfidant will die. Lacking a close confidant was associated with some detrimental and deviant behavior, but not depression probably due to a genetic origin. If a person was a member of an online community with daily online interaction, do you think that the associated health benefits from close confidant support can function online, or is there something about face-to-face health management? Do you think people with greater social roles (from Cohen's cold study) would have this same result for MI? Does any of the benefit from social support stem from an identity management theme of a "keeping up appearances" regulation? Do you think if the person went into a hospital to see a team of doctors everyday (with the institutional and professional support to aid him to get better but lacking the "authentic tie" of a nonconstructed network encouraging him) would there be any difference?

"Diffusion Networks" was an accessible read dealing with opinion leaders, S Curves, and idea diffusion. Rogers' peppers his chapter with examples of how diffusion networks operate through opinion leaders, for both positive (promoting safe sex in gay bars with logo-wearing ambassadors, photovoltaic enthusiasts in DR, Paul Revere, populist sleeper hits) and negative (the new math flop fad) ends. One example I found somewhat specious was his discussion of the modernization of agriculture. He notes the high cost barrier adopting mechanical farm equipment in Dutch farm communities, but cites the large land plots of opinion leaders as being discordant with small landowner's adopting their mechanical methods. Using a situation in which primogeniture and other rural community morays shape social mobility and land acquisition does not really support the overall opinion leader generalizations.

He describes the two-step flow model, which cuts the monolithic and hegemonic ideal of mass media down to size while emphasizing the importance of interpersonal communication in the transfer of information. I agree with this analysis, as many people need an intermediary translator to extract relevant information from the news or current events and frame it for them. Will the advent of new media journalism such as prestigious bloggers (evaluated through web search hits and embedded links) or sites like Digg which allow readers to vote and rank stories (seems similar to interactivity or mutual discourse) ever replace the "face-to-face contact that influences people's political decisions?" (304) Much has been made of Web 3.0 semantic advisors or information gatekeepers, but we have been retreading the "what in network tie structure or human tendencies is impeding these online replacements of opinion leaders?" question.

The author focuses on homophilious communication's ease, frequency, and use in acclerating diffusion in a tightly knit network versus hetereophily's integral role in diffusing innovation across a broad expanse of network communities. In one of his first generalization's, Rogers claims that "interpersonal diffusion networks are mostly homophilous," explaining that individuals of highest status in a system seldom interact with directly with those of the lowest status. This definitely correlates with my job experiences but seems to contradict Milgram's findings in six degrees reachability studies that reaching a high-ranking employee in a company is a good target to trickle down to the lower employees. I know I had hoped for this with my Wistar packet, but does this access to lower rung employees also translate to opinion leadership? Does just being the head boss of a big company give one enough social capital (or using simulated tactics to mimic close ties like a weekly newsletter from the boss with smiling picture) to influence lower employees' decisions on consumption patterns or is there a face-to-face element needed as in the political decisions situation?

Rogers describes the methods of measuring opinion leadership (recall, roster, key informant's identifications, self-designation, and the laborious observation) and their disadvantages. I would have liked for Rogers to expound upon how they identify key informants, especially in our urbanized, non civic participatory, ego-centric networks of today. He presents the differentiation between polymorphism (opinion leading for various topics) and monomorphism (opinion leading for one topic). He then presents unique social characteristics of opinion leaders such as high SES and high levels of social participation. One of the characteristics states that opinion leaders have greater exposure to mass media, but I think Rogers should have specified perhaps that they access non-redundant and heterophilous media, like structural holes. There are neat discussions of change agents facilitation, state opinion leaders, and the effects of various experiments in promoting social change or beneficial health policies. The concept of radial personal networks and low communication proximity seem to correlate with these opinion leaders, who reach a broad sparsely-knit population. Rogers introduces critical mass and network externalities in the diffusion of innovations, and uses examples of fax and Internet adoption. He cites a study by Shermesh and Tellis that claims the average time-to-take off for kitchen and household products is 7.5 years, compared to 2 years for information and entertainment products, an interesting discrepancy which could be due to planned obsolescence or differences in technology investment. This was a general easy to read chapter definitely reminscent of a Gladwell piece. I would have liked to also read more about opinion leader's specific development of their networks, and how one maintains this status with new ties and through life cycle changes. While much of this diffusion of innovation talk is hijacked by annoying marketers, I think the applications such as the Korean birth control villages is interesting and show the power of unconvential approaches to social change through networks.

In Deviance as a Search Process," Lorne Tepperman focuses on individual deviant behavior that pits individuals against communities. Tepperman characterizes the deviant continuum, using a description of search versus contagion that reflects our previous readings on assimilation versus homophily in teenage smokers. The discussion of intention versus deviant acts was interesting, but I would have liked to seen an application of this idea to support resource fruition in another area, with entrepreneurial idea and vc funding or microloan access. I enjoyed reading Tepperman's introduction of the beginnings of search processes through the targeting of WWII enemy sea ships, which puts the topic in perspective but also shows the breadth of applications. Tepperman makes a crucial point about search efficacy depending on the social-cognitive map a searcher has of their deviant object or social behavior. Do you think that the breadth of information available on the Internet could act as a suitable replacement for "authentic" first-hand experience with a subculture in obtaining information on marijuana smokers' location or identities?

I strongly disagree with Tepperman's assertion that the more acculturated the policeman to a deviant subculture, the "more likely his cooptation by criminals." (5) This may be the case of victimless crimes such as marijuana buying, but I highly doubt he has any proof of this for officers tracking people that have sex with children or forge checks from the elderly. He goes on to explain how homophily and our uncertainty of our own networks hinders deviant searches, and the process sort of resembles a twisted version of Milgram's Six Degrees, where we need to access an unidentified tie with a taboo social capital resource through our personal tie networks. Tepperman presents three types of neighborhoods, and his description of a "structurally interchangeable" closed network again resembles Durkheim's mechanical solidarity societies. Tepperman's presents these closed networks as having "little emotional neutrality," a hallmark of weak ties; I had never thought of that perspective before and think it is very useful for analyzing weak ties. Tepperman concludes by describing various methods of deviant search processes, including "closing in," "following a path, through breadth first or depth first," and heuristic searches. I had heard about Lee's pre-Roe v. Wade abortionist study, and was glad it and its findings of a median of 2 contacts was included at the conclusion of this piece.

In 'Social Capital of Opinion Leaders," Burt refines the opinion leader concept by emphasizing their role on the edge of social networks, as brokers of information between groups. I had never noticed that he was a professor at INSEAD, which is sort of Wharton's counterpart in Europe, and strange since he refers to GE's Jack Welch as Jack Welsh. Burt begins his discussion with a parable thats shows a micro-interaction that fueled diffusion of an idea in the business community at large and then touches upon the two-step flow model of diffusion and adoption. He then approaches the network structure of interpersonal contagion and research on the structure of social capital to formulate his argument on opinion brokers. I interpreted his discussion of equivalence and cohesion as slightly echoing our previous readings that characterized strong ties and adoption in heterophilous networks as unlikely without the facilitation of opinion brokers. Burt, like Rogers, uses an example of the adoption of new prescription drugs in a medical community. I would have liked to seen a less institutional example, maybe of the diffusion of religion amongst prison inmates, or a deviant diffusion and adoption of ectasy in suburban high schools. His finding of the role of strong ties between weakly equivalent doctors in decreasing time intervals was interesting, and I think makes sense in light of issues of trust and structural holes (but being strong here). I found his graph illustrating the findings from doctors, officers, and most interesting lobbyists to be a little hard to understand. The reading reviews Burt's concepts of competitive advantage and structural holes, which continually point out the importance of having heterophilous social networks, and brokering strong cohesion across these groups. I know we have talked about the problems with measuring weak ties, but is there a way we could identify opinion brokers by measuring their social networks? I did not really enjoy the conclusion of this article as much as the middle and beginning, as Burt discusses "marketing strategies" and "training sales people as opinion leaders."

I was a little skeptical of the Michigan State University sociological study on Facebook and social capital at first, as there have been plenty of lame discussions in other classes about the performance of identity on online social networking sites. However, I found this study on how Facebook helps users maintain high school ties, learn information about offline ties, and attain social capital and a sense of integration into the MSU community, to be not that bad at all. Facebook is not an easy research subject, and the authors cite a study by Donath and Boyd about the validity of ties and public displays of connections as reliable indicators of true networks. MSU may not be a generalizeable population, and I wish that they would have given the total MSU student population to put the average number of "Facebook friends" in context. The higher high school social capital of Facebook users cannot be causally linked to Facebook use, as people may be motivated to join Facebook in order to keep in contact with these old ties. I really enjoyed the discussion of bridging social capital in Facebook users and conversion of "latent ties to weak ties." (29) However, I had a difficult time getting past the somewhat template-based format of the paper and the occasional spelling error ("asses" on page 17).

In "The Structure of the Web," Jon Kleinberg and Steve Lawrence explain the structure of the Internet in an analogous manner to our prior six degrees and connectedness readings and specify four categories of linked pages as the core (Lois Weinberg hubs), upstream nodes (outdegrees to the core but no reciprocated indegrees), downstream nodes (indegrees from the core but no outdegrees), and tendrils (isolates). The authors cite that there are an average of 16-20 page links to connect the majority of webpages and the core, in an analogy like the small world 5 to 6 ties between most humans. However, I do think that cyber ties differ in a couple of ways. For example, Viagra spammers and miserable failure googlebombers do not really have true replicas in human relations. Also, the forbidden triad tertius gardens scenario can very well occur in web communities. Web page links do tend to follow the specialized network trend Wellman has been discussing. Other than a few broader "lifestyle" consumption based web pages like Gawker Media, most websites will link to other homophilious sites focusing on a specific interest or information niche (and giving one type of support). I would have been interested in a discussion of social capital (perhaps measured through page hits or search rankings) through page links, authority and reciprocity, or the similarities to social networking "friend" links.

The New Scientist article outlines the NSA's efforts to agglomerate and collect online data and information about individuals into an easily accessed RDF format. The article borders on the alarmist side, as many of the strongest arguments have already been manipulated for quite some time (credit card transaction history, financial history, and cell phone histories). However, the articles presents valid information about the present and potential personal data mining on the web. I know that I went on a job interview over fall break and my interviewers asked me about the blog for this class and a previous history seminar that came up in web searches on derivatives of my name and school. The article touches upon the nature of the Internet as a public forum, but with a new technology that can capture the information we present about ourselves in perpetuity. How can these archived snapshots of our social networks (say your aol hometown page from age 13 when you listed your best friends who are no longer ties in 2006) alter contemporary interpretations of our social networks? I think the detritus of personal information on abandoned websites is pretty interesting, especially in light of our ever-evolving personalized networks. Everyone has heard of a "So and so got fired from work because of their party pictures on Facebook" fable, but I would have liked to learn more about other online network and identity searches such as the cataloguing of search histories as well as video and image resources like Riya that aim to encrypt image files for searchable identifier tags.

In "Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking," Wellman introduces the network revolution transition from group communities of space and kin to networked individualism in a glocalized social sphere. His allusion to organizational structure and management hierarchies in relation to the decay of group communities is an interesting tangent to explore. Have more neoliberal structures of economic relationships allowed for greater mobility of an individual but less for a collective social class group? I agree with his assertion that trading and political blocs have become less monolithic and hegemonic, but to what degree is this macro-change of world systems and international relations in a global performance stage linked to micro-networked individualism evolution? Wellman elaborates on the communication and technological advances of globalization's effects on "the societal transitions from little boxes to social networks." (228)

This article compares physical-based communities and information-based "cyberplaces." In relation to Penn and geographic communities, The university makes a lot of efforts to sustain community partnerships and foster institutional action with business improvement districts like the UCD but to what degree does non-homophily hinder community action in West Philadelphia? So what are the implications of physical-based residential groupings that are not considered to be "communities" by Wellman's definition (228)? Could we force a cybercommunity here to mediate neighborhood community relations?

The piece continues to approach the social affordances of technology in communicating with geographically dispersed strong ties but does not head on talk about the Internet as a space for forming ties that evolve into face-to-face contacts. Communication has become more portable, which can cause the alienation of space and public engagement seen in street cell phoners, Wellman's bus lady, and the masses on the first floor of Van Pelt hunched over their personal computers. Wellman later quotes a pundit that says these transgressors think "no one else matters." (240) I think it has more to do with a reinforced and learned principle, as these public space co-existors had devolved from potential contacts into props to be checked out or ignored before the rise of new media and the tyranny of public cell conversations. The authors revists many of the historical precedents and contexts for network community changes found in his first reading, but his delineation of place-to-place versus door-to-door communities was very similar to the organic solidarity decription by Durkheim. A footnate regarding Japan's community ties further hinted at an interesting aspect of suicide, competition and specialization, and the structure of social networks.

I found the discussion of gender roles in networks fairly disenchanting, and the "siren call" stress of personalized Internet identity and communication ties on families and between spouses was humorous. The Internet can glocalize networks, but Wellman does not differentiate if the "twenty-five neighbours" Netville residents "know" are strong or weak ties or what purpose and resources these ties were mobilized for. (236) It sort of gives the impression that knowing these Netville neighbors gave them a competitive edge, and harked back to the problems in measuring weak ties versus accessed resources seen with the position generator. I enjoyed the metanarrative of the genesis of this paper and progression through online ties into what we are reading now, and the inclusion of an excerpt from Putnam's email proves that sides in the evolution of networks continuum can be generational and subjective. The point about "tracing memory in online archives" for email communication is very telling. How can the potential elimination of backward time in our relationship history (with cached "proof" in saved gmails) affect our communication processes? Or vice versa? Wellman sort of overreacts in his explanation of networked individual's ignorance of strangers and passerbys. I do not think that this is a recent phenomena or that it can be attributed to the transformation of person-to-person networks. Simmel theorized that this was a rational response to the intensification of nervous stimula found in urban environments and public arenas. I do not think the increased "private contact with relatives and friends" will replace or stop a person who routinely sees another person at a sandwich stop from smiling at them or holding their door. There is an interesting acknowledgement of the technology skipping development in other societies like Iraq, which brings up potential consequences in economic stages and social and information relations. The conclusion asks a poignant and not overstated question about the future of citizenry and networked groups.

1. The five people I communicated with the most often were :
1. Brian L. (31)
2. Kathy D. (15)
3 Nina L. (8)
4. Lisa C. (5)
5. Kas D. (4)

For each medium:
Mobile Phone:
1. Brian L. (14)
2. Kathy D. (7)
3 and 4. (tie) Nina L. and Kas D. (4)
5. Lindsey F. (3)

Text:
1. Brian L. (10)
2. Kathy D. (4)
3. Nina L. (3)
4. Greta M. (1)
5. Adam C. (1)

E-mail
1. Lisa C. (4)
2. Brian L. (2)
3. Latasha C. (2)
4. Jennifer C. (2)
5. *there was a tie amongst various contacts that I contacted via e-mail once. These were mainly potential job contacts.*

Instant Messenger (Gchat and Aim)
1. Brian L. (5)
2. Kathy D. (3)
3. Barbara W. (1)

Brian L. is my boyfriend and a best friend, who I met at Penn through a mutual friend about three years ago. He now lives in Brooklyn, but is originally from a suburb about 17 miles away from my suburb. He is 22 years old. He is a close tie that provides me with emotional aid, both about important matters and simpler emotional support, small services, and sometimes companionship on weekends.

Kathy D. is my 25 year old sister, who now lives in South Philadelphia. We have a very strong sibling and best friend tie and frequently rely on each other for companionship, small services, and emotional support, both about important matters and simpler emotional support.

Nina L. is my 21-year-old best friend at school, who I met freshman year when we were paired up as roommates. We continued to live together for two more years, and she is originally from a suburb about 5 miles away from my suburb. We have also worked together and share many mutual friends. Nina is a very strong tie and I rely on her for emotional support, both important matter and simpler emotional support, small services, and companionship.

Lisa C. is my 36 year old sister. She lives about 5 miles away from where I grew up and is married with two little girls. Lisa is a strong sibling tie, and we support each other with small services (babysitting), potential job information, emotional support for both important matters and simpler emotional support, and companionship mainly through her daughters.

Kas D. is my mom. She is 56 years old, lives in the suburbs with my dad about 15 miles away from me. She is a strong tie for emotional support mainly important matters, financial services, companionship, and small and large services.

Lindsey F. is my best friend who lives up the street from my house in the suburbs. She is a strong tie, who currently goes to school about 8 miles away. I rely on her for emotional support, both important matters and simpler relationship management, and infrequent companionship.

Greta M. is a close tie from my suburb at home who is currently at school about 3 miles away. We met through mutual friends and she provides me with companionship and simple emotional support.

Adam C. is a moderate tie who I met through a job. He lives about 3 miles away and we rely on each for companionship and small services.

Latasha C. is a not close at all tie who is my boss for one of my jobs. We have known each other for about 6 months, our relationship is online only, and I rely on her solely for potential job information and new clients for SAT tutoring.

Jennifer C. is a not close tie who is my boss for another job. We have known each other for about 7 months and we primarily communicate through email and weekly conference calls for established job information.

Barbara W. is a close tie who I went to grade school with. She now lives about 230 miles away and we rely on each for emotional support, both for important matters and simple relationship management, and companionship about twice a year.

2.a) Relationship between medium of communication used and the strength of the tie?

For my strongest tie, my boyfriend, we communicated through multiple mediums: email, SMS texting, cell phone, and online messaging. This multiplexity of communication mediums extended to my next two strongest ties and 2. and 3. on my most frequent interaction list: my sister Kathy and my best friend Nina. For all of my strongest ties, except for my oldest sister Lisa C., I communicated with them the most frequently using cell phone. Outside of these three strongest ties, my other strong ties were more mono-communication. My mom and I only communicated via my cell phone, my dad and I via cell phone and one e-mail, and my oldest sister Lisa predominantly through e-mail. The remainder of my strong ties, which are old friends from gradeschool or the neighborhood, are strictly mono-communique. I communicated with Lindsey and Stephanie solely through the phone, Barbara solely through instant messenger, and Greta exclusively through text. It is sort of a routine mode of communication that we rely on and identify with. For not-at-all close ties, I communicated only through e-mail (15) and phone (4), with these weak relationships having one function: job intermediary, doctor, or professor. As in Baym's findings, I used instant messaging significantly less than e-mail for Internet communication. Baym's results indicate that close relationships are more multiplex, in which online interaction more strongly correlates with telephone and mail interaction than with online interaction amongst weaker social circles. I communicated with close ties through cell phone, and to a lesser extent e-mail, text, and instant messenger. Weaker ties are reached through e-mail, and my results indicate closeness is needed for text and instant messaging. Baym's findings show that people were more likely to use telephone communication in intimate relationships, and my strong tie prevalence of phone communication and weak tie prevalence of e-mail agrees.

b.) Relationship between medium of communication used and type of support exchanged?

I most frequently used my cell phone to obtain emotional aid (24 out of a total 45 emotional aid transmissions), especially for important matters. My next most frequent use for cell phone was for companionship (9), small services (7) and job information (3). I used email mainly for job information (16), and used it five times or less for emotional aid, small services, academic information, and companionship. I used text message for emotional aid (10) and companionship (6), and instant messaging mainly for nonimportant emotional support (5). My use of new media for emotional support agrees with Hampton's discussion of the respondents to the Pew Internet and American Life Project who emailed family members for social support. While again, cell use primarily dominated in my emotional support transactions, I used e-mail 3 times to discuss important matters, text-messaging twice for important matters, and instant messaging 5 times for important matters. My results agree with Wellman and Wortley that less than half of my network members provide emotional aid and small services, but my new media log shows that emotional support and companionship could both be reached through cell phone, text, e-mail, and instant messaging.

c.) Relationship between medium of communication used and type of relationship?

For every type of relationship except job contact, I communicated most frequently using cell phone, correlating with Baym's findings that telephone remains the most frequent medium of communication. With job contacts, I communicated 13 times through e-mail, as opposed to 3 times over the phone. Wellman recognizes the Internet's affordances in telecommuniting, and that is the primary basis for two of my jobs. With my parents, I contacted them five times via cell phone, but only sent one email to my dad, probably related with my parents' age and my mom's uncomfort with the web. After job contacts, I communicate most frequently using email with my siblings, due to my dependence on e-mail to communicate with my oldest sister when she is at work as opposed to home with her young daughters. I also used text message (4) and instant messaging (3) to communicate with my sisters. I used text message the most with my boyfriend (10), and then my friends (5), but seldom used email with my boyfriend (2) or friends (2). As with all non-email mediums of comunication, I used instant messaging the most with my boyfriend (5), 3 times with my siblings, and not at all for job contacts.

d.) Relationship between medium of communication used and duration of relationship?

I communicate most frequently and almost exclusively with ties <1 year old through e-mail (16/20 total contacts). My contacts that are three years old all represent people I met freshman year at Penn, and I most frequently use cell phone (19) and text messaging (14), but also through instant messaging and e-mail. My ties of about three years old are the most multiplex in reference to mode of communication. The 9-20 year duration range represents my close friends, Barbara, Lindsey, and Stephanie, who I communicate using cell phone (5 out of total 6), with one interaction using instant messenger. These results are probably a little unusual, but I found that it is more difficult to transfer a tie solidified when younger through constant phone conversations over to email or text or instant messaging. The 21 year duration cohort is my parents and my two older sisters. I interact with them through the cell phone (13) the most, followed by e-mail (6), and text and instant messaging (3 each). The varied age distribution in my immediate family skews these results.

e.) Relationship between medium of communication used and distance to the person?

For people <1 mile away from me, generally on Penn's campus, I split evenly communicating with them via cell phone (7) and e-mail (7). I think the high usage of e-mail within a one mile radius is probably attributed to my e-mail correspondance with my professors and for one of my jobs right off campus. Baym's findings say that local relationships are least likely to use the Internet, but I use the Internet with people less than a mile away more often (7) than I do for people in the 3-10 (2) mile and 11-30 (5) mile ranges. That study also concluded that local relationships are more likely to use the phone than the Internet, but my interactions were both tied at (7) for people under a mile away. For the 3-10 mile distance, I again primarily used cell phone (6), but this was tied with text messaging (6). For 11-30 miles away, cell phone again dominated (12), followed by an almost equal use of text and e-mail ( 6 and 5). For a distance of over 100 miles, E-mail and cell tied for most frequent medium (both 14), and e-mail was used much more than the closer distances of under 30 miles away. This finding agrees with Baym's finding that long-distance relationships use the Internet almost as often as the telephone (pg. 15) and much more than local distance relationships.

f.) Relationship between medium of communication used and the person's age and gender?

There were no huge discrepancies between my gender distribution, except for e-mail. I used e-mail to contact females 17 times compared to 6 times for males, probably attributed to my greater frequency of work contact through e-mail and the fact that all of my established job supervisors are females. The only male I regularly contact using e-mail is my father, who was unreachable by email for most of this week. I also used my cell phone slightly more with females (22) than males(18). I did not really communicate with a heterophilious age group, so my results are not really compelling. My primary contacts were from 21-25, and then the only ages of other contacts that I knew were my oldest sister's (36) and my parents (55+). I think this is probably due to the fact that my only non-friends and non-kin contacts were job affiliated, in which all of my ties are weak and thus non-age information sharing. My friends are all basically age homophilous to me, correlating to McPherson's theory that nonsimilar ties tend to die off faster than homophilous ties. However, I do wonder if it were not for new media's ease in communication across long-distances, my relationships between Barbara, Stephanie, and Lindsey, all who are not homophilous to me in their strictly mono-medium of communication, would dissolve? For ages 55 and over (aka my mom and dad) I almost solely used cell phone communication, with only one e-mail. For the age group 26-50 (aka my oldest sister Lisa) I most frequently used e-mail; The age group 21-25, there was a healthy mix of communication medium usage, with cell phone topping like usual (29). This was the only age cohort in which text messaging (19) and instant messaging (7) were used, with text messaging equaling e-mail. I would probably attribute this to the newer age of text messaging and instant messaging and younger people's early adoption and ease of use with this newer new media. Also, our shared homophily in age may extend to our homophilous uses of various mediums of new media. Baym adds credence to this, finding that "older populations that encounter the Internet later in life" do not utilize it as much in interactions.

g.) Relationship between medium of communication used and similarity of age and gender to my own?

For homophilous ties (21 year old females), I most frequently communicated through cell phone (8 times), with a heavy proportion of that being due to my close friend Lindsey's aversion to e-mail or text messaging. I texted four times with homophilous ties Nina (3) and Greta (1). I also used e-mail and instant messaging once each. All of my homophilous contacts are extremely close friends I have met through my neighborhood or through school, all having a duration of over three years or more and sharing race, education level, and age. They are like my other non-homophilous close and long-duration ties in which I contact primarily through the cell phone versus my newer, non-close, job-related e-mail contacts.

My results seem to show that cell phone contact is still the number one method of communication, but that other methods of new media are not replacing my face-to-face contacts, as in Wellman's non-zero sum game. Without new media, I would not be getting this same information about job contacts from face-to-face contacts. I may have a land-line installed in my apartment, but would have less frequent contact with my instant and text-messaging contacts because of the loss of what Wellman describes in Netville as the "always available feature." Like the Pew Project on Internet and American Life's findings, I did not communicate via chatrooms, message boards, and newsgroups to meet new ties, and the only non-offline originating contacts were through jobs. This also fits with our findings in Mesch and Talmud's study and Lampe et al.'s Facebook paper that students are not meeting new people online or through social networks so much as they are maintaining previous face-to-face contacts. My sole facebook message was from an old tie from a nearby neighborhood growing up that I ran into at a bar down the street. He then used Facebook to follow up and arrange for companionship, exchanging our information without the intimacy of a cell phone call or the purpose of an e-mail. My most interesting results were in my SMS. I have only recently gotten SMS capability, and it has replaced e-mails my long-distance boyfriend and I used to send to keep in contact with each other with brief funny and love-y emotion transactions. SMS has also transformed our communication for meeting up ("34th and Walnut at 5?") and in partner relationships (more intimate and portable than e-mail, but more efficient and less serious than a phone call). Unfortunately none of our readings have focused solely on SMS messaging, probably due to its nascent use in America, but I would be very curious to see who is using it and for what reasons. New media could create an age discrepancy in our social network communications, with younger ties being more likely to communicate using text and instant-messaging. New media's most influential effect on my social network is that e-mail and cell phones allow for me to telecommute for two of my jobs, an observation Wellman makes in "Physical Place and Cyberspace." Without my employer's slick website, I would have a much harder tie recruiting new students through word-of-mouth.

New media solely did not function for informational purposes, but for many types of support, including companionship and small services. Hampton discusses the issue of broadcast of one-to-many purposes of new media, allowing for an online community without propinquity in our social networks. My experience with this involves weekly job conference calls and a work list-serv sent out from West Philadelphia that connects similar enthusiasts across the country without the "door-to-door cost," and allows for my social network to include people from all over the country. Overall, Wellman and Wortley's findings that strong ties convey broader social support can be extended in my experience to mean that strong ties also communicate through broader mediums using multiple new media methods, than specialized weak ties.

3.
For weak ties, I had 16 private interactions, versus 3 public interactions. The majority of my weak tie contacts are job related, which usually rely on data stored on my pc. My weak ties are generally more formal, and thus involve me performing a role that requires private space. For strong ties, interaction space was more mixed; for overall interactions, I conducted almost 2/3 (60 / 97) from my bedroom, supporting Baym's table that shows telephone and Internet use is most likely to be used at home. My next highest area for interaction (20) was my number 7 coded "entertainment zone," a vague description for a third place such as dining area, retail shop, or public parade. These results bolster Wellman's theories on the privatization of our networks, from public interactions to person-to-person networks operating out of our homes. I communicated with males in a private sphere significantly greater than in public space (33 private versus 10 public). This correlates to most of my male contacts being weak ties (I only have two close male ties), generally contacted for job information from my pc.

The prevalence of my public communications is in line with Wellman's description of the person as an autonomous communication node and Hampton's "private spheres of mobile interactions" in public space. The portability and personalization of new media communication also has emphasized person-to-person and place-to-place communications, which can end up diminishing new opportunities for meeting friends of friends in public space. My emails, instant messages, text-messages, and mobile calls all went directly to my strong tie, and I did not reach their partner, kin-member or roommate as may have happened with a landline household call, letter, or visit to their workplace. My new media experiences follows Wellman's explanation of contextual vacuum. I primarily used e-mail at my home, because of Wellman's immersive nature; even when I communicated in a public space, it was when I was with an extremely strong tie that I consider an extension of myself, or could go into an isolated room, or use text-message to maintain my message's privacy. This correlates to Baym's finding that 73.5 percent of the reported online interactions were conducted without others there.

I agree with Barry Wellman that the Internet increases community diversity, as the overwhelming majority of my contacts that are not traditional group-based (kin, Penn, and old neighborhood/gradeschool ties) I have either met online or primarily contact using e-mail. My usage of text-messaging with my boyfriend who is usually over 100 miles away supports Wellman's assertion that strong, intimate ties are possible online, and text messaging in particular allows for "reciprocal, mutual support" of tie-partner's needs. (345)

While Hampton discusses the Internet's ability to reconstitute a social place for local ties in the wake of the decay of public third places, I noticed that new media in my life has not been creating new ties, but mainly keeping strong distant ties and increasing my contact with strong ties. My new media diary showed me that the diminishing opportunities to create new ties correlated with the rise of personalized networking are not fully solved through new media interactions.

In "The Quality of Online and Offline Relationships," authors Mesch and Talmud examine the homophily, multiplexity, and duration of online relationships versus face-to-face relationships. The authors review the previous literature about Internet use and network ties, and cite several works about how some online ties progress into face-to-face relationships. (pp 137) This seems like an interesting topic and I would have liked a further discussion about the types of these online ties, especially since the authors cite themselves here. Are there certain functions of online sites that encourage face-to-face progression (like Match.com), an average duration of online tie length before face-to-face meeting, or a limitation on the social support these newly adapted face-to-face ties can offer? Does the relationship shift primarily to face-to-face after the initial jump and online contact diminishes?

The authors explain that adolescent personal friendships are a crucial form of social support, but present discordant research on the quality of online ties. There is a neat discussion of symbolic interactionism versus social constructivists' perspectives about online networks facilitation of strong and weak ties. In the section on homophily and the quality of social ties, the authors state that, "when social dissimilarity exists at the beginning of relationships, or a mismatch occurs in ascribed social statuses, relationships are more likely to terminate." (139) Does this realist statement mean that the friendship or relationship between classes is illusory? Is our increasing number of weak ties due to these transitory relationships between socially dissimilar ties enabled by a somewhat more democratic or egalitarian society but eventually lost to our very homophilious, long-lasting strong ties? This seems to indicate that we can meet our best friends when we are younger and social similarity is fixed (we go to school with kids of same age and somtimes gender, residential proximity is more important), than when we have more options, choices, and mobility when we are older and ascribed group cohesions decay. I like the idea of mulitplexity indicating tie strength, as your "superfriend" ties should be people in which you could do anything with, again with the more eggs in less baskets idea. However, the authors have a credible point in that emotional intensity is the best measure of the strength of a tie. We have seen these emotional support strong network ties measured with Smtih-Lovin, but has there been such a definitive study on if our network ties are becoming more multiplexic (?)

This study evaluates the duration, activity, and content multiplexity of online and offline ties, and also focuses on the effect of origin, duration, and multiplexity to the quality of the relationship. They find that respondents with online friends report greater age range in ties, the duration, intimacy, and strength of the tie are higher for face-to-face friends, and online friends engage in fewer face-to-face activities. Online relationships tend to have less activity and content mulitplexity and tie duration than face-to-face relationships, thus relatively decreasing the quality of these ties compared to face-to-face adolescent ties, which are in part bolstered by schooling and residential similarity. I think it is important to keep in mind this study was about adolescent use of Internet ties, where the median respondent age was about 15.

In "Networked Sociability Online, Off-line," Hampton revisits the hyperpolarized Gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft arguments on network community shifts from our Week 1 Wellman reading. Choice is paralyzing, and also there is an illusion that we really create our own networks. Making new friends is hard, making strong ties is even harder. As the constructs that shaped our networks in the past (geographic location, social groups, extended kin affiliation) become less important in a globalized society, our networks are changing, but what constructs can replace them? Our idenities are becoming more complex and we have greater volition in them, but our network communities still need that a form of priming cohesion. I enjoy reading about the changes in "similarity of interest" versus "similarity of setting" and "community without propinquity," but reviewing our assignment #2, who then will rush you chicken soup or lend you sugar or keep an eye on your house when your gone? The haughty attitude towards provincial geographic based communities ignore these significant functions of geogrpahic proximity in relationships.

Hampton discusses Putnam's writings on the loss of social capital and participation in public community organizations. While Putnam castigates the television for this decay, Hampton focuses on traditional and mobile telephone technology's privitization of public space and makes an interesting point about "private spheres of mobile interaction." (219) While Fischer is already alluded to, I thought of our previous Fischer reading that telephone contact frequency is a better indication of strong ties than face-to-face interaction. Mobile telephone and technologic improvements in communication have allowed us to maintain geographically dispersed ties, but their direct connection offers little bridging potential that even calling a friend's home and speaking to their mother allowed. After all of this somewhat depressing discourse, Hampton presents the concept of a virtual community and its potential to create new public space. However the people engaging in online communities are systematically different (have had Internet longer) than people who do not and use the Internet for other functions.

Hampton's concluding declaration that "online communities may become the street corners of the twenty-first century," harks back to my questions about online-originating relationships progressing to face-to-face contact. How can we mobilize this shared social interest to progress from online origins to action in the public sphere? What mechanism could we use to propel Netvilles to face-to-face interaction. Is this a necessary step? The internet is great for organizing, spreading and accessing information (both primarily weak tie resources and support) but what about the social support of chicken soup, town watch, et cetera?

In "Social Interactions Across Media," Baym, Zhang, and Lin enlist college students to record an interaction diary and complete a survey on media use in their social circles. The authors found that Internet use and quality has not usurped face-to-face interaction as the dominant mode of social interaction. A literature review on the research of Internet sociability again reinforces the previous readings' portrayal of this field as spotty and discordant. Baym et al postulate that this is the result of the conglomeration of Internet use into one mass action, and propose differentiating social interaction activity through specific Internet media that college students use. There is an interesting discussion about email's efficient replacement of long-distance phone calls, but the stamina of the telephone for relatives.

The interaction diaries resemble our assignment #3, except for our exclusion of subjective "quality" and "significance" evaluations, which is probably for the best. I found it interesting that not one of the 51 respondents deemed "pioneers" who socialize over the Internet had participated in newsgroups or role-playing games. Their survey results echo the finding by the Pew Project on Internet and American Life that "chatrooms, messageboards, and newsgroups do not serve as meaningful venues for social interaction." (313) This sort of contrasts with the presentation of online use of Internet pioneers in Hampton's piece. I would have rather have had this study include some of those people who are forming new ties through Internet interaction (so we could study where this is happening, what are the rituals or norms, et cetera) instead of college students basically maintaining old ties or more efficiently communicating with established ties in replacing phone technology. I was a little surprised to read that more people were multitasking during face-to-face interaction than Internet or telephone use, but I guess it makes sense as many face-to-face interactions are actually shared experiences aka going out to dinner, road trip, doing homework together, seeing a movie. I would have expected Internet and telephone to be higher than face-to-face as mulitasking during an interaction can connotate disrespect and inattention. Their findings describe new media interactions as taking place at home, further illustrating the network trends of privitization and the disintegration of public space interaction other than face-to-face, despite the potential for mobile bubbles of privitization seen on Locust Walk mobile communiques.

Kronholz's "After the Science Fair," was a cute little allegory about an online chain letter and the expanses of social ties and transmission flow on the Internet. While the article shows the exponential speed and potential reach of a letter from "someone just like us," I would have liked a comparison to the efficacy or encompassing network of concrete chain letters to give this article a little more gravity. I do not think we could use a study similar to this chain letter model to measure weak ties because there are certain taboos on chain letter detritus, as the article claims, "one person's innocent chain letter is another person's spam."

In "Net-Surfers Don't Ride Alone," Wellman begins with a condescending and enjoyable dismissal of the debate over the quality and potential of Internet community as "unscholarly and parochial," reflecting the paradigm shift from spatial community to social network elaborated in Week One's "The Network Community." He returns to many of his points about network evolution from that reading but now focuses on their application in online relationships, as online relationships tend to be specialized, can be a resource for support and companionship and is often reciprocated, establish an egalitarian performance stage and bridge the social taboo towards public interaction with strangers, and can be used to socially define affiliated identity against an "Other." Wellman brings up again the dichotomy between Internet pioneers and mass utilization of the Internet (339). I am really interested in this topic, and hope to read about the development of ties on the Internet that may progress to face-to-face interaction. Wellman continues to evaluate the quality of Internet ties, flippantly dismisses antisocial online behavior (what about Wikipedia defacing and open source communities response to viral threats) and mentions the danger of absence of social clues found in Talmud's symbolic interactionism section. Wellman deftly deconstructs the perspective of online interaction as a measly and hollow simulcra of conventional face-to-face interaction (but I would have liked a reference to the shared experience multitasking finding from Baym's reading) and shows that Internet ties are interspersed with our traditional social networks in a non-zero sum plane. I am not surely convinced of his point about the growing multiplexity of online relationships found in recovering addict communities (349), as our readings for this week do not really approach this subject. He mentions a woman planning a wedding in a newsgroup, but our readings, especially Baym's, show that most people and students do not interact in this forms of Internet sociability, so I doubt this behavior can be generalizable. But this evolution and conversion of online-developed ties to other medium contacts is really interesting and I hope we get to read more. I also enjoyed his discussion of the replacement of shared characteristics with shared interests on the Internet, fostering a more egalitarian and democratic social relationship soil. However, as we saw in Talmud's discussion, social ties that are socially dissimilar at formation tend to decay much faster and are replaced with more homophilious ties. So the Internet may create a more democratic stage for interaction and information flow (aka libraries for the lazy), but ties remain the same. I enjoyed the conclusion about glocalized personal networks.

In the "Position-Generator..." authors Lin, Hsung, and Fu operationalize social capital and evaluate the measurement methodology of a position generator. Social capital is defined as the resources embedded, accessible, and mobilized in a social structure. The authors discuss the relative distribution of resources as a social capital asset in communities, and refer to Putnam's study of declining participation in voluntary organizations. While there is a brief allusion to immigrant resources on page 60, I would have liked for the authors to approach the topic of other social resource groups in greater depth, such as informal money pools found in some Asian immigrant communities or The United Negro College Fund, and what this may mean in the structure of immigrant or ethnic affiliation communities in the wake of a society bemoaned for "Bowling Alone." The authors cite Burt's work to comment that stategic locations such as structural holes indicate social capital itself, but explain further that mobilization, not just access, of these resources must be studied as well. The position generator methodology is explained, and measures of range, heterogeneity, and upper reachability of accessibility are all identified.

The authors use a previous study by Lin and Dumin to evaluate the position generator's results. The study found that friends and acquaintances provided the best access to high status positions and the range of accessed statuses, thus adding a dimension of diverse social mobility and contacts to Granovetter's unique information weak ties. This omission of relatives concurs with our findings in previous weeks, as relatives will be the most homophilious (genetically) to us, and thus less likely to be sources of unique and socially diverse contacts. The authors continue to remark that the "position-generator approach has yielded similar findings for different political economies," (64) including capitalism and socialism. Does this mean that the economic relationships produced from an economic system (specifically ones as divergent in the ideal types of socialism and capitalism) do not affect our social capital and access/mobilization of embedded resources?

The authors study the return of unequal access on individual well-being and find that in a Taiwan social networks study: males generate more returns from social capital (and nonkin contacts) than females, and females have to rely on human capital (education) more than males do. This differential gender returns on social capital made me think back to Elizabeth Bott's study on couples with separated gender roles and duties. Do you think these women in these connected networks have more or less access to social capital through their partners than the shared role females? Also are these results a reason why more women are attending college than males? Do you think that if they replicated this study with single fathers and single mothers access to social capital in obtaining resources to help with their family, the results would be the same? The work concludes by postulating that network location is a precursor to access to social resources, dishearteningly concordant with Gladwell's remark that poverty can be evaluated through social isolation or the distance between some citizens and Lois Weinberg.

In "Auditing Information Structures in Organizations," De Jong and Zwijze-Koning confront communication network flows in organizational dynamics and evaluate research methods for reliability, validity, and applicability. This reading was not as engaging as previous works, as it sort of bordered on lame Taylorism in improving workplace information transfer and also reiterated a methods review chapter in an introductory Sociological Research course. I did however find the section on diary research interesting, in light of assignment #3. The authors advise that it is not practical to "keep a communication activity diary for..more than five consecutive days." (436) They also illustrate the pitfalls of this technique, ranging from respondent underreporting of less than 30 second contacts, not including outgoing messages, underestimation of frequency of contacts, and propoensity to omit certain types of messages. For this last point, the authors refer to a study by Conrath, Higgins, and McClean, and I am curious as to if this was a social desireability effect or something deeper. The authors highlight the difficulties of diary research in terms of feasability, so I am looking forward to seeing the class results for our New Media log project.

"The Resource Generator," is another social networks study from The Netherlands that we are reading in class. This paper advocates a revised (easier and more concretely intepretable) social capital measurement method called the "Resource Generator" and delineates the nuances of social capital into four separately accessed portions: political/financial, education, personal skills, and personal support. This differentiation of social capital niches is great, and addresses many of the questions I had about specific immigrant milieus or social support for single fathers during my reading of the "Position Generator." The Resource Generator uses similar questionairre to the Position Generator, and measures availability of resources and tie strength to accessor. The authors cite six cognitive domains in their construction of generic social capital, including private productive activities, public relationships, and public productive activities. Referring to Wellman's characterization of the shift from networks from the public to the private sphere and Smith-Lovin et al's work in transformed discussion networks, would we find similar changes in responses and goal attainment in (2) personal relationships and (5) public relationships in recent years? The findings were very interesting, as the Resource Generator put more emphasis on familiar access to resources, but pointed the weak tie advantages of "knowing people working at the town hall" (important from our local governance problems with Gans) and "good references to jobs." (Granovetter revisited) The results show that almost all items are accessed by atleast 50% of respondents, a statistic that would be interesting to figure in American society admist obsessions on social stratification, isolation, and competition for access to resources.

In "Simplifying the Personal Network Generator," Hampton and Marin evaluate two alternative methods, the MMG and the MGRI, to unreliable single name generators and cumbersome multiple name generators. The authors expound upon the history of name generators in social network research, discussing the follies of a generic application of name generators to the four types of personal network approaches and the temporal "cost-cutting" of replacing a multiple name generator with a single name generator in determining the complexities of social support. The authors describe their methods in the E-Neighbors Project, complete with six name generators. I have a hard time empathizing with the problems of multiple name generators, because I actually enjoy filling out such surveys. However, I am sure many researchers value the attempts at finding a valid and reliable alternative method that does not contribute to respondent fatigue. It has also proven a little difficult to critically review a piece by someone who has shaped our course reality on social network analysis. Nevertheless, it was interesting to read about this week's readings on the new approaches to measurement problems, as many probably never invest in the challenging and daunting task of conceptualizing and measuring social interactions!

In "Birds of a Feather," McPherson et al present a study outlining the tendency of ties to flow towards homophilious relationships. Like many of our past readings, this calculated and socially determined flow challenges our views on an individual's free will in who our ties will be. I wonder if this is a result of natural selection, as homophilious communication is more productive and successful since similar nodes are using the same frame of reference? If we become friends or create new ties with people who are like us already in age, gender, race, or education, then networks can become more and more isolated. This study seems to re-up the value on Burt's structural holes, who can bridge these network gaps. McPherson's findings in regard to residence reiterate our discussion in the first week of class about the illusion of shared interests in many ties, which can be directly linked to spatial proximity and thus greater chance of interaction amongst two people on the same floor of a freshman dorm.

If we wanted to try to reverse this homophily trend (to ensure greater social diversity or something else uninspired), how could this be manipulated? Does that mean we would have to destroy all cultural cues that shape your identity based on these traits if we want to equalize hompophily to be based on personality or character? Fischer's reading last week brought up the notion that people with similar views on urbanism will be more likely to move to the city and thus be in the same geographic location. If where we choose to live also follows these homophilious trends, are we in danger of a society of polarized locational cliques? The idea of distance in terms of social characteristics translating to network distance was discussed again, an important matter Gladwell first mentioned in regards to poverty and connectors in "Lois Weinberg." Our greater communication and interconnectedness with ties in our habitus, seems to present a situation in which people of different SES, race, or age could never be unified in a society. This is when McPherson delineates between status homophily versus value homophily, and the value of unification through political institutions appears more integral to our society than people think. Do you think that our identification with a social network is increased depending on how many social ties the network foments or is the direct cause for? Are churches more integrated into Person A's life because it has strengthened their ties to their family, neighborhood, and introduced him to his wife?
Persons located at great sociological trait distance are very unlikely to interact, which creates the conditions for social differences in any characteristic that is transmitted through social communication. The homophily principle thus localizes communication leading to the development of social niches for human activity and social organization.

Pearson et al analyze cigarette, marijuana, and alcohol use amongst teenagers and the levels of homophily versus assimilation in these groups, in an attempt to help shape future anti-substance abuse policy towards teenagers. Due to the really difficult issues at hand when studying topics as nebulous as teen drug use habits and teen friendship networks, I could not help but view this study as little more than a paranoid parent's handbook on whom to let their kid hang out with. Pearson et al did not contribute much in my opinion to seem more credulous. "The cannabis-ego effect whereby cannabis users tend to name fewer friends also implies that cannabis use tends to make people less socially active. This could tie in with the frequent portrayal of drugtakers as being lethargic." ~That is not very scientific in my opinion, and sounds more like pseudoscience posturing. I would have enjoyed a more ethnographic approach, say similar to Elizabeth Bott's, in which a cohort of teens could be longitudinally observed for five years, and watching network affiliations wax and wane according to substance use. This study, while laboriously detailing results and statistics, omits an important and more interesting discussion of the symbolic interactionism and shared emotional experience nature of teenager substance use and this effect on assimilation in these groups. The act of a group of giddy teenagers transgressing the taboo of smoking is a lot different than a depressing adult's physiological addiction. While Pearson and friends are concerned with the correlation between low rates of sports activities amongst female marijuana smokers, they overlook the social interaction rituals outlined in Howard Becker's theories on becoming a marijuana smoker and these applications to their study. The cannabis homophily is fairly low, at .18, but the cannabis assimilation is much higher, at 3.54. Does this mean teenage marijuana smokers are parasitic entities, entering non-drug using host circles and influencing them all to smoke pot with him or her?

I was intrigued by Hill and Dunbar's novel approach of looking for a human application of the findings on animal neocortex size's restrictions on network size. We have been discussing how social networks mimic neural pathways, and I have wanted to explore this further. Sadly, Hill and Dunbar pick a flippant methodology of evaluating Christmas card exchange in order to evaluate social networks. Hill and Dunbar choose Christmas cards, because they "represent the one time of year when individuals make an effort to contact all those individuals within their social network whose relationships they value." (55) Evaluating card sending is an interesting riff from Wellman's analysis of phone versus face-to-face contact, but there are inherent problems. Christmas cards are relevant to a certain habitus, and this study does not acknowledge that the transmission of Christmas cards is not a universal, unbiased practice but has weighty social motivations and obligations. I had read about Dunbar's rule of 150 in a cultural anthropology class, and I remember us discussing the analogy to the recommended size of about 150 for a Church congregation. There have been studies discussing the maximum number of people's faces one can remember, but I wonder is there a limit to our number or combination of strong/weak ties before we are overwhelmed? Do you believe that there may be cognitive constraints on network size? What is the maximum capacity of our emotion dispersion ability in regards to networks? Do networks over 150 people require more formal organization or bureaucratization to run smoothly and efficiently with relegated emotional payments to each tie (a la a burgeoning independent state)? Do smaller networks or tribes allow for greater informal social control through taboos and the sacred?

Also, Hill and Dunbar find 7 members of our "support clique," just two years after Linda Smith-Lovin finds our important matters discussion partners have dropped to two people. Despite the experimental problems with Hill and Dunbar's experiment, why do you think their findings were of a greater number?

In "Estimating the size of personal networks," Killworth and friends analyze the total size of personal communication networks in Jacksonville and Mexico City. One of the methods is measuring an individual's ratio of recognized names in a phone book. Killworth also analyzes acquaintance networks in Orange County, and finds that Mexico City has the significantly smallest amongst the three. These findings echo our previous readings' assertions that education increases network heterogeneity and number of weak ties. If we sort of ethnocentrically view these American cities as progressive, expansive networks, can we justify our larger networks as the evolution of successful industrialization, capitalism, and globalization?

In the interview, Smith-Lovin accurately notes the increased spatial difference between work and home and resultant decrease of leisure time on our network communities, but suburbanization and women entering the workforce occurred primarily after World War II, and would not be exclusively responsible for the 1985 to 2000 shift. So what has occurred from 1985 to 2000? Well, globalization and by association postmodernism as paradigm shifts could also be analyzed. Wellman heavily discussed the shift from neighborhood, group based networks to the individual actor’s chosen network. Fischer pointed out urbane individuals’ greater self-selection in choosing kin, and I think this hints at the changes in our personal networks. As ascribed network ties are no longer as strong (we are more mobile and our networks tend to change according to our personal life progression), people are failing to recoup these neighborhood ties, partly due to Putnam’s reasons on the decay of civic engagement. Putnam mentions in the interview that people do not feel safe in their communities, and the increasing privatization of public interaction (entertaining in one’s home) is also being institutionalized in the “militarization of public space” as seen in architectural approaches to Los Angeles communities. If we are no longer meeting neighbors at the local cafe, where are we meeting our new friends? Individualized developments in communication have also exacerbated this private shift, as I no longer speak to my best friend’s parents when I can now call her directly via mobile. The internet has allowed for us to maintain far-flung contacts and also allows us to find our niche of subcultures, but the lack of an arena for the traditionally neighborhood based, close-tie breeding interaction has helped to cause the shrinkage and spouse-centralized networks McPherson found in 2000.

Globalization has increased our access to information such as the same way Granovetter’s weak ties act as structural holes to link sparsely knit communities and obtain access to unique resources. However, Mcpherson et al’s study illustrates our loss of close discussion networks, which Wellman and Wortley define as important for obtaining support, and mobilizing existing resources. Our ties are more specialized but also more plural, we can get emotional support and large favors from our siblings. But we also interact with more networks, in a variety of different functions: our kin is specialized for emotion support, our coworkers for acquaintanceship.

The possible effects of globalization on a microcosm social scale and the postmodern nichification of identity and life on our ties also have ramifications for the support we receive from our networks. The emotion work of discussing important matters has become more specialized, in lieu of broadly supportive whole communities. McPherson’s findings of the drop from 3 to 2 discussion partners does not signal that our other needs (financial aid, large services, companionship) are not being met by other ties, but emboldens Smith-Lovin’s warning on the danger of “putting all of our eggs in one basket.” If our spouse dies off, or our mother as in the case of one caller, we may still find help with chores or large services but the specialized tie for discussing important matters is gone. Wellman likens this to boutique tie support in which we can no longer rely on assumed solidarity of neighborhoods and must personally manage a diverse portfolio of ties to get our needs met. While we are not gambling as heavily as a Walmart "one-stop shopping for all our support needs" model of networks, individuals are still vulnerable in contemporary support investments. As our networks are also more dispersed, we can lose the local relationships important for mobilizing action as in the razing of Gans’ West End. Redundancy, created by McPherson’s more homophilious tie findings, increases our flow to information; our strong ties all have the same information and we will end up hearing it from one of them. However, Granovetter explicates weak ties’ (outlying non-kin ones killed off first when “networks collapse inwards” [Putnam]) importance in access to unique information. So as McPherson finds these weak ties decaying, Burt’s structural holes become more rare and valuable in linking social networks and the flow of information, surely a challenge for governance.

Upward mobility causes less reliance on traditional neighborhood network for material support. The privatization of the public interaction sphere has diminished our opportunities to create new local ties. Our identities and social networks are less bounded and stabilized by our residence and employment; our neighborhood as a commodity may “go bad” and we’ll move to a new real estate market and my job may be outsourced in a couple of years. Thus, we are less of a clan with traditional groups and our support networks have transformed into specialized personal communities.