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.