Social Network Blog - g33

In administering this survey, analyzing the results was easily done according to age group and gender. There were many major differences in respondent’s answers which were either characteristic of their age group or their gender. Nonetheless the survey results still proved to differ from some of the theories brought up in class.

In terms of a measurement methodology, I used the position generator. According to Lin, Fu and Husng, the position generator is a scientific method used to measure social capital in a three different ways: access to social capital, collective social capital and advantage of social capital based on the location of the respondent. Based on the questions asked in the survey we had to administer, I would say the only real basis for analysis given is access to social capital. 35% of females knew at least one of the top four positions on the position generator, while 30% of males knew at least one. 25% of the females who did know those at the top of the position generator were between the ages of 18-22. This group was counted as citing 5 instances of knowledge within the position generator. This contradicts Lin, Fu and Hsung’s finding that males generate more social capital than do females. Although these results differed, there are many important factors to be taken into account. First, many of the survey participants are Penn students. There was also no control for socio-economic standard which can cause a large change in data had there been a more diverse respondent pool. There was also a correlation between education with most respondents having attended at least some college.Nonetheless, these are the results based on the position generator and hypothetically as a result of my research, women between the ages of 18-22 or more generally women have greater access to social capital. Even if women may have access to socially prestigious positions, how close in proximity are the respondents to their ties?

In Wellman's "Network Community" he states that there is a tendency for people to have dispersed networks as opposed to those solely in their neighborhoods and/or communities. On average, women between the age of 18-22 cited their contacts as living in the same building/dorm the most, followed by same neighborhood, while women aged 33 and up cited same city and same home as their top two respectively. Males aged 18-22 cited same city followed by same state the most and males ages 33 and over cited same country and same city as their top two contact distances. There is a difference in the male statistics perhaps because the idea that women are kin-keepers as told to us by (name here) is certainly true. Men still go out of the home and even expand outside their neighborhoods and residences to create relationships, while women are still centering their network where they reside. "A person's set of active community ties is usually more socially diverse, spatially dispersed, and sparsely knit," according to "Different Strokes From Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support. This statement is far truer for older men than any other group of respondents I surveyed. The older men are certainly at an advantage due to their age and perhaps downplayed role in the home. Again, important questions such as marital status, length of marriage and location of education are factors which may play a role in the answers to these questions, but this result does represent a trend we’ve discussed in class about women’s roles inside of the home and that affects their networks.

In Peter Monge's work, the idea of transitivity is first presented to us. This is the connection of three individuals through the shared knowledge of one person who serves as a central actor in the other two people's relations. In my results, there was not much transitivity. In order to present this information in the simplest way possible, I looked at the tie strength among respondents contacts. The amount of people who labeled at least least 3 of their contacts as ‘especially close’ was measured. The reason I chose three is because the forbidden triad comprises of exactly three people, as does the concept of transitivity. If three people in one’s network were considered especially close it says a lot about their network, including Ron Burt’s problem of redundancy in terms of information acquisition. 20% of women listed at least three people on their list as especially close, while 30% of males did. Ron Burt's "The Social Structure of Competition" discusses the benefit of weak ties in the acquisition of information. In order to have competitive networking advantages it is vital that people have the "forbidden triad" a concept created by Mark Granovetter. The forbidden traid is a relationship which according to Grannovetter must be avoided. In Grannovetter's estimation if there is a central person (person A) and that person is close to two different people, those two people must be close by default. My own results were a definite variation of that. One, women displayed greater radial interpersonal networks than men. In “Relational Diffusion Networks,”one person is connected to many others who are not close. If this is the case, then women are supposed to be able to acquire information faster and easier because of their different associations and ties but again, men have usually done this with greater ease than women. This also points at the various numbers of strong ties versus weak ties. Because many of the people listed are strong ties it could be assumed that there must be a great deal of information redundancy going on, but because many of the people are not connected to each other, there is still a variety of information available to the respondents (especially the female respondents).
Kalmijn found in his study that the percentage of shared friends and the number of joint contacts increases over the life course due to aging. I found that this theory generally holds true. Older men and women tended to have overlapping strong ties such as siblings and children. Perhaps this is because as one ages they focus on the home and their family more? It could be a possibility, but Kalmijn’s theory applied to my respondents. Aside from homogeneity regarding contacts there was alos gender homophily. Smith-Lovin's "Birds of a Feather" states that people's personal networks are homogenous when it comes to sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. According to Mesch and Talmud, social similarity allows for exposure to opportune friendship conditions because it allows validation for attitudes and beliefs as well as allows for participation in similar activities. This was already noted in the location of many respondent’s contacts (same building/city). But I also want to add that the college setting breeds homophily for its students through housing. That fact taken into account, the average number of male contacts for women between ages 18-22 was 1.5 and 1.8 for the women 33 and up. Men for both age ranges had an average of 3 male contacts that they listed. Gender homophily is also propagated at the university level through a promulgation of groups that attract girls-only or guys only. Already through the homophily of gender, friends can influence each other in the activities they choose to pursue, where more homophilus contacts can be made.

College students also use greater methods of communication. Baym, Zhang and Lin found that although college students did use the other forms of communication. face-to-face communication was still the dominant method of interaction. This study also notes that participants cited using the internet as often as the telephone, however, I found that the mobile phone was used the greatest and often used to supplement face-to-face interactions. When distance was a factor the cell phone was used more than any other method of communication. Even when there was a great deal of face-to-face interaction (20 days or more) there was just as much cell phone or similar cell phone usage. Those who were older saw each other in person and used landlines more than the younger age group, but there was definitely cell phone usage throughout the survey with email sparingly throughout. There was no postal mail usage which indicates a shift in times to portable methods of communications. Face-to-face is still important however for creating those strong ties.

All in all, this survey will most likely present a varied result set depending on where everyone went to get their results. Conducting the survey was difficult because there was no incentive for participants, hence why I asked friends and friends of friends to do it. Also, the extensive questioning about the methods of communication was definitely where people got annoyed with doing the survey. It was difficult to hold people’s attention to actually do the survey in one sitting. In addition we know from the Konig and de Jong reading that self-reports are often inaccurate. There were also some misunderstandings I had to clarify that I did not think of when I administered the survey. Examples are the many college students who asked if they should put same neighborhood if that’s the context they met their contact in, why there were so many forms of communication on the paper, and why they were chosen. Even though it was a bit of a struggle to get the information and put it together, it definitely was a benefit in synthesizing what we’ve been doing all semester and having an actual glimpse of these theories at work.

In "Social Isolation and the Underclass" a number of different hypotheses are presented regarding the social networks of poor African-Americans in poor neighborhoods. In this article, poor is definied as 125% below the official poverty line and social isolation is defined as "the lack of contact or of sustained interaction with the individuals or institutions that represent mainstream society." The definition used here by Roberto Fernandez and David Harris is what drives the creation of the survey they administered as a result. The results displayed greater gender differences than class or neighborhood differences as a whole. Black males' personal networks were not affected by class effects in terms of multiplexity, volume or range. Black women on the other hand had more constricted networks as a result of their poverty. When I read this, it seemed a little inconsistent with what we read in the class earlier about women being kin-keepers. If women are kin keepers as Smith-Lovin had suggested and their networks circle around the home, why then did Black women not have as many multiplex relationships through kin? Does poverty changes the amount of people in Black women's network significantly enough to change even this common-held theory? Ironically as well, the range of Black men's contacts also increase with the level of neighborhood poverty. This pattern seems odd, but at least things are not as bleak as they could are for Black women, who suffer the most from their social isolation as a result of poverty and lack of work.
In the article by Peter Marsden and Jeanne Hurlbert they replicate the effect of job-matching on tie-strength and other social network measures. The major findings were that the prestige of the contact has a significant effect on the prestige of the job outcome. The only inconsistent finding in the article "Social Resources and Mobility" and the original study performed by Lin et al. is that tie strength in Marsden and Hurlbert's work has a siginificant negative effect on status. Lastly, homophily is has a substantial role in the industrial sector of a contact and the respondent. To synthesize this article to the preceding reading, if homophily can be used to gain access to an industry and it is proven that Black males are not affected by their neighborhood or level of poverty, Black men may not be at an disadvantage. However, Black women still are lag behind their male counterparts for some reason. Do you have any ideas as to what causes this difference? If homophily and occupational prestige were the only two barriers preventing greater amounts of poor African-Americans from entering the work-force wouldn't there be more? I think that one key issue that the article "Social Mobility and the Underclass" fail to address is the theory of social capital. Although many Black men may have diverse networks despite their class still does not change their status in social and cultural capital which plays a large role in how people attain upward mobility and hence can extend the invitation to others. Before this discussion can be considered complete I think these two factors social and cultural capital should be addressed.

The small university experiment at Penn differed in a few vital ways compared to the studies conducted by Stevenson et al. In “The Small World of the University” each class year was represented. This meant that freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors participated in the study. Because our social networks class is an upper level course, there are many no underclassmen. Also, the school selected in Stevenson et al.’s study did not have an internal mailing system, causing a lack of information regarding the links from one contact to the next. Those were the two significant differences, and once those are accounted for, many of the theories presented to us throughout the course rang true.
In Lynn Smith-Lovin et al.’s “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks” the researches made it clear that homophilus ties were used to form connections for many services including information transfer and exchanges. Homophilus ties according to Smith-Lovin are also a result of a variety of factors including organizational affiliation, appearance and social/economic similarities. This was especially the case in both our findings at Penn and in Stevenson et al.’s study. At Penn, there were a large percentage of folders passed on to people in the same school. For both targets total folders passed on to people in the same school were 50% and up (Antonio Polley’s group had approximately 65% and Susan Yoon’s group had 50%). Homophily of school was prevalent in our trial of this experiment, while in the reading, there tended to be a greater instance of homophily among the upperclass students who passed to each other. One similarity among both was that undergraduates passed to other undergraduates in more instances than they did to faculty or staff. In terms of homophily, people most definitely asked people who had the same school affiliation to pass on the folder, even with the knowledge that the targets may not have been in their school. Gender was perhaps the largest source of homophily and that seemed to manifest itself in the successful group. Susan Yoon’s group had an 80% completion rate and had approximately 86% of transfers to the same gender (female to female). Stevenson et al. found this to be the case in the reading as well. Antonio Polley’s group meanwhile had a 25% completion rate and a 50% of transfers to the same gender. These statistics can imply that female to female transfers are stronger forms of homophily then school affiliation homophily.
In my original reason for choosing a weak tie to pass my folder on to, I cited Granovetter’s “The Strength of Weak Ties.” According to this reading, weak ties form bridges through which information is passed. Because the folder was essentially a simple task, I thought it would have been best to think about the path the folder would take. The knowledge of Antonio Polley’s affiliation with the Wistar Institute is definitely what caused the flaw in my decision. Polley did not spend too much time at the institute and his affiliation with Wistar was a weak one as well. His role as staff and his weak affiliation with the institute are what caused my mis-calculations on the projected path of the folder. In “Estimating the Size of Personal Networks” we read that people are bad at estimating the number of people in their network and the connections among people in their network. Both of the successful members in my target group went through the Biochemistry department in order to get to the target who works in a lab. Had I placed greater emphasis on Polley’s role as a member of the staff at the laboratory (a stronger tie for him as well) perhaps my folder would have had greater success. Also, the folders passed on through gender homophily had greater success. In Kilworth et al. the residents of Nebraska used their cultural and organizational ties (strong ties as well) to pass their folders on. Perhaps the folder-passing is viewed more as a small service. In this instance, a small service has greater likelihood of being performed by a strong tie versus a weak tie (which I chose). Because the person had no real obligation or incentive (primarily monetary) to perform the task the folder took a long time to be passed on as well.
Lastly, the targets were different in one important aspect. Susan Yoon is a teaching assistant while Antonio Polley is simply a staff member. In Stanley Milgrim’s “Small World Problem” he claims that any two people can be linked, but he does briefly mention that there may be unbridgeable gaps when different groups do not intersect. It is my belief that students and staff interact a lot less than faculty or people who work with faculty on a regular basis. Antonio Polley is certainly someone who was a bit harder to reach than Susan Yoon for that reason. The completion rates (25% vs. 80%) prove this to an extent. Had the numbers been a bit closer it would be harder to argue this, but the large difference in completion demonstrates something that is to be noted. In Fischer’s “To Dwell Among Friends” he states: “…the differentiated urban landscape composed of many distinct districts and neighborhoods fragments individuals’ lives.” It is my argument that the large school divisions attributed to the completion rates at Penn. The schools here are highly segregated, but there is a larger connection between the School of Education and the College, than Penn Medical School and the College. Antonio Polley’s rate for final transfers sharing the same department was only 50% out of a 25% completion rate, while Yoon’s was 75% out of an 80% completion rate. Yoon must certainly is more a central actor than Polley, if only because her school is located closer to undergraduates in terms of visibility (since Dr. Hampton noted that both targets were equidistant in mileage). Her work with undergraduate students and her school affiliation impacted the transfer completion. This factor, coupled with the decision to try and reach Polley solely through his weaker affiliation with the Wistar Institute led to my folder’s unsuccessful turnout. There was also no real incentive for my second alter to forward the folder in a timely fashion or for the third alter to continue with the task. Especially, since the path of my folder was solely from weak tie and was supposed to go on to another weak tie. Apparently, passing the folder in this experiment can be regarded as a small service for the aforementioned reasons.

Link to Part I: http://www.mysocialnetwork.net/blog/481/g33/2006/09/oops_the_accidental_beginnings.html

This week, we read about the effects of social networks on health. In the article "Social Integration of Health: The Case of the Common Cold," a study was performed to measure the effect of social multiplexity in preventing or causing the spread of infectious illnesses. In this study, social diversity was measured by a questionnaire. From readings throughout this semester, one of the problems we constantly grappled with was that people are bad at estimating the size and density of their own networks. If this is true, then the self-reporting on questionnaires could be tailored to match desirable answers. While this is a minor detail in a larger study it is still worth mention. The results of this article found that social integration and diversity actually created lower levels of susceptibility to infectious illnesses. While there is no concrete scientific reasoning, one argument the authors suggest is that by circulating through different networks and playing different roles, there are alternating levels of hormones. This mass approach to health and social networks was greatly contrasted by the Dickens et al. article on cardiac events.
In the article from Cardiovascular Medicine, the lack of a close confidant for patients was a cause for depression and further cardiac events after MI. This article however, focused on the effect of one strong tie in preventing depression. A step away from the other two readings because of its approach on one strong tie, the conclusion was still very similar to the reading preceding it. Social contact was beneficial to the patients in this study to a certain extent, but the effects could not be fully verified because of the order in which the study was performed.
Nonetheless, the support for social contact and health was still asserted.
In "Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks," adolescent sexual patterns at a high school in the Midwest were found to be in the shape of a spanning tree. The many interconnections that formed the long chain of STD transmission, proved to be a bad aspect in terms of this case because it indicated many unprotected sexual exchanges among adolescents. Social networks in this case were dense and highly interconected, differing from the networks in the first reading. Just as there can be redundancy in terms of information perhaps there can be redundancy in terms of infection transmissions among networks such as these. If the health effects in this case are negative, then it is safe to assume that this week, we were presented with nearly each type of social setting possible in terms of our health options. This leads to my questions: which type of social setting is optimal for our health? Large, diverse networks; interconnected dense networks; or small homophilus nnetworks consisting of very few strong ties? Do you think thay any of these social network settings could be reversed to represent the health problems that could apply to each? Can you give examples?

1) In order to show the five people I spoke to the most were: Anne Z., Tia R., Leia H., Mujidat S., and Melissa P. I communicated with all of them via cell phone. But I also communicated with Tia R. through email and Melissa P. through SMS. Anne is my mother and has known me all my life, Tia is my friend and is the advisor of my sorority (known for 2 years) and Melissa is my friend and sorority sister (known for 2 years). The others are my friends; Leia has known me for 3 1/2 years and Mujidat for 1 1/2.

2) As I went over my 7 day diary, I noticed that there was no direct relationship between the medium used and the strength of the tie. As cited in Barry Wellman’s “Physical Place and Cyber Place,” “…by the end of 2001 there will be more wireless mobile cell phones than wired phones in use worldwide according to Kurt Hellstron president of Ericsson.” I do not have a landline in my home and hence, my communication was virtually all on my cell phone. For strong ties as well as weak ties, I always used my cell phone to request a small service to be performed. I usually communicated with the person over the telephone to ask for a small service rather than using SMS or email. My results may be different from many others in that, the duration of time that I knew someone had no significant effect on which medium I used to contact them. I almost always picked up the phone to call someone for something. Many people in my network however, are in my age group and use their cell phones just as much as (if not more than) I do.
In “Birds of a Feather” by McPherson and Smith-Lovin, “age homophilus ties tend to be more close and to involve a larger number of exchanges and to be more personal.” The people that I spoke to the most were in my age range with the exception of one person who was 25. With Tia R. and my mother being the people in my top 5 who were not direct peers of mine the type of support did vary. Among my top 5, the main type of support exchanged was companionship. It was only for Tia R. that small services were exchanged on a consistent basis (and that was simply in those conversations because we do offer each other companionship at times). We had these companionship exchanges primarily on the cell phone and occasionally through SMS and IM. This supports Mesch and Talmud’s findings that “content and activity multiplexity and the duration are less likely in online relations. All of my top 5 contacts were female, supporting Smith-Lovin and McPherson’s findings that age and gender are two primary factors of homophilus networks. It is also important to note that during the time of my diary log my friend’s phone was broken, which explains the only reason why I used IM in the first place.
In Barry Wellman’s “Physical Place and Cyber Place” he notes that many contacts do not use the internet alone, but “…use the internet to fill in gaps between in-person meetings.” In my case however, I used the internet to fill in gaps of voice-to-voice communication and habitually do so. If I cannot reach someone through their cell phone, I may sign on AIM to see if they are available and perhaps are not near their phone. In terms of distance, whether the person was near or far, I used my cell phone. This in a way refutes the article by Prof. Hampton which states that “most CMC is local affording and reinforcing connections within existing realms of activity.” This argument postulates that we use the internet for local relations more than we do telephone communication. Of the people I spoke to the most, the distance varied and many of those people were local. My mother and best friend were well over 100 miles away, while the other three people were less than one mile to about 15 miles away. Many of the others on my diary were close in distance, to me.
The composition of my diary included friends primarily with a very small number of relatives. In my top 5, only my mother was a relative and the other 4 were friends. According to Mesch and Talmud, “the quality of social ties is heavily dependent not only on the place where friends met but also on their social similarity, intensity and the content of the relationship.” I feel that new media supports the quality of social ties to a greater extent because we can always be connected to those in our networks in one respect or another. New media most definitely increases the intensity of social ties because it facilitates greater amounts of communication regardless of distance. New media also supplements face-to-face interaction furthering the intensity of these social ties.

3) According to Konig and Jong “Auditing Information Structures in Organizations” diary observation may cause changes in behavior if participants are aware of the study. In my diary I did note that I was less eager to make a large amount of phone calls because I would have to note it. While I did not alter my behavior significantly, this is important because the author also suggested 5 days as the cutoff point for diary logs. I agree simply because communication and social patterns change over the weekend. I certainly go out more during the weekend and simply do not check my email until Sunday night. Also, my location outside the home on the weekend and during the week means that any contact I make will be via cell phone. That being noted, it was surprising that the phone calls made from my house according to my diary entries were largely moderate ties, while those that took place outside my home were stronger. In the Baym et al reading, the authors note that “the internet has come to rival the telephone as a medium for conducting personal relationships.” I think that the portability of the cell phone has allowed for personal relationships to be on the go. I also think that I may have spoken to moderate ties at home because information I needed pertaining to our conversation was home. With stronger ties, the conversation was mobile because I did not require anything specific to speak with them. Cummings et al. found that the internet rated worse for conducting personal relationships and better for getting schoolwork and exchanging information. This claim makes sense according to my diary and the lack of email presence. The main reason I use my email is simply to acquire the information I need to know in order to be somewhere or perform a task.
Konig and Jong also stated that when keeping a communication diary certain messages are neglected. I realized that email was the message type I neglected in the beginning. I went back and corrected this error (first day and a half), but I realized that email is the new media I use the least. In my realization that I rarely used email for anything, I realized it was because I used my cell phone as a primary method of communication. My use of my cell phone is convenient and allows me the portability I need to handle my business and maintain those strong and weak ties. I cited Baym et al earlier and I cannot stress enough that new media strengthens personal relationships and weak ties because it facilitates easier varied forms of communication. The availability of internet and the abundance of cellular phones mean that networks may become highly integrated as time goes on. As we become inter-connected through technology it will be even easier to connect weak ties and disseminate information amongst each other, especially if there are a variety of methods in which we can reach each other.

In Lorne Tepperman's readings, we are presented with the search process and how individuals attempt to acquire deviant information. Because people have little knowledge of who is in their network, searches often go outside of their network to obtain information about a good or service. The fact that it involves deviant activites also adds another layer of secrecy to one's intentions. The problem with deviant searches is not only that it must be conducted in secret, if one is not familiar with the culture they have entered, their search is made all the more difficult. Different search strategies according to Tepperman are: "closing in" and "following the path." In the closing-in method the underlying theory is that the sought after operates from a distinct location which makes finding them a matter of narrowing down where they are located. The problem with this method is that it is highly visibile and open. The following a path method attempts to find the shortest distance between two points. In this entire paper, I could not help but think that although the internet can be traced back to people in the event of discovery, many deviant searches are conducted on the internet. The ability to hide behind the guise of a name without a face to match it with makes it easy for people to find ways to satisfy their deviant needs. While Tepperman does not believe that deviant searches can be aided my mass-mediated communication because they reveal too much, do you think this is applicable to the internet?
In the "Diffusion of Networks" we read about the path of innovations from their beginnings with innovators to their adoption by the critical mass. This reading's main point is that centrality is the essential component necessary for innovations to diffuse widely within communities. Opinion leaders are people who have heterophilous connections and thus can spread the use of a product or service more so than marginalized network members. Diffusion always occurs in the form of an 'S'-curve. Homophilous networks are a barrier to diffusion because they do not allow for the vertical dissemination of information and there is a lack of visibility in a homophilous network. A few of the generalized characteristics of opinion leaders according to this article are that they have greater exposure to mass media than their followers, they are socially accessible and have greater social participation, and that they have a higher socioeconomic status than their followers. Opinion leaders are often looked at as role models in their networks.
In "Relational Diffusion Networks" in addition to opinion leadership, group membership, personal and network density and personal network exposure are discussed as methods of diffusions. In the group membership model, in some cases individuals adopt innovations when group members do, but not always. In personal networks, people with dense networks are later adopters of innovations but connectedness increases rates of adoption through exposure.
Taken together, it may seem odd that the first reading focuses on deviant searches, while the other two simply talk about diffusion. But, deviant searches along with deviant behavior can be seen as a function of diffusion. In the "Diffusion of Innovations" copycat crimes are discussed as being promulgated by the media. While these crimes occur without face-to-face channels (again speaking to my earlier question about mass-mediated communication having no relevance to deviant searches) these behaviors are "contagious" as the reading says. This leads to my next question: with increasing media connectivity throughout the world, should the media continue to cover stories which may create a venur for deviant searches to be commited? (I ask this question in lieu of the journalistic view as a defender of the public's right to know)
Deviant searches differ from diffusion in only one way and that is, centrality aids in diffusion of innovation, while isolation aids in the search for deviant goods and services. The reason this may not be all that substantial however, is because it can never be assumed that a central figure is not invovled in deviant searches through intermediaries. Because there is little direct connection to opinion leaders and the lower ranking individuals of a network, one can never really tell how they may be connected. Aside from this, deviant searches depend in some way upon the spread of innovations that allow them to perform their search. In my estimation, deviant searches represent an underground, secret rendition of the diffusion of innovations of beneficial products.

This week's readings continued to focus on cyberspace and its effects on social networks. In The Structure of the Web, Kleinberg and Lawrence speak in detail about the web and how there is no concrete architecture within which to place its activites in. While there is a slight understanding of how hyperlinks and pages are distributed on the web, the main focus of this paper was on how the structure of the web formed communities. "Pages and links are created by users with particular interests, and pages on the same topic tend to cluster into natural 'community' structures that exhibit an increased density of links." This statement made me think that the web is actually similar to human networks. The only exception I noticed that could be applied to this theory is that in the web, redundacy is beneficial. This allows information to reach a greater number of people depending on how often information is accessed. In human networks, redundancy should be avoided since it decreases chances for opportunities. With that in mind, my first question is whether you believe that redundancy on the web is a benefit or can it be regarded as the same problem as it causes in human networks?
Paul Marks article in the NewScientist.com continues in the vein of compute rnetworks serving as an extension of physical networks. The use of My Space and Freindster as an example, this article focuses on the problem of privacy. Through these social websites, people display information which allows their information to be tracked. Information included on social networking sites can be linked with purchase information to make deductions about people's activites. The only problem preventing this from occuring already is the incompatability of the information on the web. According to Marks, the Resource Description Framework would solve this problem. Once this RDF is created and works, each type of data will have its own identification. The striking feaure of this for me, is that even in terms of information and identification, the web resembles our personal networks more and more. We can have individualized ringtones for people when they call us, so trhey can be identified, name tags in emails and the like. The downside of this of course would be that information would be easier to combine for tracking purposes which may violate privacy.
In the Role of Facebook, the privacy issue was a concern of the authors but the study was primarily a focus of who was using Facebook and for what purpose. This study found that Facebook is a tool used to facilitate and form social capital relationships. It also bridges social capital and slightly increases participation in students with low self-esteem. The limits of the study are addressed by the authors and include the fact that it was only one sample form one university which eliminates generalizabitlity. Causation is also another problem since, there were no significant controls to see of Facebook caused changes in behavior. Another problem is now that Facebook has been opened to the general public, the audience and uses have certainly changed in some way.
Lastly, in Barry Wellman's article, the rise of personalized networking is discussed. The idea of community is presented and coincides with the previous explanation that the web is a community-based place. The idea of portability is presented and there is an important argument that Wellman raises. As the ability to travel with our computers and thus our global connections increases, the site of communication becomes less important. The contextual sense and lateral awareness disappears. The example that Wellman gives is "if people can have access to their favorite music anywhere, they become less aware of the importance of gospel music to southern Americans, farm news to midwesterners..." If this does actually happen, can it not be implied that there may be a decrease in people's perceptions of the criteria necessary to be involved in community? The web affors people a type of annoymity unavailable in physical space because we can see what we want and who we want as members of a group. Goin along further into Wellman's readings he states that people are no longer part of a single group. They belong to many and switch to different networks allowing for information exchange among the different groups. Wellman goes on to add that strong identities and belonging occur after people lose their visible local community. It is my argument however that the opposite can be said as well. The ease with which people can have fluid identities is easy if there is all this proposed exchange among the strong identities in web communities. Weak identity formation allows for shadowing and harboring of information that could be for members who are active. Because there is no authority as discussed in last week's readings the reciprocity does not always have to be there. Do you agree with this statement? Does the web support weak and fluid identity formation because of its lack of concreteness in architecture and visual capabilities?

This week's readings all addressed the internet as a social networking agent. Whether good or bad, both aspects and other issues were covered in the different studies and articles. In the "Science Fair Project Overwhelms Computer" the speed of information dissemination and it's negative effects was discussed. Once the email was forwarded, it never really ceased. As was noted in the quotation by Vincent Weaver, "one person's innocent letter is going to be another person's spam." The inundation of irrelvant information is a problem that is highly characteristic of the internet. I do not feel that any of the readings elaborated on this aspect of the internet. This first reading was a good example of the negative side of the internet because it demonstrates how good intentions can quickly become problematic in virtual space. Shanno Syfrett was simply trying to create an experiment which demonstrated the speed of information transfer, but it became too much to handle once all that information was re-routed and sent back to her.
In the article by Baym et al. and the article by Wellman, both present the concerns regarding the internet as a viable interface to build relationships. In Baym et al., the idea of the internet as a technologically deterministic force is presented. This means that the internet is viewed as a single mode of communication through which users are influenced because of their exposure. As a technologically deterministic force, the internet is applied by some critics as a medium that promotes social isolation by taking away from time spent doing other things. The internet as a community disintegrater is the view takin by dystopists (as called in Professor Hampton's article), and other critics of new media. On the other hand, Baym et al propose that the internet is used socially based on a person's location, relationships and sociability. In the Wellman reading, the internet is offered as a source of another type of community. The virtual community may empower people by forming communities where they can find emotional and social support without the formalities, prejudices and logistics of face to face interactions. The reason I use the terms prejudices is because in this particular reading Wellman notes that face to face interactions allow people to make judgments about one's social status, and allows them to see one's racial background, economic class and other information which may affect tie strength.
In Professor Hampton's reading, the example of Netville is a good example of how the internet can be used to support network relations once used as an initial ground-breaker. residents of Netville spoke to each other more in person as a presumed result of the internet community which they could use to get to know each other. In the Mesch and Talmud reading, it was said that online relationships became incorporated into the internet user's face-to-face social circles. While internet relationships were found to be limited to certain topics of discussion (romantic and personal matters were left out) and the duration of acquantaince appeared to be shorter, the weak ties fostered on the internet serve as a place for new information. The internet can serve as a source of networking that allows for greater access of information (after filtration) because there may be less redundancy through these networks. One key issue that was left out of all the readings from this week was the impact of internet networks on social good.
Perhaps because many people keep their identity hidden when they join certain groups it is hard to gage certain information. But, it is important to note that with the proliferation of dating websites and sites established specifically so people can interact, how many people have created friends across social staus, economic class, race and values because of the internet. My question is does the internet or can the internet be a way of bridging people from various backgrounds who would not necessarily interact before? Given that there is still an information divide to account for, can the internet be viewed not only as a community builder (Netville example) but also as method of crossing stereotypical barriers?

When I read this week's readings I could not help but relate them to the old Tootsie Roll Pop commercials. A young boy would ask the owl: "how many licks it took to get to the center of the lollipop?" This week the focus on centrality was a bit puzzling in quite the same sense. In the first two readings by Freeman and Wasserman, the difficulty in centrality measures was made painstakingly clear. While both papers struggled to formulate a concrete grasp of how to measure things like actor betweeness, actor information centrality and closeness they did a decent job of explaining the difference between prestige and centrality. As I understood it, prestigious actors are those with many indegrees while central actors are those with in and outdegrees. I had great difficulty in dechipering the mathematical formulas for each of these concept but I think that grasping the concepts is slightly more important for our analytical purposes.
In the other readings, the implementation of those centrality theories was in essence tested in the three different studies. In the Valente et al. reading on smoking and popularity, I believe it was hard to make a deep theoretical relationship to centrality and smoking only because the sample was not diverse enough. If smoking is already prevalent in Hispanic and White adolescents moreso than another group, and the sample is predominantly Hispanic than the study may be inaccurate in some way. Aside from the sample however, I think that the results of the study provided inspiration for one of my questions. If students who felt they were popular felt the need to smoke in order to maintain their popularity in the sixth grade, then can we use centrality measures as behavioral predictors to some extent? Can programs based on prevention be geared towards central actors in the hopes of preventing unhealthy behavior? Following in this line of thinking, I also viewed the Krebs reading as flawed in it's data source which lead to my inquiry of the reliability of the network map. But more importantly it lead me to ask the class: what are recent examples of SNA used for preventative measures? Is this method strong enough for the use of disbanding terrorist networks? Lastly, in the Montapa et al. paper, males occupying central network positions were heterogeneous in terms of their aggressive behavior, female bullies however occupied less central network position. Why do you think there is a difference in the central network position of female bullies and male bullies? Is bullying 'overlooked' more by males than females?

1) Lynn Smith-Lovin cites a large scale social change as the primary explanation for the changes in core discussion networks. People’s discussion networks have been reduced as a result of their “ecology of time” as Lovin calls it. People are spending more time at work; people are more dispersed in suburbs and as a result of this dispersion, there are longer commutes. The proliferation of technology also adds another dynamic to this social change, but as Lovin argues the time and space divide over the internet leads to a different relationship which cannot be counted towards a core discussion network. Robert Putnam’s study in Bowling Alone focused on a wide-scale analysis which included voluntary organizations and social outings with others. In Putnam’s estimation, he found that there was a decrease in the amount of civil engagement in these organizations, which he argues is directly related to our personal network formation. Because there is a decline in participation in these societal groups, there is also a decline in the amount of people turned to as confidants. Because community and group networks are on the decline, there is less involvement outside the home. Support for this is found in Claude Fischer’s work, where the more organizations respondents belonged to, the more non-members they knew. This is evident in McPherson et al.’s findings that men had a decline in the amount of ties outside the home. While this question seeks to explore possible causes, there are also theoretical factors in the research design which may have derived a greater change in core discussion networks than truly existed. The interpretation of what “important” means may have changed, therefore changing respondent’s answers and the interpretation of the word “discuss” could have also changed people’s answers. While the authors are careful to note that these were not enough to cause a strong effect, it could have been a contributor to the results. Both the words “important” and “discuss” may have elicited a limited response by confining people to think of topics and face-to-face interaction respectively.

2) In the article co-authored by Lovin and the radio interview, the types of resources provided by confidants are those of socio-emotional support, help in making important decisions, and major help in a crisis. Confidants are a source of dependency and serve as a safety net. In Wellman’s article, the most important component offered by confidants is companionship and this cannot be obtained from any other group. The transformations in network structure and composition may affect resources by reducing the amount of opportunities and information that becomes available to people. As Ron Burt discussed in “The Social Structure of Competition,” cohesion and redundancy become a problem in terms of the dissemination of information. The interconnectedness involved with these social circles also makes the penetration of new ideas and innovations hard. The lack of civic engagement is a problem insofar that crime rates and neighborhood school operations are dependent on the connections of people within their community as Putnam argues. In Herbert Gans’ study of the Boston’s West End neighborhood, there was a tightly knit community which could not mobilize to help their own neighborhood. Lovin cites Louisiana as one of the states with the greatest social isolation and Putnam goes on to attribute Louisiana’s ratings as the least effective government and most corrupt as a result of this social isolation. In addition to political reasons, information acquisition and social security, social dependency is another aspect of resources that can be affected. Kalmijn’s theory of dyadic withdrawal is important because as Lovin noted, people depend on their spouses. If something happens to the spouse however, those resources acquired from the spouse or the spouse’s network suffer immensely in terms of emotional support, small services and other needs. These all do not have an extensive impact on the formation of new ties, except that new ties may be forged weakly and may remain that way due to the smaller personal networks people already have. As Lovin notes shifts in geographic, work and recreational patterns may have created a distinction between our close confidant ties and the larger networks we maintain. I think that there may be a greater separation between kinship and friendship and that there is a greater focus on family. With the distrust of the government, people are perhaps turning inwards and dealing with their personal lives in effect rejecting the public sphere.