Social Network Blog - y10

#1 The Most Common Interactions
Top 5 Overall
1. Elena G. (21 interactions)
2. Christy K. (5)
3. Emily F. and Sanja B. (4)
5. Deb L., Ismet I., Janet L., and Saurabh J. (3)

Top 5 Cell Phone
1. Elena G. (9)
2. Ismet I., Janet L., Masaya J., Sanja B., and Tim W. (2)

Top 5 SMS
1. Ismet I., and Ian S. (1)

Top 5 Email
1. Elena G. (12)
2. Christy K. (5)
3. Emily F. (4)
4. Deb L. (3)
5. Le T., Paul S., Sanja B., and Saurabh J. (2)

Top 5 Instant Messenger
1. Jessie B. (2)

Top 5 Facebook
1. Atakan A. (1)

Elena G.
Age: 20
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Tie Strength: 1
Known For: 3.25 yrs
Note: Best Friend, UPenn Undergrad

Christy K.
Age: 24
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Tie Strength: 1
Known For: 3.25 yrs
Note: UPenn Alum

Emily F.
Age: 20
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Tie Strength: 2
Known For: 2.25 yrs
Note: UPenn Undergrad

Sanja B.
Age: 20
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Tie Strength: 2
Known For: 2.25 yrs
Note: UPenn Undergrad

Deb L.
Age: ?
Relationship: TA
Known For: 0.25 yrs
Tie Strength: 3

Ismet I.
Age: 24
Relationship: Friend
Tie Strength: 1
Known For: ~ 17 yrs
Note: Childhood friend, works in Chicago

Janet L.
Age: 21
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Tie Strength: 1
Known For: 3.25 yrs
Note: UPenn Undergrad

Saurabh J.
Age: 24
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Known For: 1.25 yrs
Tie Strength: 2

Masaya J.
Age: 21
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Tie Strength: 2
Known For: 2.25 yrs
Note: UPenn Undergrad, Dance Partner

Tim W.
Age: 33
Relationship: Organization Member
Tie Strength: 2
Known For: 3.25 yrs
Note: Dance Partner

Ian S.
Age: 21
Relationship: Friend
Tie Strength: 2
Known For: 3.25 yrs
Note: UPenn Undergrad

Le T.
Age: 20
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Tie Strength: 2
Known For: 1.75 yrs
Note: UPenn Undergrad

Paul S.
Age: 47
Relationship: Friend & Organization Member
Known For: 3.25 yrs
Tie Strength: 3

Jessie B.
Age: ?
Relationship: Co-worker
Known For: 0.25 yrs
Tie Strength: 3

Atakan A.
Age: 24
Relationship: Acquaintance
Tie Strength: 3
Known For: ~ 10 yrs
Note: Same high school

#2 Medium of Communication
Tie Strength
There was some connection between the medium of communication and the strength of the tie. Email and Cell Phone were most often used to contact strong and moderate ties. While Cell Phone was not used to contact any weak ties, that wasn’t the case with Email. Instant Messenger (IM) and Facebook were seemingly used for contacting weak ties only, while SMS was used for contacting moderate and strong ties. However, these three mediums were not used extensively enough in the study to draw reliable conclusions.

It wasn’t surprising to see that I didn’t use Cell Phone to contact weak ties, since I don’t give out my number to everyone. The added benefit of sound also makes it ideal for contacting strong and moderate ties for various types of support. Since Email is a more diverse medium in terms of its uses, it was used to contact anyone regardless of tie strength. The nature of the Emails could be different based on the person we are contacting. As for IM, since I only use it at work to contact my colleagues within the same building, it would be fair to conclude that I only use it with weak ties. That’s not the case with Facebook though, as I use this medium to contact a wide array of people, including strong ties. However, since it’s only a weeklong study the results did not reflect this.

My findings also confirmed Mesch & Talmud’s claim that “multiplexity increases tie strength” (139). All my weak ties were single-fold relationships (i.e.. either friend OR co-worker, not both) and these were all carried out through a single type of new media communication. In contrast, my moderate and strong ties were mostly two-fold relationships (i.e. both friend and organization member) and in most cases I had at least two types of communication with these people.

Type of Support Exchanged
Wellman & Wortley’s categories in this area were not completely sufficient for this study so I added a few categories of my own: organizational information, class information and making plans.

In their radio interview, Smith-Lovin & Putnam suggest that new media and especially Internet interactions do not serve the same functions as face-to-face connections. On one hand, my findings support this claim, since the type of support exchanged through new media did not include any large services or financial aid, and included only a couple instances of emotional aid. However, new media seemed to be good outlets for making plans, which mostly ended up in face-to-face interactions, as well as providing companionship when it wasn’t possible to meet face-to-face. In this sense, new media seem to complement our existing relationships and make it easier to exchange certain types of support such as small services, companionship, information in general, and making plans.

Relationship
The nature of my relationship to people definitely had an impact on the method of communication. Cell Phone was mostly used to contact friends who were also organization members. It was also used for separately for friends, organization members and parents. Email contacts were a little more diverse as they included professor/TA, acquaintance and co-worker categories as well. IM was only used to contact co-workers, while Facebook and SMS were only used to contact friends. These findings show that Cell Phone and Email are used among a more diverse group of people. This could be related to the flexibility of Cell Phone and Email conversations that can be long and eloquent, or short and direct depending on ones needs, whereas other types of communication are more limited in nature.

Distance
Distance alone did not have a strong correlation to medium of communication. However, in instances where the person was in a different state or country, distance and tie strength together played an important. When distance increased, Cell Phone use was common with strong ties. Email, Facebook and SMS were more common with moderate and weak ties. Cost of communication is likely to be a factor here. We are more likely to spend money on maintaining our strong ties rather than our weak ties. Plus, one is more likely to seek support from distant close ties, rather than distant weak ties.

Age
Although most of my new media interactions were with people who are close to my own age (21), due to the nature of the organization that I’m part of I had several interactions with older people as well. The generational gap that one would expect to see was not relevant in this case since all these people are very active on email.

Gender
Most of my new media contacts were females. This observation proves McPherson et al’s point about how gender homophily is a factor that increases interaction.

SMS and Facebook were the two mediums where I solely had interactions with the opposite sex. However, once again, these mediums were not used extensively enough during the study to draw reliable conclusions. It might be true that SMS and Facebook interactions are more common with the opposite sex, since these mediums are suitable for flirting. However, there is not enough data to support this assumption.

The role of new media in our social networks
While Marks claims that online relationships are less close, less multiplex, and less homophilous, my findings did not support these claims. Online relationships could be less close on average since we are more likely to have a larger number of weak ties, yet my findings still showed diversity in terms of tie strength and included many strong tie connections. If anything, online connections were more multiplex and pretty homophilous as outlined above. So although some believe that the advent of Internet usage has caused declines in our social networks, I believe that Internet and new media in general extend our social networks.

In general, new media allows for much easier, cheaper, and faster communication, especially for long-distances. Ellison, Steinfield & Lampe suggest that online social networking sites like Facebook work well to “capitalize on weak ties and convert latent ties to weak ties” (29). Based on my findings I thought this claim could be applied to any type of online communication through new media as they play an important role in maintaining our existing social network.

#3 Private vs. Public Spaces
I considered home and family house as private spaces, work and friend’s house as semi-private, and classroom, street, dance practice, library, school building, and transportation as public spaces. Based on these distinctions majority of my new media interactions took place at home, in private spaces. Although this seems very plausible, the fact that it’s easier to record interactions at home might have had an effect in this area.

It was interesting to see that I had contact with weak ties only at home and at work. It might be because public spaces are more suitable for maintaining relationships with close and moderate ties, while weak ties require more privacy.

Cell Phone and Email were used in both private and public spaces. While Cell Phone usage was more common in public spaces, most likely due to its portability, Email usage was more common in private spaces, which is most likely due to the need for a computer, since I don’t use my cell phone to check Email and I don’t own a PDA. Other types of communication (Facebook, IM and SMS) mostly took place in semi-private areas but the distinction was less clear and the correlation was not as significant.

In the McPherson et al article on “Important Matters” a lot of emphasis was given to privatization. As outlined by Hampton and brought up in the radio interview, Putnam also agrees that there has been an increase in privatization, along with a decrease in public participation. New media might be increasing privatization as they make it possible to have privacy in public spaces. Nowadays, it’s very common for people to talk on their cell phones in public spaces avoiding contact with people around them. Accordingly, Wellman claims, “North Americans go out to be private – in streets where no one greets each other” (29). Although this sort of privatization has the disadvantage of decreasing chance encounters, new media also help us maintain a dense network, which is a huge advantage.

So even though new media might be replacing face-to-face interactions that take place in public spaces and accordingly turn public spaces into private ones, there is also evidence to support just the opposite as new media turn private spaces into public ones. My findings confirmed that new media allow us to stay at home and still be connected to the outside world. Hampton suggests, “as public spaces, online communities may become the street corners of the twenty-first century” (229). This is especially true for organizations that use listserves to stay connected. Email was indeed a crucial method of communication with organization members, in order to exchange information and it enabled me to contact my organizational contacts from home when I couldn’t have face-to-face contact with them. Also, the fact that I was with many of my friends for the weekend shows that when face-to-face interaction is available, new media interaction slows down. This shows that new media, and specifically Internet interactions support existing relations rather than replacing them completely.

On a separate note, an important weakness of this study was that it failed to take into account how our communication patterns might change considerably during the course of the year. Especially for college students being at school vs. at home would make a significant difference. So a week is not a long enough time period to get a representative sample of someone’s new media usage. This study also made me realize that my new media usage changes drastically from week to week. This particular week was not necessarily unusual, yet my communication patterns were not very representative. I was busy studying for a midterm at the beginning of the week and this lead me to cut off a significant amount of my communication. On top of that I was away for the weekend at a competition with many of my friends from the dance team. During this time, I didn’t have access to any new media besides my cell phone and I didn’t feel the need to contact anyone since most people I contact on a regular basis were with me. Considering that I have midterms and papers almost every week and that I go to similar competitions pretty often, these events are not unusual, yet they did affect my new media usage considerably.