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Publications - Abstracts: Grieving For a Lost Network: Collective Action in a Wired Suburb Abstract Critics have argued
that information and communication technologies (ICTs) disconnect people
from their social networks and reduce public participation. Research
in support of this perspective has been biased by two assumptions. The
first is a tendency to privilege the Internet as a social system removed
from the other ways people communicate. The second is a tendency to
favor broadly supportive strong social ties. Survey and ethnographic
observations from Netville, a two-year community networking experiment,
suggest that weak, not strong ties, experience growth as a result of
ICTs. By examining a unique and under explored stage in the lifecycle
of a community networking project, the end of a networking trial, this
paper demonstrates how ICTs facilitate community participation and collective
action by: 1) creating large, dense networks of relatively weak social
ties, and 2) through the use of ICTs as an organizing tool. |
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