I recently published this paper with my colleague Rich Ling (University of Copenhagen). This paper came about as a result of a dinner conversation where we realized that we had each collected data on core discussion networks, national samples from the United States, Norway and Ukraine, over the same time period. The perfect opportunity to add comparative data to a growing literature on core networks (including a number of my own studies), that had previously relied exclusively on a series of repeated cross-sectional samples of Americans. This literature suggests that there has been large-scale change in the size and structure of American’s core networks over the past two decades.
The goal of our paper was to test the theory that there was something unexpected or exceptional about a finding that American’s core networks are relatively small and kin-centric. Our expectation was that this was not something exceptional at all. Rather, we anticipated that at the societal level a large and diverse core networks was a sign of something troubling, the need for large amounts of informal support. Our expectation was that where formal resources were relatively limited (Ukraine), we would find larger and more diverse core networks. When formal resources were more robust, as a result of things like a strong economy, strong civic society, and strong government safety net (Norway and the US), people would have less need for informal support and could thus rely on a smaller core network. We argued that kin are more likely to persist in core networks; when the median core network size drops to one it should be of no surprise that kin dominate these networks. As we expected, Norwegians have relatively small and kin-centric core networks, and a similar level of social isolation as Americans. Along the way, we also challenge a number of related arguments: that higher levels of individual and societal well-being predict higher levels of face-to-face contact, that most people have less face-to-face contact when mediated communication is used with core confidants, and that the use of ICTs within core networks displaces core confidants.
We have three main findings:
- Concerns that low societal well-being is associated with smaller and less diverse core networks should be discounted. Arguments in favor of this position are based on an ecological fallacy that assumes that the positive relationship between individual well-being and core network size can be generalized to the societal level (that is, individual factors related to well-being, such as higher education, that predict larger and more diverse core networks, cannot be extended to conclude that societies with higher well-being should also average larger and more diverse core networks). This generalization is false; it ignores a network paradox. Unlike at the individual level, societal prosperity is negatively related to network size.
- For most people, frequent ICT use within core networks is associated with frequent face-to-face contact. However, as a result of an affordance paradox, there is an exception based on individual inequality. In the absence of new communication technologies, the most disadvantaged, individuals of lower socioeconomic status, have more frequent face-to-face contact with core ties (compared to those of higher socioeconomic status). In this context, face-to-face contact is lower with ICT use only for those of lower socioeconomic status.
- Social contact, in-person communication, and the use of ICTs support larger core networks. However, there is a contact paradox whereby, in a context of lower societal well-being, frequent contact with core networks, face-to-face and otherwise, impedes the ability to maintain a larger core network.
You can download the final version of the paper here, or access a draft version of the paper on my website.
I have published a new paper with colleagues from Virginia Tech: Samah Gad, Naren Ramakrishnam, and Andrea Kavanaugh. It was a particular pleasure to work on this paper, as it provided an opportunity to collaborate with some of the folks who I have long admired for their research on the Blacksburg Electronic Village, a community networking project that has a lot of similarities to my Netville, E-Neighbors and i-Neighbors projects. Our paper uses data from i-Neighbors.org to test hypotheses that I original developed in a paper that I published in Internet Use and the Concentration of Disadvantage: Glocalization and the Urban Underclass. In short, the argument is that there is something about social media that enables local social contact and collective action. Moreover, social media can enable social contact in geographic areas that are otherwise, because of digital and more traditional divides, unlikely to experience high levels of civic and civil engagement.
Here is the abstract:
The Internet offers opportunities for informal deliberation, and civic and civil engagement. However, social inequalities have traditionally meant that some communities, where there is a concentration of poverty, are both less likely to exhibit these democratic behaviors and less likely to benefit from any additional boost as a result of technology use. We argue that some new technologies afford opportunities for communication that bridge this divide. Using temporal topic modeling, we compare informal conversational activity that takes place online in communities of high and low poverty. Our analysis is based on data collected through i-Neighbors, a community website that provides neighborhood discussion forums. To test our hypotheses, we designed a novel time series segmentation algorithm that is driven by topic dynamics. We embed an LDA algorithm in a segmentation strategy and develop an approach to compare and contrast the resulting topic models underlying time series segments. We examine the adoption of i-Neighbors by poverty level, and apply our algorithm to six neighborhoods (three economically advantaged and three economically disadvantaged) and evaluate differences in conversations for statistical significance. Our findings suggest that social technologies may afford opportunities for democratic engagement in contexts that are otherwise less likely to support opportunities for deliberation and participatory democracy.
Want to read more, you can find a copy of the paper here:
Gad, Samah, Naren Ramakrishnam, Keith Hampton & Kavanaugh, Andrea (2012). Bridging the Divide in Democratic Engagement: Studying Conversation Patterns in Advantaged and Disadvantaged Communities. 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Informatics, Washington D.C.
I have a new paper, How new media affords network diversity: Direct and mediated access to social capital through participation in local social settings, in print in New Media & Society. Co-authored with my former students Chul-joo Lee (The Ohio State) and Eun Ja Her.
This paper is based on data that I collected with the Pew Intenret Project in 2008. The paper addresses two important questions:
- Are people\’s social networks (the real stuff, not just Facebook) less diverse as a result of their participation in mediated activities? In other words, does the Internet create silos?
- If ICTs are are associated with higher levels of diversity, how does the diversity associated with online engagement compare to the diversity associated with offline engagement (in public spaces, voluntary groups, church, cafes, neighborhoods, etc)?
I explore the relative contribution of traditional physical settings to social network diversity and answer the question of whether virtual community really is like a public spaces or a \”3rd space\”. The conclusions contrast with the notion of \”networked individualism\”. I suggest that there is a duality in how ICTs influence social relations: they support relationships globally and locally – \”glocalization.\” That is, ICTs afford social participation that is both unbounded from shared time and geography (\”global\” and not dependent on place) and tied to participation in foci of activity that are very \”local\” (contextual and tied to place). Different uses of new technologies afford one or both of these trends.
Findings provide very limited evidence that place-based relations have less resonance with internet users. A claim that the structure of personal networks has shifted from place-to-place to person-to-person underplays the continued role and technological affordances that are associated with traditional social settings. Place is not lost as a result of the affordances of new technologies — place-based networks are reinforced and made persistent. I argue, in contrast to a belief that networks would be more easily abandoned in the electronic age, social networks may be more persistent now than at any point in modern history. Not only are networks persistent over time, but they are increasingly pervasive and visible across what were once clearly articulated and bounded cliques. New technologies, such as the \”status update\” offered by many social networking services, afford opportunities for \”pervasive awareness,\” whereby individuals are regularly broadcasting and receiving information from their networks.
The pervasive awareness afforded by many new technologies has more in common with a traditional village-like community than it does with individualized person-to-person contact. Pervasive awareness provides a shared history, familiarity of daily labor, shared context, density, and public life that is reminiscent of traditional village life. The fundamental difference between a village-like community and the person-to-network structure that characterizes contemporary networks is the possibility for personal networks that are larger and more diverse than at any time in human history. I go on to explore how newer technologies, such as \”social search,\” in which the use of the internet to search for information privileges or limit exposure to information
collected or accredited by members of a person’s social circle, may promote prevailing ideology and information while omitting important bridges, divergent views, and unique resources that exist between networks — possibly reversing the trend found in this paper and the advantages of network diversity.
Find the n the NM&S website, or a draft on my site.