Barry Wellman

Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital? Social Networks, Participation, and Community Commitment

How does the Internet affect social capital? Do the communication possibilities of the Internet increase, decrease, or supplement interpersonal contact, participation, and community commitment? This evidence comes from a 1998 survey of 39,211 visitors to the National Geographic Society Web site, one of the first large-scale Web surveys. The authors find that peoples interaction online supplements their face-to-face and telephone communication without increasing or decreasing it. However, heavy Internet use is associated with increased participation in voluntary organizations and politics. Further support for this effect is the positive association between offline and online participation in voluntary organizations and politics. However, the effects of the Internet are not only positive: The heaviest users of the Internet are the least committed to online community. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the Internet is becoming normalized as it is incorporated into the routine practices of everyday life.

The Internet in everyday life

List of Figures. List of Tables. Foreword: The Virtual Community in the Real World. (Howard Rheingold). Series Editora s Preface: The Internet and the Network Society . (Manuel Castells). Introduction: The Internet in Everyday Life. (Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman). Part I: Moving The Internet Out Of Cyberspace. The internet in Everyday Life: An Introduction. (Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman). Part II: The Place Of The Internet In Everyday Life. 1. Days and Nights on the Internet. (Philip Howard, Lee Rainie, and Steve Jones). 2 The Global Villagers: Comparing Internet Users and Uses Around the World. (Wenhong Chen, Jeffrey Boase and Barry Wellman). 3 Syntopia: Access, Civic Involvement and Social Interaction on the Net. (James Katz and Ronald Rice). 4 Digital Living: The Impact (or Otherwise) of the Internet in Everyday British Life. (Ben Anderson and Karina Tracey). 5 The Changing Digital Divide in Germany. (Gert Wagner, Rainer Pischner and John Haisken--DeNew). 6 Doing Social Science Research Online . (Alan Neustadtl, John Robinson and Meyer Kestnbaum). Part III: Finding Time For The Internet. 7 Internet Use, Interpersonal Relations and Sociability: A Time Diary Study. (Norman Nie, D. Sunshine Hillygus and Lutz Erbring). 8 The Internet and Other Uses of Time. (John Robinson, Meyer Kestnbaum, Alan Neustadtl and Anthony Alvarez). 9 Everyday Communication Patterns of Heavy and Light Email Users. (Janell Copher, Alaina Kanfer and Mary Bea Walker). Part IV: The Internet In The Community. 10 Capitalizing on the Net: Social Contact, Civic Engagement and Sense of Community. (Anabel Quan--Haase and Barry Wellman). 11 The Impact of Computer Networks on Social Capital and Community Involvement in Blacksburg. (Andrea Kavanaugh and Scott Patterson). 12 The Not So Global Village of Netville. (Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman). 13 Gender and Personal Relationships in HomeNet. (Bonka Boneva and Robert Kraut). 14 Belonging in Geographic, Ethnic and Internet Spaces. (Sorin Matei and Sandra Ball--Rokeach). Part V: The Internet At School, Work And Home. 15 Bringing the Internet Home: Adult distance learners and their Internet, Home and Work worlds. (Caroline Haythornthwaite and Michelle Kazmer). 16 Where Home is the Office: The New Form of Flexible Work. (Janet Salaff). 17 Kerala Connections: Will the Internet Affect Science in Developing Areas?. (Teresa Davidson, R. Sooryamoorthy and Wesley Shrum). 18 Social Support for Japanese Mothers Online and Offline . (Kakuko Miyata). 19 Shopping Behavior Online. (Robert Lunn and Michael Suman). Index

Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking

Computer networks are social networks. Social affordances of computer-supported social networks - broader bandwidth, wireless portability, globalized connectivity, personalization - are fostering the movement from door-to-door and place-to-place communities to person-to-person and role-to-role communities. People connect in social networks rather than in communal groups. In-person and computer-mediated communication are integrated in communities characterized by personalized networking. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.

Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb

What is the Internet doing to local community? Analysts have debated about whether the Internet is weakening community by leading people away from meaningful in‐person contact; transforming community by creating new forms of community online; or enhancing community by adding a new means of connecting with existing relationships. They have been especially concerned that the globe‐spanning capabilities of the Internet can limit local involvements. Survey and ethnographic data from a “wired suburb” near Toronto show that high‐speed, always‐on access to the Internet, coupled with a local online discussion group, transforms and enhances neighboring. The Internet especially supports increased contact with weaker ties. In comparison to nonwired residents of the same suburb, more neighbors are known and chatted with, and they are more geographically dispersed around the suburb. Not only did the Internet support neighboring, it also facilitated discussion and mobilization around local issues.

Asynchronous learning networks as a virtual classroom

omputer-mediated communication can enable people with shared interests to form and sustain relationships and communities. Compared to communities offline, computer-supported communities tend to be larger, more dispersed in space and time, more densely knit, and to have members with more heterogeneous social characteristics but with more homogeneous attitudes. Despite earlier fears to the contrary by those who worry about the possible dehumanizing effects of computers, online communities provide emotional support and sociability as well as information and instrumental aid related to shared tasks. Online virtual classrooms combine the characteristics of online communities and computer-supported workgroups. New software tools and systems for coordinating interaction may alleviate some of the problems of interacting online, like information overload and normless behavior. What kinds of communities are most suited to the virtual environment of computer networks? How does the medium affect interaction in online communities and the types of social structures emerging in postindustrial societies, like North America and Europe? To address these questions, we provide historical perspective; define “community” as a social network; summarize studies of how computer-mediated communication (CMC) affects community interaction; survey examples of different kinds of communities communicating through the Internet; and look at asynchronous learning networks (ALNs) as an example of an online community. With development of computer networks, the standalone computer was transformed into a technology that sustains the social networks of work and community. However, some of the debates about the nature of the Internet have continued the longstanding exchange between computerphiles and computerphobes. For example, John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has proclaimed, “With the development of the Internet and with the increasing pervasiveness of communication between networked computers, we are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire” [1, p. 40]. On the other side, an ad for Mark Slouka’s 1995 book War of the Worlds warned, “Face-to-face communication is Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Barry Wellman

Work, friendship, and media use for information exchange in a networked organization

We use a social network approach to examine how work and friendship ties in a university research group were associated with the kinds of media used for different kinds of information exchange. The use of electronic mail, unscheduled face-to-face encounters, and scheduled face-to-face meetings predominated for the exchange of six kinds of information: Receiving Work, Giving Work, Collaborative Writing, Computer Programming, Sociability, and Major Emotional Support. Few pairs used synchronous desktop videoconferencing or the telephone. E-mail was used in similar ways as face-to-face communication. The more frequent the contact, the more “multiplex” the tie: A larger number of media was used to exchange a greater variety of information. The closeness of work ties and of friendship ties were each independently associated with more interaction: A greater frequency of communication, the exchange of more kinds of information, and the use of more media.

Geography of Twitter networks

Abstract The paper examines the influence of geographic distance, national boundaries, language, and frequency of air travel on the formation of social ties on Twitter, a popular micro-blogging website. Based on a large sample of publicly available Twitter data, our study shows that a substantial share of ties lies within the same metropolitan region, and that between regional clusters, distance, national borders and language differences all predict Twitter ties. We find that the frequency of airline flights between the two parties is the best predictor of Twitter ties. This highlights the importance of looking at pre-existing ties between places and people.

Imagining Twitter as an Imagined Community

The notion of “community” has often been caught between concrete social relationships and imagined sets of people perceived to be similar. The rise of the Internet has refocused our attention on this ongoing tension. The Internet has enabled people who know each other to use social media, from e-mail to Facebook, to interact without meeting physically. Into this mix came Twitter, an asymmetric microblogging service: If you follow me, I do not have to follow you. This means that connections on Twitter depend less on in-person contact, as many users have more followers than they know. Yet there is a possibility that Twitter can form the basis of interlinked personal communities—and even of a sense of community. This analysis of one person’s Twitter network shows that it is the basis for a real community, even though Twitter was not designed to support the development of online communities. Studying Twitter is useful for understanding how people use new communication technologies to form new social connections and maintain existing ones.

Networks in the global village : life in contemporary communities

* Introduction: The Network Community: An Introduction Barry Wellman * The Elements of Personal Communities B. Wellman and Stephanie Potter * The Network Basis of Social Support: A Network Is More Than the Sum of its Ties B. Wellman and Milena Gulia * Neighbor Networks of Black and White Americans Barrett A. Lee and Karen E. Campbell * Social Networks Among the Urban Poor: Inequality and Integration in a Latin American City Vincente Espinoza * The Diversity of Personal Networks in France: Social Stratifiction and Relational Structures Alexis Ferrand, Lise Mounier, and Alain Degenne * Network Capital in Capitalist, Communist, and Postcommunist Countries Endre Sik and Barry Wellman * Getting a Job Through a Web of Guanxi in China Yanjie Bian * Personal Community Networks in Contemporary Japan Shinsuke Otani * Using Social Networks to Exit Hong Kong Janet W. Salaff, Eric Fong, and Wong Siu-lun * Net-surfers Dont Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia

Are personal communities local? A Dumptarian reconsideration

Abstract Are local ties important in personal community networks? Since local ties only make up a minority of peoples active ties, network analysts have argued for decades that the neighborhood is not very important. Re-analysis of the Toronto data shows that when contacts become the unit of analysis instead of ties, the percentage of local relationships in active networks nearly doubles. Moreover, when we also take into account active contacts with coworkers, who like neighbors are physically proximate, we find that two-thirds of all contacts are ‘local’. As Humpty-Dumpty has cogently reminded us, a network can be anything we want it to be. It depends on how we define it. When we change the definition, the conclusions change too.