Online Social Networks in Everyday Life

INLS 490-151, Week 3

Overview   Measuring Social Connectedness

  Social capital, social isolation and technological intervention

  Applied Analysis   Ellison et al.’s Benefits of Facebook Friends…   Hampton et al.’s Social Isolation and New Technology…

  New Forms….   Thompson’s Ambient

Intimacy   Resnick’s Impersonal

SocioTechnical Capital

The Big Question   The effect of X on Y

  The effect of internet use on interpersonal communication, size of social circle, and depression and loneliness (Kraut et al., 1998)

  The effect of internet use on time spent with friends and family, and time spent on social and leisure activities (Nie & Hillygus, 2002)

  The effect of internet use on social participation (Katz & Aspden, 1997)

  Meta-analysis: (Shklovski et al., 2006)

Measuring Social Connectedness   Social Capital

  James Coleman: Resources used in provisioning tangible forms of Human Capital – Obligations, Expectations, Information, Norms, Sanctions – provisioned through networks. (Coleman, 1998)

  Nan Lin: The resources one can mobilize and access – for accomplishing goals and tasks, accessing resources, etc. (Lin, 1999)

Measuring Social Connectedness   Social Capital

  Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, habitus and fields (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992)

  Putnam’s concepts of Bridging and Bonding Capital (Putnam, 2001)   Bridging Capital – Weak-tie

focused, fosters organization and collaboration

  Bonding Capital – Strong-tie focused, fosters in-group identities and cohesion

Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abangale, Jr.

Measuring Social Connectedness   A brief history of the core discussion inventory

  GSS Q: From time to time, most people discuss important matters with other people. Looking back over the last six months—who are the people with whom you discussed matters important to you?

(Marsden, 1987; McPherson et al., 2006)

Critiques of the CDI?   What is an important matter?

  Social structures govern what we talk about and who we talk with.

  We reserve certain topics for certain individuals and situations (Bearman & Parigi, 2004)

  A poor question?   Question is taxing or socially

undesirable?   Random error on data collection?

(Fischer, 2009)

Other Use Outcomes   Loneliness and depression (Kraut et al., 1998; LaRose et

al., 2001)   Spatial/local participation (Hampton & Wellman, 2002;

Mesch & Levanon, 2003)   Family (Mesch, 2003) and school participation (Cummings

et al., 2006)   Range of psychometric measures (See the journal

CyberPsychology & Behavior)

Connecting With Technology   Refer to (Shklovski et al., 2004) for meta-analysis

of technology/participation studies   Recent focus:

  Online-offline connection (cf. Ellison, Hampton)   Low-involvement/low social-cost interaction (cf.

Grinter & Eldridge, 2001; Grinter & Eldridge, 2003)   Reconnection (Lenhart, 2009)   Perpetual involvement (Christensen, 2009)   Hypercoordination (Ito et al., 2005)

  Implications for development/identity play (Turkle, 2008)

  Implications for privacy (cf. Solove, 2007)

An Exercise: Your Derivatives   Think about the communication

technologies you commonly use – social network sites, status and link sharing networks, mobile phones:   What are some of the derivative

data you produce?   E.g. Facebook actions that go into

the news stream, your tag cloud…

  What types of relationships are you sustaining through these data?

  What relationships would you lose if you migrated?

Analyzing Facebook: Benefits of…   Relationship between Facebook use and Social Capital

  Three forms of social capital   Bridging – Weak-tie social capital   Bonding – Strong-tie social capital   Maintained – Perpetuated social capital

  Analysis overview   Methodology: Sample survey,

web administration   Behavioral and attitudinal scales   Regression analysis

Analyzing Facebook: Benefits of…   Facebook Intensity Scale

Analyzing Facebook: Benefits of…   Self Esteem/Life Satisfaction Scales

Analyzing Facebook: Benefits of…   Social Capital Scales

Analyzing Facebook: Benefits of…   Bridging Social Capital Scale:

  FB Intensity: .34/.34   R-Squared: .44/.46

  Bonding Social Capital Scale   FB Intensity: .37/.34   R-Squared: .23/.22

  Maintained Social Capital   FB Intensity: .37/.36   R-Squared: .16/.17

Social Isolation and New Technology   Relationship between technology use and discussion

network size

Social Isolation and New Technology   Positive associations (from Regression Appendix)

  Cell phone use and discussion network size   Cell phone use and kin discussion network   SNS use and kin discussion network   Internet use and having a nonkin discussion tie   Blogging/frequent internet use and having cross-race/ethnicity

core discussion network (EB ~ 2)   IM use and discussion network size   SNS use and knowing neighbors (EB ~ .6) Why?

Impersonal Sociotechnical Capital   Resnick's Social Capital - how it works:

  Facilitates information routing   Exchange of other resources besides info   Provides emotional support to one another   Enables coordination

  Overcome dilemmas of collective action The resources of social capital   Communication paths   Shared knowledge   Shared values   Shared sense of collective identity   Resources, obligations and debts   Norms and roles, trust

Impersonal Sociotechnical Capital   STC Opportunities   Remove barries to interaction

  Distant comm, asynchronous comm

  Expand interaction networks   Large distribution - one sender, many receivers

  Restricting information flows   Anonymity, restricted modality

  Managing dependencies   Notifications, Concurrency controls

  Maintaining history   Document versioning, interaction logs

Impersonal Sociotechnical Capital   New STC Opportunities

  Enhanced groups self-awareness   Brief interactions   Maintaining ties while spending less time   Peripheral participation (Resnick, 2001)

References   Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, Illinois: University

of Chicago Press.   Christensen, T. H. (2009). 'Connected presence' in distributed family life. New Media & Society, 11(3),

433--451.   Cummings, J. N., Lee, J. B., and Kraut, R. (2006). Communication technology and friendship during the

transition from high school to college. In Kraut, R., Brynin, M., and Kiesler, S. (Eds.), Computers, Phones, and the Internet: Domesticating Information Technology (pp. 265-278). USA: Oxford University Press.

  Fischer, C. S. (2009). The 2004 GSS Finding of Shrunken Social Networks: An Artifact?. American Sociological Review, 74(4), 657--669.

  Grinter, R. E. and Eldridge, M. A. (2001). y do tngrs luv 2 txt msg?. In ECSCW'01: Proceedings of the seventh conference on European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Norwell, MA, USA, 2001 (pp. 219-238). Kluwer Academic Publishers.

  Grinter, R. and Eldridge, M. (2003). Wan2tlk?: everyday text messaging. In Proceedings of the, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, 2003 (pp. 441-448). ACM.

  Hampton, K. and Wellman, B. (2001). Long Distance Community in the Network Society: Contact and Support Beyond Netville. American Behavioral Scientist, 45(3), 476-495.

  Ito, M., Okabe, D., and Matsuda, M. (2005). Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

  Katz, J. E. and Aspden, P. (1997). A nation of strangers?. Communications of the ACM, 40(12), 81-86.   Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., and Scherlis, W. (1998). Internet paradox.

A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?. American Psychologist, 53(9), 1017-1031.

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