[Air-L] in dis-praise of the Chronicle

[Caroline Haythornthwaite]

It also sounds like this misses the nuance of *who is talking to whom*, with stronger ties using more media to communicate than weaker ties, and stronger ties more able to influence joint (pairwise to groupwise) use. -- this is all with the caveat that I haven´t read the Chronicle article (I´m not on my own machine with my usually totally wired connection right now).

But, I also wonder if we may be seeing a shift in what the ´base´ connector for groups is going to be. Sure, AoIR is long-established on email, but would you do that today? or would you set up a Facebook or equivalent groupinstead? I rather think the latter if you didn´t think about crossing borders and internet transmission rates. 

Anyway, I better go read the article!  /Caroline


---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:07:46 -0400
>From: Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca>  
>Subject: [Air-L] in dis-praise of the Chronicle  
>To: aoir list <air-l at aoir.org>, "Denise N. Rall" <denrall at yahoo.com>, Catherine Middleton <cmiddlet at ryerson.ca>, Peter Timusk <ptimusk at sympatico.ca>
>
>I was appalled by the Chronicle's article -- especially the headline -- on
>the putative death of e-lists such as this one.
>
>First, they gave no systematic evidence, just some anecdotes. Although the
>article was more nuanced than the headline: "on the one hand, on the other
>hand." Yet, still anecdotes.
>
>Second, they ignored the organizational ecology research that has shown
>that some organizations die and some get born all the time.
>
>Third, the posts by my fellow Canucks Catherine Middleton and Peter Timusk
>clearly showed the difference between 140 character Tweets (which I do a
>fair amount) and posts to this list (ibid). Both of their posts were too
>nuanced to be short tweets.
>
>Fourth, as Marc Smith can show you, even the older Bulletin Boards are
>still thriving.
>
>Indeed, my hunch is that each communication form adds on to the other,
>rather than displacing it, which is why I never get much writing done
>(today's excusive, anyway).
>
>Happy Canada Day to All (except Janet Napolitano),
>
> Barry Wellman
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
>  S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC               NetLab Director
>  Department of Sociology                  725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388
>  University of Toronto   Toronto Canada M5S 2J4   twitter:barrywellman
>  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman             fax:+1-416-978-3963
>  Updating history:      http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
>
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--------------------------------------
Caroline Haythornthwaite
Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820
haythorn at illinois.edu OR haythorn at uiuc.edu