[Air-l] Re: weak ties, great good place, & cyberspace

[Caroline Haythornthwaite]

A late response to your request for references on weak ties and cyberspace 
... there are a few 'classic' studies of weak ties and email by Feldman, 
and Constant, Kiesler & Sproull (see references below). Some of the 
communities of practice literature also addresses weak tie usefulness via 
CMC (e.g., see Teigland).

May I also recommend my own most recent paper in The Information Society on 
how media can support and connect people with different tiers of tie 
strength. The paper in New Media and Society also addresses the usefulness 
of non-strong ties in connectivity among groups of online users.

For more on the way "people adopt and adapt to the Internet to maintain 
their personal communities" see the collected papers in The Internet in 
Everyday Life, or earlier versions of half the book's contents in the 
American Behavioral Scientist (which could be available online through your 
university's subscriptions).

/Caroline

Caroline Haythornthwaite (haythorn at uiuc.edu)
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign



Refs:

Haythornthwaite, C. (2002). Strong, weak and latent ties and the impact of 
new media. The Information Society, 18(5), 385-401.

Haythornthwaite, C. (2000). Online personal networks: Size, composition and 
media use among distance learners. New Media and Society, 2(2), 195-226.

Feldman, M. (1987). Electronic mail and weak ties in organizations. Office: 
Technology and People, 3, 83-101.

Constant, D., Kiesler, S.B., & Sproull, L.S. (1996). The kindness of 
strangers: The usefulness of electronic weak ties for technical advice. 
Organization Science, 7(2), 119-135.

Pickering, J.M. & King, J.L. (1995). Hardwiring weak ties: 
Interorganizational computer-mediated communication, occupational 
communities, and organizational change. Organization Science, 6(4), 479-486.

Sarbaugh-Thompson, Marjorie & Feldman, Martha (1998). Electronic Mail and 
Organizational Communication: Does Saying "Hi" Really Matter? Organization 
Science, 9 (6), 685-698.

Teigland, R. (2000). Communities of practice at an Internet firm: 
Netovation vs. on-time performance. In E.L. Lesser, M.A. Fontaine & J.A. 
Slusher (Eds.). Knowledge and Communities. Boston, MA: Butterworth Heinemann.

Haythornthwaite, C. & Wellman, B. (Eds.) (2001). The Internet in Everyday 
Life.  Special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, 45(3), whole issue.

Wellman, B. & Haythornthwaite, C. (Eds.) (2002). The Internet in Everyday 
Life. Oxford, UK: Blackwells Publishers.



> > -- __--__--
>Message: 3
>From: "mito akiyoshi" <sgz01570 at nifty.ne.jp>
>To: <air-l at aoir.org>
>Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 17:51:44 -0600
>Organization: The University of Chicago
>Subject: [Air-l] weak ties, great good place, & cyberspace
>Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>Does somebody know of publications that apply the notions of weak ties
>(Granovetter) and/or third place (Oldenburg) to understand ephemeral yet
>meaningful ties created in and around cyberspace? I began using these concepts
>to make sense of forms of sociality observed in communities (both "virtual"
>and offline) I am studying. I read a few papers that make reference to these
>concepts, But I do not know anything really good. Other than suggestions for
>readings, I appreciate your thoughts on this matter as well.
>
>Whoami> I am a doctoral student of sociology. I am working on a dissertation
>about uses of the Internet in Japan, I am particularly interested in the ways
>in which everyday people adopt and adapt to the Internet to maintain their
>personal communities.
>
>Thank you in advance,
>
>Mito Akiyoshi
>Department of Sociology
>The University of Chicago

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