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

Frank Thomas frank.thomasftr at free.fr
Tue Nov 12 06:52:48 PST 2002


Mito,
I shall sent you a paper and a presentation off list that I wrote with 
Zbigniew Smoreda from France Télécom R&D UCE usage lab on "Social 
Networks and Residential ICT adoption and use" based upon a 
representative European nine country study last year. However, we worked 
on ego-centered networks so we were not able to analyse weak ties.
BTW, I don't know why you call online communications "ephemeral yet 
meaningful". In our residential sample the LARGE majority of email 
messages or SMS messages were sent to people you knew offline. These 
communications are nothing of "ephemeral". This is internet hype.  
Internet - as well as the mobile phone - added another layer of 
 technology to the existing ones, and thus changed the opportunity 
structure of the users. nothing else.

In Berlin at the end of the 19th century, "you got mail" up to 6 times a 
day. There is an entire, living world before the Internet came unto Earth.

Frank


>>>>sgz01570 at nifty.ne.jp 11/11/2002 6:51:44 PM >>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>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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>  
>

-- 
----------------------------
Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
321, boulevard de la Boissière
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France
tél. 0033.1.48.94.36.90


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