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

J. Sternberg netberg at compuserve.com
Wed Nov 13 06:45:53 PST 2002


Dear Mito,

As part of my doctoral dissertation, I referred to Oldenburg's "third
places"
in characterizing virtual communities as online gathering places for social
interaction. Additional related ideas that I found useful included Erving
Goffman's analyses of behavior in public gatherings, Lynn Lofland's concept
of "parochial realms" as places where strangers interact, and Georg
Simmel's notions about urban strangers (I note gratefully that AoIR member
Stine Gotved introduced me to the work of both Lofland and Simmel).

For me, your phrase "ephemeral yet meaningful ties" evokes the idea of
transient, temporary relationships among relative strangers, what Lofland
calls "nonintimate relationships" (1998, p. 62), although perhaps this is
not what you have in mind.

And I also understand Frank Thomas's point about online messages being sent
to people one knows offline (as opposed to strangers). My students this
semester tell me their instant message relationships primarily involve
one-on-one communication with people they already know offline; most of
them claim not to participate in group conversations online, or to
communicate online with relative strangers (or nonintimate acquaintances,
if you will). This strikes me as more similar to telephone relationships
and quite different from the patterns that seemed prevalent some years back
(pre-IM) with synchronous online groups environments such as IRC and
MUDs/MOOs. Frank mentions email, SMS messages, and regular mail, all
typically forms of one-to-one communication among familiars; maybe there's
more opportunity for "ephemeral" or transient, temporary ties among
strangers/nonintimates in group communication environments.

Good luck with your research,

Janet Sternberg, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, New Media/Digital Media
Department of Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University

REFERENCES

Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places: Notes on the social
organization of gatherings. New York: The Free Press.

Gotved, S. (2000, September). Newsgroup interaction as urban life. Paper
presented at the conference of the Association of Internet Researchers,
Lawrence, KS. Retrieved September 11, 2000, from
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/aoir/papers/gotved-paper.pdf

Lofland, L. H. (1973). A world of strangers: Order and action in urban
public space. New York: Basic Books.

Lofland, L. H. (1998). The public realm: Exploring the city's
quintessential social territory. Hawthorne, NY: A. de Gruyter.

Oldenburg, R. (1997). The great good place: Cafés, coffee shops, community
centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get
you through the day. New York: Marlowe. (Original work published 1989)

Simmel, G. (1949). The sociology of sociability. American Journal of
Sociology, 55, 254-261.

Simmel, G. (1950). The stranger. In K. H. Wolff (Ed.), The sociology of
Georg Simmel (pp. 402-408). New York: Free Press.

Sternberg, J. (2001). Misbehavior in cyber places: The regulation of online
conduct in virtual communities on the Internet (Doctoral dissertation, New
York University, 2001). Dissertation Abstracts International, 62(07), 2277
(UMI No. AAT 3022160, http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3022160).



> Frank Thomas wrote:
> 
> 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
> >
> --
> ----------------------------
> 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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