[Air-L] snide, cute, ignorant, surprising

[Barry Wellman]

The tone of Monica Hesse's Washington Post story is somewhat snide.

Although I did enjoy some of her word-play: "celebrademic" danah
"uncapping" herself (altho note that the Post copyeditor re-capped her at
the start of a para.) Frankly, "danah" uncapped has made proofreading
PITAs for me for years.

What is ignorant is Ms Hesse being surprised that small circles cite each
other. This is true in many fields. There is a whole area of bibliometrics
devoted to this. Check out the work of Howard White or Loet Leyesdorff,
for example. Or, as usual, I have co-authored a paper on the subject --
its on my website.
"Does Citation Reflect Social Structure? Longitudinal Evidence from the
'Globenet' Interdisciplinary Reserach Group" JASIST, 1/04.

What is surprising is that I was interviewed and quoted by Ms Hesse and
it was a much straighter piece of reporting:

"An Unmanageable Circle of Friends: Social-Network Sites Inundate Us with
Connections, and that can be Alienating." Washington Post, August 26,
2007, p. M10.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082400481.html

 Barry Wellman
 _______________________________________________________________________

  S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC              NetLab Director
  Centre for Urban & Community Studies           University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue          Room 418          Toronto Canada M5S 2G8
  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman            fax:+1-416-978-7162
  Updating history:     http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
         Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days
 _______________________________________________________________________