[Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 69, Issue 2

Rosa Mikeal Martey rosa.martey at colostate.edu
Fri Apr 2 15:43:55 PDT 2010


Greetings:

I've been a lurker for too long, and I happen to have a handy starting
point for Barry Wellman's question about who helps whom:

Pew did a study of "social ties" and internet use where the break down
the people, medium, and type of support (e.g., help when someone is
sick, help finding a job, help fixing the house) people get.  Like
your 1990 paper, it's using the Granovetter weak ties framework. it's
a good place to see some simple trends as related to internet use:
(although it doesn't have as conceptually relevant categories as your
paper - this study only uses rather specific activities)

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/The-Strength-of-Internet-Ties/01-Summary-of-Findings.aspx?r=1

>
> In 1990, Scot Wortley and I published "Different Strokes from Different
> Folks" in the AmJSoc. Nice paper, showing that different peeps gave
> different types of help. For example, parents gave financial aid; friends
> gave sociability.
>
> I'm wondering if anyone has done similar research in the Internet age,
> that would also build media in. For ex, emotional support is easier to
> give online than material aid. And perhaps it is time online that is the
> key, rather than role type (in 1990, all we had was phone vs F2f).
>
> If you have done such research, or know of some, I Urgently need some
> leads. Already published stuff would be great, because it's more
> cite-able, but if you have some working papers, like to hear about that
> too.
>
> Telling me today would be wonderful.
>
> Happy Pesach to All,
>  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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