Networked Rainie, Lee; Wellman, Barry
MIT Press,
2012, 20120427, 2012-04-00, 2014-02-14, 2019-06-20, 20120101
eBook, Book
Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, pictures and ...videos to post and discuss. Our perpetual connectedness gives us endless opportunities to be part of the give-and-take of networking. Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked , Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making, and personal interaction. The new social operating system of "networked individualism" liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks. Rainie and Wellman outline the "triple revolution" that has brought on this transformation: the rise of social networking, the capacity of the Internet to empower individuals, and the always-on connectivity of mobile devices. Drawing on extensive evidence, they examine how the move to networked individualism has expanded personal relationships beyond households and neighborhoods; transformed work into less hierarchical, more team-driven enterprises; encouraged individuals to create and share content; and changed the way people obtain information. Rainie and Wellman guide us through the challenges and opportunities of living in the evolving world of networked individuals.
As users interact via social media spaces, like Twitter, they form connections that emerge into complex social network structures. These connections are indicators of content sharing, and network ...structures reflect patterns of information flow. This article proposes a conceptual and practical model for the classification of topical Twitter networks, based on their network-level structures. As current literature focuses on the classification of users to key positions, this study utilizes the overall network structures in order to classify Twitter conversation based on their patterns of information flow. Four network-level metrics, which have established as indicators of information flow characteristics—density, modularity, centralization, and the fraction of isolated users—are utilized in a three-step classification model. This process led us to suggest six structures of information flow: divided, unified, fragmented, clustered, in and out hub-and-spoke networks. We demonstrate the value of these network structures by segmenting 60 Twitter topical social media network datasets into these six distinct patterns of collective connections, illustrating how different topics of conversations exhibit different patterns of information flow. We discuss conceptual and practical implications for each structure.
Americans believe the civic information ecosystem is collapsing. Trust in journalism has declined in the past generation, and news media now draw polarized audiences. Public confidence in social ...media as a news and information source has never been strong, and people today say social media firms cannot be trusted to be objective or impartial information curators of political discourse or stewards of their users’ personal data. This adds up to public despair about disinformation and misinformation that impinges on the way expert knowledge is evaluated and deeply affects public life. A reckoning for both the news media and social media is at hand: For journalists, the existential challenge centers on the viability of their underlying business model. For social media firms, “techlash” might force them to change their structures and practices. Under the circumstances, networked individuals will determine the contours of trust in media.
The Internet opens new options for communication and may change the extent to which people use older communication media. Changes in the way people communicate are important, because communication is ...the mechanism people use to develop and maintain social relationships, so valuable for their physical and mental health. This paper uses data from a national panel survey conducted in 2000 and 2001 to examine the influence of Internet use on communication and on social involvement. In doing so, it contrasts the conclusions one can draw from cross‐sectional and longitudinal data on these issues. Longitudinal analyses provide stronger evidence of the causal effects of using the Internet than do the cross‐sectional ones. The longitudinal data show that heavy use of the Internet is associated with reductions in the likelihood of visiting family or friends on a randomly selected day. Cross‐sectional analyses show high correlations between the frequency with which respondents communicate with specific family members by visits, phone calls and email, suggesting that communication in one medium stimulates the others. In contrast, longitudinal analyses suggest that the links between communication media are asymmetric: visits drive more email communication and phone calls drive more visits, but email drives neither phone calls nor visits.
How Teens Do Research in the Digital World Purcell, Kristen; Lee, Rainie; Heaps, Alan ...
The Education digest,
02/2013, Volume:
78, Issue:
6
Journal Article, Magazine Article
...a significant portion report spending class time discussing with students how search engines work, how to assess the reliability of the information they find online, and how to improve their ...search skills. ...on the list of frequently used sources are online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, and social media sites such as You Tube.\n Another 57% spend class time helping students improve their search skills and 35% devote time to helping students understand how search engines work and how search results are generated.
How did the absence of mobile phones affect the romantic life and death of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? The difference in their situation would have been part of the social change to networked ...individualism from group-based societies. The Mobile Revolution would have afforded personal communication rather than the household-centered communication of the Montagues and the Capulets. Romeo and Juliet would have been always available to each other, instead of wondering where the other might be. Location-aware apps would have plotted their whereabouts. The course of true love would have been more connected.
Days and Nights on the Internet HOWARD, PHILIP E. N.; RAINIE, LEE; JONES, STEVE
The American behavioral scientist (Beverly Hills),
11/2001, Volume:
45, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
For a growing cohort of Americans, Internet tools have become a significant conduit of social life and work life. The surveys of the Pew Internet & American Life Project in 2000 show that more than ...52 million Americans went online each day, and there are significant differences in use between men and women, young and old, those of different races and ethnic groups, and those of different socioeconomic status. A user typology can be built around two variables: the length of time a person has used the Internet and the frequency with which he or she logs on from home. The authors contend that use of e-mail helps people build their social networks by extending and maintaining friend and family relationships.
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