This study examines the relationship between use of Facebook, a popular online social network site, and the formation and maintenance of social capital. In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, we explore a dimension of social capital that assesses one’s ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community, which we call maintained social capital. Regression analyses conducted on results from a survey of undergraduate students (N = 286) suggest a strong association between use of Facebook and the three types of social capital, with the strongest relationship being to bridging social capital. In addition, Facebook usage was found to interact with measures of psychological well-being, suggesting that it might provide greater benefits for users experiencing low self-esteem and low life satisfaction.

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The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today's emerging networked information environment. In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing--and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained--or lost--by the decisions we make today.

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The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

Twitter, a popular microblogging service, has received much attention recently. An important characteristic of Twitter is its real-time nature. For example, when an earthquake occurs, people make many Twitter posts (tweets) related to the earthquake, which enables detection of earthquake occurrence promptly, simply by observing the tweets. As described in this paper, we investigate the real-time interaction of events such as earthquakes in Twitter and propose an algorithm to monitor tweets and to detect a target event. To detect a target event, we devise a classifier of tweets based on features such as the keywords in a tweet, the number of words, and their context. Subsequently, we produce a probabilistic spatiotemporal model for the target event that can find the center and the trajectory of the event location. We consider each Twitter user as a sensor and apply Kalman filtering and particle filtering, which are widely used for location estimation in ubiquitous/pervasive computing. The particle filter works better than other comparable methods for estimating the centers of earthquakes and the trajectories of typhoons. As an application, we construct an earthquake reporting system in Japan. Because of the numerous earthquakes and the large number of Twitter users throughout the country, we can detect an earthquake with high probability (96% of earthquakes of Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) seismic intensity scale 3 or more are detected) merely by monitoring tweets. Our system detects earthquakes promptly and sends e-mails to registered users. Notification is delivered much faster than the announcements that are broadcast by the JMA.

/pdf/earthquake-shakes-twitter-users-real-time-event-detection-by-1tue7cvj9p.pdf

Earthquake shakes Twitter users: real-time event detection by social sensors

Social media technologies collapse multiple audiences into single contexts, making it difficult for people to use the same techniques online that they do to handle multiplicity in face-to-face conversation. This article investigates how content producers navigate ‘imagined audiences’ on Twitter. We talked with participants who have different types of followings to understand their techniques, including targeting different audiences, concealing subjects, and maintaining authenticity. Some techniques of audience management resemble the practices of ‘micro-celebrity’ and personal branding, both strategic self-commodification. Our model of the networked audience assumes a many-to-many communication through which individuals conceptualize an imagined audience evoked through their tweets.

/pdf/i-tweet-honestly-i-tweet-passionately-twitter-users-context-g4xm6zfq7s.pdf

I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience

In this work we examine the characteristics of social activity and patterns of communication on Twitter, a prominent example of the emerging class of communication systems we call "social awareness streams." We use system data and message content from over 350 Twitter users, applying human coding and quantitative analysis to provide a deeper understanding of the activity of individuals on the Twitter network. In particular, we develop a content-based categorization of the type of messages posted by Twitter users, based on which we examine users' activity. Our analysis shows two common types of user behavior in terms of the content of the posted messages, and exposes differences between users in respect to these activities.

/pdf/is-it-really-about-me-message-content-in-social-awareness-16tnkd8wi4.pdf

Is it really about me?: message content in social awareness streams

We review the evidence from a number of surveys in which our NetLab has been involved about the extent to which the Internet is transforming or enhancing community. The studies show that the Internet is used for connectivity locally as well as globally, although the nature of its use varies in different countries. Internet use is adding on to other forms of communication, rather than replacing them. Internet use is reinforcing the pre-existing turn to societies in the developed world that are organized around networked individualism rather than group or local solidarities. The result has important implications for civic involvement.

The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism

Approximately 40% of mobile phone use studies published in scholarly communication journals base their findings on self-report data about how frequently respondents use their mobile phones. Using a subset of a larger representative sample we examine the validity of this type of self-report data by comparing it to server log data. The self-report data correlate only moderately with the server log data, indicating low criterion validity. The categorical self-report measure asking respondents to estimate “how often” they use their mobile phones fared better than the continuous self-report measure asking them to estimate their mobile phone activity “yesterday.” A multivariate exploratory analysis further suggests that it may be difficult to identify under- and overreporting using demographic variables alone.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jcc4.12021

Measuring Mobile Phone Use: Self-Report Versus Log Data

Strength of Internet Ties, The

That the internet is a communication medium for personal relationships is obvious. That the nature of the internet affects the nature of personal relationships has often been proclaimed – recall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” – but less often proven, especially in field studies. How might the internet have an impact? Although the internet has captured popular attention as a communication and information medium, a substantial body of research has only developed recently. This chapter discusses the role of the internet in personal relationships. It starts with a brief description of the socially relevant characteristics of internet technology and a summary of the debate between utopian and dystopian accounts of internet use on personal relationships. Both of these accounts are inadequate because they take a technologically deterministic approach that ignores the causal role of the individual’s need to maintain offline social relationships. Research that examines the internet’s role in facilitating communication between family and friends, forming new social ties and neighboring relations shows that the internet is neither destroying nor radically altering society for the better. Rather, research results point to the need for a more holistic account of internet use that places internet use in the broader context of all personal relationships. They suggest that the interpersonal patterns associated with internet use are the continuations of a shift in the nature of personal networks that began well before the advent of the internet. This shift toward “networked individualism” involves the transition from spatially proximate and densely-knit communities in which people belong to more spatially dispersed and sparsely-knit personal networks in which people maneuver.

Jeffrey Boase

Papers

Is it really about me?: message content in social awareness streams

The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism

Measuring Mobile Phone Use: Self-Report Versus Log Data

Strength of Internet Ties, The

The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships: Personal Relationships: On and Off the Internet