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@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




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