In addition to Keith Hampton's study (with Barry Wellman) of Netville noted by Doug Timusk earlier, we have found in Blacksburg that Internet use increases community involvement for those who are predisposed to become more involved. If you include increased involvement and social interaction as measures of "community strength", see, for example: Kavanaugh, A. and Patterson, S. (2001) The Impact of Community Computer Networks on Social Capital and Community Involvement. American Behavioral Scientist, 45 (3) (special issue edited by Barry and Caroline Haythornthwaite, including an article by Barry and Keith on Netville). Or more recently: Kavanaugh, A., Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B., Zin, T. T., and Reese, D.D. (2005). Community networks: Where offline communities meet online. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(4) <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/kavanaugh.html>http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/kavanaugh.html Let me know if you are interested in any other recent papers on Blacksburg findings related to this. Andrea At 05:15 PM 4/12/2006, you wrote:
Are there any studies showing that internet access increases local community strength? I think I came across this thesis on this list. Can someone point this out to me?
thanks.
Peter Timusk B.Math(2002) BA (2006) Carleton University running MacOSX, Debian 3.0 & 3.1, WinXP &Win2K & Fedora Core 3 Community activist, statistics worker. member IWW IU 620, CUPE 4600, USWA 9597 Nothing I write is intended to be representative of my employer, or our clients. Nor do I alone speak for my unions. Feel free to learn more about me at www.crystalcomputing.net Computer ethics studies at www.webpagex.org blogs http://logbook.crystalcomputing.net <- computers http://notebook.webpagex.org <- school work
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Andrea Kavanaugh, Ph.D. Senior Research Scientist Associate Director Center for Human Computer Interaction Department of Computer Science 2160 H Torgersen Hall Virginia Tech (0295) Blacksburg, VA 24061-0295 tel: (540) 231-1806 fax:(540) 231-6075 http://java.cs.vt.edu/public/users/kavan