there have been a number of lit reviews in this area recently - see for example: Loader, B. and L. Keeble (2004). Challenging the digital divide? A review of online community support. Digital Age. York, Joseph Rowntree Foundation. http://www.jrf.org.uk/KNOWLEDGE/FINDINGS/ socialpolicy/584.asp As part of a European project on ICT, social capital and Quality of life (www.socquit.net) Mark Gaved and I put together a similar report focusing on (strangely enough) social capital and quality of life in wired communities (http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/content/pubs/wps/ CWP-2006-06-Local-ICT-Social-Capital.pdf). High quality long-term empirical studies are quite rare. Depends what you mean by 'strength' of course. Ben
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?
---- Dr Ben Anderson Deputy Director, Chimera, University of Essex +44 (0) 7710 187 806 http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~benander