It also sounds like this misses the nuance of *who is talking to whom*, with stronger ties using more media to communicate than weaker ties, and stronger ties more able to influence joint (pairwise to groupwise) use. -- this is all with the caveat that I haven´t read the Chronicle article (I´m not on my own machine with my usually totally wired connection right now). But, I also wonder if we may be seeing a shift in what the ´base´ connector for groups is going to be. Sure, AoIR is long-established on email, but would you do that today? or would you set up a Facebook or equivalent groupinstead? I rather think the latter if you didn´t think about crossing borders and internet transmission rates. Anyway, I better go read the article! /Caroline ---- Original message ----
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:07:46 -0400 From: Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> Subject: [Air-L] in dis-praise of the Chronicle To: aoir list <air-l@aoir.org>, "Denise N. Rall" <denrall@yahoo.com>, Catherine Middleton <cmiddlet@ryerson.ca>, Peter Timusk <ptimusk@sympatico.ca>
I was appalled by the Chronicle's article -- especially the headline -- on the putative death of e-lists such as this one.
First, they gave no systematic evidence, just some anecdotes. Although the article was more nuanced than the headline: "on the one hand, on the other hand." Yet, still anecdotes.
Second, they ignored the organizational ecology research that has shown that some organizations die and some get born all the time.
Third, the posts by my fellow Canucks Catherine Middleton and Peter Timusk clearly showed the difference between 140 character Tweets (which I do a fair amount) and posts to this list (ibid). Both of their posts were too nuanced to be short tweets.
Fourth, as Marc Smith can show you, even the older Bulletin Boards are still thriving.
Indeed, my hunch is that each communication form adds on to the other, rather than displacing it, which is why I never get much writing done (today's excusive, anyway).
Happy Canada Day to All (except Janet Napolitano),
Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________
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Caroline Haythornthwaite Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820 haythorn@illinois.edu OR haythorn@uiuc.edu