From Social Isolation in America to Facebook
SPOILER WARNING: This posting will wind up with Networked Individualism. The meaning of friendship has been preoccupying me -- and others -- more than I would have expected. It started with the publication of McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Brashears' "Social Isolation in America" in Amer Soc Rev, June 2006. This evoked a media panic that friendship was dying, based on a shrinkage in the number of people "who discuss important matters" from nearly 3 in 1984 to slightly more than 2 in 2005. (And nearly a quarter of the American adult pop said they had no one.) I spent a lot of time with the media for the next month pointing out that research suggests that most very close ties are specialized, and that "discussing important matters" wasn't the only way that people are close. I noted that other surveys -- such as our Connected Lives study in Toronto and the Pew Internet "Strength of Internet Ties" study have found a mean of 10+ Very Close friends and relatives. (These numbers probably seem high to non-North Americans. German and French folk frequently tell me that they are astonished at how easily Americans call someone "friend" when they, by contrast, take 5 or so years to admit someone to their charmed cognitive friendship circle.) I also pointed folks to Peter Bearman (& coauthor's) 2005 Social Forces' article showing the variety of matters that people think are important to discuss. While most people have their own construct of what are important matters, they'd be mistaken to think that others share their zeitgeist. To me, it is "world peace" (just like Miss Congeniality), the state of the internet, and various family issues, but Bearman shows that to others it might be what kind of haircut or tatoo to get, plus the usual boy/girl friend issues. This leads me to the Facebook fiasco. First, as danah boyd says on her blog, a Facebook, MySpace, etc. "friend" often is different from what most of us otherwise would consider a "friend". Folks on the AOIR list reported mean numbers of greater than 100 Facebook "friends" in major American universities. By contrast, no survey has shown such high numbers, even though they have shown larger numbers than the 2 that McPherson found in analyzing the 2005 US General Social Survey. One problem with almost all social software is that it makes two false assumptions: (a) It assumes that relationships are dichotomous: Friend/Non-Friend. (b) It assumes that friends all belong to the same group. In reality, friendships not only are specialized in content, but vary in intensity. It's rare that someone would want to share everything with almost any "friend". Our data also show the obvious: it's rare that all Very Close friends (and relatives) live in the same densely-knit group. The news that we want to share with friends in one cluster of relationships may not be something we would want to share with those in other clusters. In short, we live in a world of "networked individualism" in which we're forever navigating through complex social networks -- assessing who and when to tell what. Facebook got both of these wrong (in addition to foolishly not consulting): It propogated all changes to all Facebook Friends. Gosh, we could have saved them a bunch of money and reputation. Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace" http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________
Well done Barry!! That a scholarly discourse. Rasputin -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Barry Wellman Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 2:29 PM To: aoir list; communication and information technology section asa; asa com&urb section e-list; social networks list Subject: [Air-l] From Social Isolation in America to Facebook SPOILER WARNING: This posting will wind up with Networked Individualism. The meaning of friendship has been preoccupying me -- and others -- more than I would have expected. It started with the publication of McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Brashears' "Social Isolation in America" in Amer Soc Rev, June 2006. This evoked a media panic that friendship was dying, based on a shrinkage in the number of people "who discuss important matters" from nearly 3 in 1984 to slightly more than 2 in 2005. (And nearly a quarter of the American adult pop said they had no one.) I spent a lot of time with the media for the next month pointing out that research suggests that most very close ties are specialized, and that "discussing important matters" wasn't the only way that people are close. I noted that other surveys -- such as our Connected Lives study in Toronto and the Pew Internet "Strength of Internet Ties" study have found a mean of 10+ Very Close friends and relatives. (These numbers probably seem high to non-North Americans. German and French folk frequently tell me that they are astonished at how easily Americans call someone "friend" when they, by contrast, take 5 or so years to admit someone to their charmed cognitive friendship circle.) I also pointed folks to Peter Bearman (& coauthor's) 2005 Social Forces' article showing the variety of matters that people think are important to discuss. While most people have their own construct of what are important matters, they'd be mistaken to think that others share their zeitgeist. To me, it is "world peace" (just like Miss Congeniality), the state of the internet, and various family issues, but Bearman shows that to others it might be what kind of haircut or tatoo to get, plus the usual boy/girl friend issues. This leads me to the Facebook fiasco. First, as danah boyd says on her blog, a Facebook, MySpace, etc. "friend" often is different from what most of us otherwise would consider a "friend". Folks on the AOIR list reported mean numbers of greater than 100 Facebook "friends" in major American universities. By contrast, no survey has shown such high numbers, even though they have shown larger numbers than the 2 that McPherson found in analyzing the 2005 US General Social Survey. One problem with almost all social software is that it makes two false assumptions: (a) It assumes that relationships are dichotomous: Friend/Non-Friend. (b) It assumes that friends all belong to the same group. In reality, friendships not only are specialized in content, but vary in intensity. It's rare that someone would want to share everything with almost any "friend". Our data also show the obvious: it's rare that all Very Close friends (and relatives) live in the same densely-knit group. The news that we want to share with friends in one cluster of relationships may not be something we would want to share with those in other clusters. In short, we live in a world of "networked individualism" in which we're forever navigating through complex social networks -- assessing who and when to tell what. Facebook got both of these wrong (in addition to foolishly not consulting): It propogated all changes to all Facebook Friends. Gosh, we could have saved them a bunch of money and reputation. Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace" http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
I've also been thinking about the meanings of 'friend' in social networking contexts and appreciate danah's and Barry's insights into the issue. To return to last.fm, one of the changes they introduced over the summer was going from a system where you could 'friend' someone without their 'friending' you to a system where friending had to be mutual. Some derided this as the further MySpacification of last.fm, but, to my surprise, most seemed not to care. Aside from the lack of reaction from last.fm users, what I thought was interesting was: (1) the ability of developers to make a unilateral decision about what 'friendship' should mean after another system had already been in place for some time. This gets back to the questions raised by forming social networks in proprietary spaces. (2) the social network information lost to the community as a whole when friendships must be mutual. For instance, it is no longer possible to see that People X, Y and Z all think Person J is a great source of new music tips unless Person J has accepted all of their friendship requests, so if J is a much-admired discerner of good music that provides stickiness for the site yet does not want to collect friends, the information about J's value is lost where before it was visible. This seems to work against the site's best interests. They are now working on a bookmarking feature to replace one-way friendship, but it is not clear if those bookmarks will be visible to others, let alone aggregated in any way to figure out who are the stickiest people. While many social networking sites seem to operate just fine with only allowing mutual friending, I would think it would be better for site stickiness to discern the kinds of links that danah notes 'friendships' may actually represent and build in ways to make that information visible rather than narrowing an already vague category into something more restrictive and no definitionally clearer. As Barry notes, there are many kinds of valuable interpersonal connection, and one term does not begin to do them justice. Putting together my syllabus for a course in Communication Technologies and Personal Relationships this semester, I was surprised to see little if any published research taking on the question of what people mean when they label someone a 'friend' on a social networking site or the concerns that label raises for people (for instance, one objection to the Facebook minifeed was that if one were 'defriended' it would be visible to all as public rejection, while for the defriender, rejection may have had nothing to do with it). If anyone is aware of research into this, I would appreciate references. Nancy
Barry wrote:
One problem with almost all social software is that it makes two false assumptions: (a) It assumes that relationships are dichotomous: Friend/Non-Friend. (b) It assumes that friends all belong to the same group.
It also makes (at least) a third: (c) It assumes that relationships are symmetrical, though I'd wager more folks might identify Barry as a friend that Barry knows - or at least that plenty of folks consider him a friend whom he may not consider a friend, or even know. The asymetric nature of intimacy in most relationships is something that seems to have received relatively little attention in any literature, particularly talk about social software. -eg
Barry wrote:
One problem with almost all social software is that it makes two false assumptions: (a) It assumes that relationships are dichotomous: Friend/Non-Friend. (b) It assumes that friends all belong to the same group.
false according to whose praxis? and whose defining the sameness of any group?
It also makes (at least) a third: (c) It assumes that relationships are symmetrical, though I'd wager more folks might identify Barry as a friend that Barry knows - or at least that plenty of folks consider him a friend whom he may not consider a friend, or even know.
According to my (Indian) junior high school "friends" (potentially - since I asked them about this in a face-to-face lecture setting in their school and have not connected with them on any SNS yet) on orkut most of them will let a familiar stranger on if they ask to "friend" them, but block this person from seeing their "real" friendsy stuff. I'd probably do this on my livejournal as well myself. So the word friend takes on different meanings in different settings - therefore is it not possible that we who are (in practice) using the word in specific offline contexts in particular ways are in fact assuming a dichotomy based elsewhere. Of course the use of the word by the designers of the software is probably also in that dichotomy (as Carolyn Marvin and others have pointed out habits and practices based in previous technologies do pile on onto newer ones). In actuality, its the people who inhabit these networks in their daily practices that are shifting the definitions/notion of "friend"? r
-- Radhika Gajjala Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator School of Communication Studies 302 West Hall Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, OH 43402 http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik/index2.html For queries about BGSU's School of Communication Studies Grad program, email comsgrad@bgsu.edu For info on the Theory Research cluster at SCS - see http://scs.bgsu.edu/Research/ResearchClusters/theory.php
Hi, A bunch of us are putting a panel together in relation to Communication and Social Responsibility and teens on SNS. If anyone is planning to come to central states (its in minneapolis is April) - http://www.csca-net.org/ please email me an abstract of about 100 words by wednesday sept 13th 5 pm. I will select the ones that work for our panel. Email me offlist with questions and ideas. thanks! r -- Radhika Gajjala Associate Professor and Graduate coordinator School of Communication Studies Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, OH 43403 http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik http://cyberdiva.typepad.com/teach http://cyberdiva.typepad.com http://www.cyberdiva.org
On 9/10/06, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
One problem with almost all social software is that it makes two false assumptions: (a) It assumes that relationships are dichotomous: Friend/Non-Friend.
Or that it is unidimensional. Tribe.net, I believe, orkut, and others have tried to provide a bit more nuance here, at the encouragement of the community. But adding gradations isn't enough. "Friend" in the social networking systems parlance really covers a range of personal relationships. Note that Flickr allows you to put people into a few different groups. * "contact" * "friend" * "family" I suspect that most systems consider "friend" to be "contact." I also suspect that most people do not define "friends" the same way their software does, though there is almost certainly "leakage" in terminology. And, frankly, I think that these kinds of issues are leading to everyday elaboration of such gradations (viz BFFL, friends with benefits, and other neologisms). What I find most interesting about the Flickr case is that you can mark photographs appropriate for "friends" or "family" or both. Just because I want my friends to see a photo doesn't mean that I want my Mom to. To which the natural answer is "duh!" But many systems that allow for gradations in "friendliness" assume that you want to reveal the most to your closest friends/family, when that may not be the case at all. Spring break in Mexico is not for Moms, and in many cases is not for SOs or even close friends.
(b) It assumes that friends all belong to the same group.
It certainly seems to clump them together that way. But I would argue that many social networking systems have at least the implicit objective (inasmuch as they seem to have an objective at all), of performing the function of linking up your network of friends. Systems like LinkedIn, especially, seem to be keyed directly to making introductions within your network, but that is a major function of most of these systems. I've suggested elsewhere that these systems (blogs too) are moving us *away* from networked sociability as they tend to aggregate our relationships in a way that feels much more like a constrained physical/geographical community. My "contacts" at work, and in my home town, and in my hobby club, and at school are now much more likely to know each other through my blog or through my social networking system than they would have been a few years ago. - Alex -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //
On 11 Sep 2006, at 14:58, Alex Halavais wrote:
I suspect that most systems consider "friend" to be "contact." I also suspect that most people do not define "friends" the same way their software does, though there is almost certainly "leakage" in terminology. And, frankly, I think that these kinds of issues are leading to everyday elaboration of such gradations (viz BFFL, friends with benefits, and other neologisms).
What I find most interesting about the Flickr case is that you can mark photographs appropriate for "friends" or "family" or both. Just because I want my friends to see a photo doesn't mean that I want my Mom to.
it is this aspect (amongst others) that has been the downfall of many collaborative systems (social software). See the extensive Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) literature on permissions and roles for example. The reason they fail is the reason flickr works (for tagging at least) - real life categorisations are highly heterogeneous, situated/contextual, flexible (over time & between people) and (often) contested. This is a very tricky computer science problem and it is only human to try to keep things simple to implement (& thus stupid). I have not been active in CSCW for some time so I would be hopeful that it now has a better handle on this although my impression from the various social software sites is that either it has not or it hasn't filtered out to the development community (yet)! Ben ---- Dr Ben Anderson Deputy Director, Chimera, University of Essex +44 (0) 7710 187 806 http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~benander ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
participants (8)
-
Alex Halavais -
Barry Wellman -
Ben Anderson -
Ellis Godard -
Nancy Baym -
radhika gajjala -
Radhika Gajjala -
Rasputin