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How social networks, the personalized Internet, and always-on mobile connectivity are transforming—and expanding—social life. Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, pictures and videos to post and discuss. Our perpetual connectedness gives us endless opportunities to be part of the give-and-take of networking. Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving...
The Internet in Everyday Life is the first book to systematically investigate how being online fits into people's everyday lives. Opens up a new line of inquiry into the social effects of the Internet. Focuses on how the Internet fits into everyday lives, rather than considering it as an alternate world. Chapters are contributed by leading researchers in the area. Studies are based on empirical data. Talks about the reality of being online now, not hopes or fears about the future effects of the Internet.
Networks in the Global Village examines how people live through personal communities: their networks of friends, neighbors, relatives, and coworkers. It is the first book to compare the communities of people around the world. Major social differences between and within the First, Second, and Third Worlds affect the opportunities and insecurities w
This study of social structures looks at the network approach. It contains non-technical articles that contrast structural analysis with other social scientific approaches. It deals with individual behaviour and identity and with neighbourhood and community ties. It examines the relationships within and between organizations, discussing how firms occupy strategically appropriate niches. It also explores the impact of the growth of the Internet, equating computer networks as social networks connecting people in virtual communities and collaborative work.
This volume assesses the evolving role of guanxi (social networks) in China's transforming society.
The internet may be a utopia for free expression, but it also harbours nihilistic groups and individuals spreading bizarre creeds, unhindered by the risk-averse gatekeepers of the mass media -- and not all are as harmless as the Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua or Sexastrianism. With few entry barriers, ready anonymity and no centralised control, the internet offers wired extremists unprecedented access to a potential global audience of billions. Technology allows us to select the information we wish to receive -- so those of a fanatical bent can filter out moderating voices and ignore countervailing arguments, retreating into a virtual world of their own design that reaffirms their vie...
One of the most significant and obvious examples of how mobile communication influences our understanding of time and space is how we coordinate with one another. Mobile communication enables us to call specific individuals, not general places. Regardless of location, we are able to make contact with almost anyone, almost anywhere. This advancement has changed, and continues to change, human interaction. Now, instead of agreeing on a particular time well beforehand, we can iteratively work out the most convenient time and place to meet at the last possible moment--on the way to the meeting or once we arrive at the destination.In their early days, mobile devices were primarily used for variou...
This collection brings together the principal sources in the development of the techniques of social network analysis, from early metaphorical statements in Simmel and Radcliffe-Brown through the more systematic explorations in sociology and social anthropology, to contemporary formalizations. A new introduction explores the history of Social Networks and highlights the arguments of those who treat social network analysis as a loose, qualitative approach as well as those who see its potential in technical, mathematical uses. The thematically organized coverage includes: * Part I: Conceptualizing Social Networks * Part II: Topics and Developments in Graph Theory * Part III: Further Mathematical Models for Networks * Part IV: Applications: Family and Community * Part V: Applications: Corporate Power and Economic Structures * Part VI: Applications: Political, Protest, and Policy Networks * Part VII: Applications: Knowledge, Reputation, and Diffusion
Leading scholars in the field of social networks from diverse disciplines present the first systematic and comprehensive collection of current theories and empirical research on the informal connections that individuals have for support, help, and information from other people. Expanding on concepts originally formulated by Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman, this seminal work will find an essential place with educators and students in the fields of social networks, rational choice theory, institutions, and the socioeconomics of poverty, labor markets, social psychology, and race. The volume is divided into three parts. The first segment clarifies social capital as a concept and explores its ...
These original essays by eminent sociologists probe issues of central importance to North American societies in the twenty-first century. The chapters in part 1 revise theory and methods to comprehend the economic and political institutions that increasingly dominate the lives of individuals and groups, arguing that these giants must be made more democratically accountable. Part 2 explores the social effects that growing globalization, transnationalization, and information technologies are having on politics, economics, and the environment. The final chapters compare how new immigrants from increasingly diversified backgrounds are being absorbed in Canada and the United States, exploring the...