The Internet : Social & Community Ties

Courtesy of Howard saw this well compiled note titled internet ties. The report submit that the internet is reinforcing new set of ties in the society & that this would improve over time while reaching larger masses. The internet has become part of everyday life. People routinely integrate it into the ways in which they communicate with each other, moving between phone, computer, and in-person encounters. Instead of disappearing ties, people’s communities are transforming:
The traditional human orientation to neighborhood- and village-based groups is moving towards communities that are oriented around geographically dispersed social networks. Today people’s networks continue to have substantial numbers of relatives and neighbors — the traditional bases of community — as well as friends and workmates. The internet and email play an important role in maintaining these dispersed social networks. Rather than conflicting with people’s community ties, the authors submit that the internet fits seamlessly with in-person and phone encounters. With the help of the internet, people are able to maintain active contact with sizable social networks, even though many of the people in those networks do not live nearby. Do not miss out the section on the role internet plays in taking decisions. A must read report if you want to taste a sample of the profoundness of the report : Even though there are fewer people contacted, they are a greater percentage of your network. This pattern - the percentage of one’s social network contacted declining as network size grows - holds true for almost all forms of contact analyzed in the Social Ties survey. The one exception is email. As the size of people’s social network increases, the percentage of one’s social network contacted weekly by email does not decline but remains about the same at about 20% of core and significant ties.