I forgot to tell our distinguished professor that I'll be absent again tomorrow, away in Asheville, taking in what I hope will be some autumnal splendor...as well as seeing and hanging out with the Black Crowes...yes, I know, they're so entirely un-hip, not mod, and, ahem, not Radiohead, but they remain a somewhat guilty pleasure nonetheless. (DISCLAIMER: Despite what you may think, no one was stoned when this picture was taken.)But I digress!
Due to my absence, I thought I'd be the dutiful student and post some thoughts on this week's reading, Chapter 14 in our current book. I found this article quite interesting and refreshing in terms of its hypothesis and primary research question, excellent lit review, and well-written summary of findings. As the research indicates a strong correlation across ethnic lines between making friends online and maintaining personal ties within real communities, I found myself asking, does this finding hold true for less urban populations, more geographically isolated and less culturally diverse communities (e.g., a small town in central Iowa). Does the average middle American Goth kid, dressed in black and ostracized as a "freak" at school, with few real world social contacts and little social support, suffer from an equal lack of contact and support online? I would guess the answer may be no. I know this is drawing on a stereotype, but you get the point.
I wonder too whether there wasn't enough focus on the socio-economic influencing factors, rather than socio-cultural. Except for the unique case of the economically challenged Koreatown residents, who registered high levels of online social connectedness, all other low income groups fell into the bottom end of the spectrum. This might suggest that everyday access to technology--or lack thereof--may have been as strong an influencing factor as ethnic and cultural variables. (See chart 14.1 on page 416 and look at the values for the income variable.)
Finally, I was curious to know whether Korean websites still comprised about a third of the top 10 most popular in the world (p. 419), so I Googled it. This result doesn't seem to support that finding anymore, but it has some interesting facts and footnotes. Alexa's latest results don't show any foreign sites in the top 10 either.
1 comment:
Thanks for the review, Doug.
I also liked the article, but also wondered whether or not it was fully specified in that several potential control variables seemed missing. For example, there was no attempt to check on marital status, on fertility (i.e., did these people have children or not), or on whether they had other close family members living in the same neighborhoods as them. I would think that these could (potentially at least) be hypothesized to be independent variables that could significantly influence the overall findings, especially since ethnicity was a key issue here -- differing family structures should somehow be captured, I think, not to mention potential tendencies for the members of some ethnic groups to be more geographically clustered near immediate or extended family.
Also, nice pic, Doug. Where did you say you got the stuff you were imbibing, lol?
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