Keith N Hampton
Biographic Data
| ID | 92706 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Keith N Hampton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Keith N |
| FAMILY NAME | Hampton |
| SIGNATURE | HAMPTON K N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6181-4700 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 677 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Rethinking screen time and academic achievement: Gender differences and the hidden benefit of online leisure through digital skills
Concerns about the detrimental effects of screen time on adolescents’ academic achievement are widespread. However, this perspective often overlooks the potential educational benefits of online leisure time, and gender differences in online and offline activities. We examine the relationship between digital media use (social media, video games, etc.), digital skills, and standardized test scores (SAT) in a sample of 2,582 students in grades 8-11.…
Disrupting echo chambers? How social media is related to social tolerance through network diversity: Linked lives over a major life course event
Existing echo chamber studies tend to focus on political attitudes within specific online platforms. We broaden this scope by examining social media use and attitudes within a real-world context that resembles an echo chamber: rural areas characterized by low racial/ethnic diversity and low social tolerance. Rural environments often lack conditions conducive to higher social tolerance due to limited cross-group interaction and lower formal educat…
Disciplinary brakes on the sociology of digital media: The incongruity of communication and the sociological imagination
This paper draws on my experience over two decades as part of an early generation of scholars who graduated with a PhD in sociology into a career as a researcher and teacher in the multidisciplinary field of digital media. I reflect on my experiences to offer an assessment of the state of digital media scholarship within sociology and the field of communication. The study of digital media remains underdeveloped within sociology. In part, this is …
Disconnection More Problematic for Adolescent Self-Esteem than Heavy Social Media Use: Evidence from Access Inequalities and Restrictive Media Parenting in Rural America
Some argue that social media use displaces time that adolescents spend with friends and family and is therefore associated with lower psychological well-being. They reason that young people who experience “disconnection,” because their parents actively restrict media use, or they have limited material access to the Internet, are better protected from psychological harm. Prior research has misspecified and exaggerated the magnitude of the relation…
A restricted multiple generator approach to enumerate personal support networks: An alternative to global important matters and satisficing in web surveys
How variation in internet access, digital skills, and media use are related to rural student outcomes: GPA, SAT, and educational aspirations
Some have pointed to divides in the availability of fixed home broadband Internet access as a contributor to rural students’ lower levels of educational attainment. Based on standardized exams (SAT Suite) and a survey of rural Michigan students in grades 8–11, we find that rural students with broadband home Internet access are more interested in school and leave homework incomplete less often. However, the relationship to classroom grades (GPA) i…
Mobile Phones Will Not Eliminate Digital and Social Divides: How Variation in Internet Activities Mediates the Relationship Between Type of Internet Access and Local Social Capital in Detroit
This study examines the relationship between mode of Internet access, variety of online activities, and the potential for the Internet to contribute to local social capital in distressed, urban communities. Based on a sample of 525 telephone surveys in Detroit, findings show that breadth of access predicts participation in a larger variety of online activities, which is associated with higher levels of local social capital. Neither public Interne…
Social Media and Change in Psychological Distress Over Time: The Role of Social Causation
This article tests the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICT), such as the Internet, cell phones, and social media, and change over time in psychological distress (PD) and risk of serious psychological distress (SPD) associated with depression and anxiety disorders. Using a longitudinal panel design, survey data from a representative sample of American adults, findings revealed that home Internet and social network …
Network Instability in Times of Stability
Personal networks undergo change in response to major life course events. Individual, relational, and network characteristics that influence network instability in the absence of a significant life transition/crisis are less understood. We focus on those ties that transition from active to dormant. Because the shift to dormancy is often interpreted as a reduction in support or social capital, it is considered problematic. This study is based on l…
Lost and Saved . . . Again: The Moral Panic about the Loss of Community Takes Hold of Social Media
Social media and political discussion: When online presence silences offline conversation
This paper explores the relationship between the use of social media, attitudinal strength, perceived opinion agreement with social ties, and willingness to discuss a political issue in different online and offline contexts. Unlike the anonymous environment of some Internet forums, social media are closely tied to the relationships and activities of everyday life. Social media increasingly make ties from offline contexts persistent online, and, b…
Studying the Digital: Directions and Challenges for Digital Methods
The methodological tool chest available to those who study digital technologies ranges from those that are uniquely digital methods to approaches that are well established in the social sciences. This domain of work includes the application of methods to answer questions about the relationship between digital technologies and the social world, as well as the use of digital methods to answer questions about the offline world. New or old, quantitat…
Communication in City and Community: From the Chicago School to Digital Technology
Digital media and stress: The cost of caring 2.0
This research explores the relationship between the use of digital media and stress. Based on the findings of a national, probability sample of adults in the United States, the use of digital media was not directly associated with higher levels of psychological stress. Some uses of digital media were associated with lower levels of perceived stress for women but not for men. However, the evidence suggests that, for men and women, digital media pr…
Why is Helping Behavior Declining in the United States But Not in Canada: Ethnic Diversity, New Technologies, and Other Explanations
This paper explores whether there has been a recent decline in helping behavior in the United States. In a lost letter experiment, 7,466 letters were “lost” in 63 urban areas in the United States and Canada in 2001 and 2011. There has been a 10 percent decline in helping behavior in the United States, but not in Canada. Two arguments anticipate change in the level of help provided to strangers: the rise of new technologies, and neighborhood racia…
Beyond the power of networks: Differentiating network structure from social media affordances for perceived social support
Existing research suggests that social media use is associated with higher levels of social capital—the resources contained within a person’s network of friends, family, and other acquaintances. However, in predicting access to these resources, it has been impossible to distinguish the affordances of social media from the underlying advantage of maintaining a favorable social network of relationships on- and offline. Based on data from a represen…
Persistent and Pervasive Community: New Communication Technologies and the Future of Community
Two affordances of digital communication technologies, persistent contact and pervasive awareness, are ushering in fundamental change to the structure of community. These affordances break from the mobility narrative that has described community since the rise of urban industrialism, including accounts of networked individualism and a postindustrial or a network society. In contrast to images of late modernity, which suggest that mobility will be…
Change in the social life of urban public spaces: The rise of mobile phones and women, and the decline of aloneness over 30 years
This study illustrates that over the past 30 years, Americans have become less socially isolated while using public spaces. Based on content analysis of films from four public spaces over a 30-year period, the behaviour and characteristics of 143,593 people were coded. The most dramatic changes in the social life of urban public spaces have been an increase in the proportion of women and a corresponding increase in the tendency for men and women …
Testing the validity of social capital measures in the study of information and communication technologies
Social capital has been considered a cause and consequence of various uses of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, there is a growing divergence between how social capital is commonly measured in the study of ICTs and how it is measured in other fields. This departure raises questions about the validity of some of the most widely cited studies of social capital and ICTs. We compare the Internet Social Capital Scales (IS…
Explaining Communication Displacement and Large-Scale Social Change in Core Networks: A cross-national comparison of why bigger is not better and less can mean more
Decline in the size and diversity of American's core networks has been tied to the displacement of face-to-face interaction and to lower societal well-being. Comparing core networks in the United States, Norway, and Ukraine, we reject the conclusions that frequent in-person contact predicts individual well-being and that large/diverse networks predict broader societal well-being. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status (SES) and societies with …
Exploring the Use of Social Network Analysis to Measure Social Integration Among Older Adults in Assisted Living
Social integration is measured by a variety of social network indicators each with limitations in its ability to produce a complete picture of the variety and scope of interactions of older adults receiving long-term services and supports. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the feasibility of collecting sociocentric (whole network) data among older adults in one assisted living neighborhood. The sociocentric approach is require…
Comparing Bonding and Bridging Ties for Democratic Engagement: Everyday use of communication technologies within social networks for civic and civil behaviors
The structure of people's social networks predicts democratic engagement. However, the relative contribution of different types of social ties to civic and civil behaviors is unclear. This paper explores the role of core networks – bonding social capital – to the role of overall network diversity – bridging social capital – for participation in formal civic institutions and informal civil behaviors. Emphasis is placed on the possible role of hete…
Core Networks, Social Isolation, and New Media: How Internet and mobile phone use is related to network size and diversity
Evidence from the US General Social Surveys (GSS) suggests that during the past 20 years, people have become increasingly socially isolated and their core discussion networks have become smaller and less diverse. One explanation offered for this trend is the use of mobile phones and the Internet. This study reports on the findings of a 2008 survey that replicates and expands on the GSS network methodology to explore the relationship between the u…
How new media affords network diversity: Direct and mediated access to social capital through participation in local social settings
This study examines how information and communication technologies – mobile phone, social networking websites, blogging, instant messaging, and photo sharing – are related to the diversity of people’s social networks. We find that a limited set of technologies directly afford diversity, but many indirectly contribute to diversity by supporting participation in traditional settings such as neighborhoods, voluntary groups, religious institutions, a…
The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces: Internet Use, Social Networks, and the Public Realm
This study explores the role of urban public spaces for democratic and social engagement. It examines the impact of wireless Internet use on urban public spaces, Internet users, and others who inhabit these spaces. Through observations of 7 parks, plazas, and markets in 4 North American cities, and surveys of wireless Internet users in those sites, we explore how this new technology is related to processes of social interaction, privatism, and de…
Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital: Social Networks, Participation, and Community Commitment
How does the Internet affect social capital? Do the communication possibilities of the Internet increase, decrease, or supplement interpersonal contact, participation, and community commitment? This evidence comes from a 1998 survey of 39,211 visitors to the National Geographic Society Web site, one of the first large-scale Web surveys. The authors find that people's interaction online supplements their face-to-face and telephone communication wi…
The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism
We review the evidence from a number of surveys in which our NetLab has been involved about the extent to which the Internet is transforming or enhancing community. The studies show that the Internet is used for connectivity locally as well as globally, although the nature of its use varies in different countries. Internet use is adding on to other forms of communication, rather than replacing them. Internet use is reinforcing the pre-existing tu…
Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb
What is the Internet doing to local community? Analysts have debated about whether the Internet is weakening community by leading people away from meaningful in‐person contact; transforming community by creating new forms of community online; or enhancing community by adding a new means of connecting with existing relationships. They have been especially concerned that the globe‐spanning capabilities of the Internet can limit local involvements. …
Simplifying the Personal Network Name Generator: Alternatives to Traditional Multiple and Single Name Generators
Researchers studying personal networks often collect network data using name generators and name interpreters. We argue that when studying social support, multiple name generators ensure that researchers sample from a multidimensional definition of support. However, because administering multiple name generators is time consuming and strains respondent motivation, researchers often use single name generators. We compared network measures obtained…
How new media affords network diversity: Direct and mediated access to social capital through participation in local social settings
This study examines how information and communication technologies – mobile phone, social networking websites, blogging, instant messaging, and photo sharing – are related to the diversity of people’s social networks. We find that a limited set of technologies directly afford diversity, but many indirectly contribute to diversity by supporting participation in traditional settings such as neighborhoods, voluntary groups, religious institutions, a…
Long Distance Community in the Network Society: Contact and Support Beyond Netville
The authors examine the experience of the residents of Netville, a suburban neighborhood with access to some of the most advanced new communication technologies available, and how this technology affected the amount of contact and support exchanged with members of their distant social networks. Focusing exclusively on friends and relatives external to the neighborhood of Netville, the authors analyze community as relations that provide a sense of…
Studying the Digital: Directions and Challenges for Digital Methods
The methodological tool chest available to those who study digital technologies ranges from those that are uniquely digital methods to approaches that are well established in the social sciences. This domain of work includes the application of methods to answer questions about the relationship between digital technologies and the social world, as well as the use of digital methods to answer questions about the offline world. New or old, quantitat…
Persistent and Pervasive Community: New Communication Technologies and the Future of Community
Two affordances of digital communication technologies, persistent contact and pervasive awareness, are ushering in fundamental change to the structure of community. These affordances break from the mobility narrative that has described community since the rise of urban industrialism, including accounts of networked individualism and a postindustrial or a network society. In contrast to images of late modernity, which suggest that mobility will be…
Grieving for a Lost Network: Collective Action in a Wired Suburb Special Issue: ICTs and Community Networking
Critics have argued that information and communication technologies (ICTs) disconnect people from their social networks and reduce public participation. Research in support of this perspective has been biased by two assumptions. The first is a tendency to privilege the Internet as a social system removed from the other ways people communicate. The second is a tendency to favor broadly supportive strong social ties. Survey and ethnographic observa…
Living Networked On and Offline
References Bromberg, Philip. 1994. Speak that I May See You: Some Reflections on Dissociation, Reality, and Psychoanalytic Listening. Psychoanalytic D alogues 4 (4): 517-47. Dennett, Daniel. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown. Erikson, Erik. [1950] 1963. Childhood and Society, 2nd Ed. New York: Norton. Haraway, Donna. 1991. Actors are Cyborg, Nature is Coyote, and the Geography is Elsewhere: Postscript o 'Cyborgs at Large.' In T…
Beyond the power of networks: Differentiating network structure from social media affordances for perceived social support
Existing research suggests that social media use is associated with higher levels of social capital—the resources contained within a person’s network of friends, family, and other acquaintances. However, in predicting access to these resources, it has been impossible to distinguish the affordances of social media from the underlying advantage of maintaining a favorable social network of relationships on- and offline. Based on data from a represen…
Network Instability in Times of Stability
Personal networks undergo change in response to major life course events. Individual, relational, and network characteristics that influence network instability in the absence of a significant life transition/crisis are less understood. We focus on those ties that transition from active to dormant. Because the shift to dormancy is often interpreted as a reduction in support or social capital, it is considered problematic. This study is based on l…
Internet Use and the Concentration of Disadvantage: Glocalization and the Urban Underclass
This article argues that the literature on digital inequality-in its focus on individual characteristics, behaviors, and outcomes-has overlooked change within the context of where social and civic inequalities are reproduced. This omission is the result of a failure to explore the role of ecological context within the study of the digital divide and the role of communication within the study of collective efficacy. Social cohesion, and an expecta…
Community and social interaction in the wireless city: Wi-fi use in public and semi-public spaces
A significant body of research has addressed whether fixed internet use increases, decreases or supplements the ways in which people engage in residential and workplace settings, but few studies have addressed how wireless internet use in public and semi-public spaces influences social life. Ubiquitous wi-fi adds a new dimension to the debate over how the internet may influence the structure of community.Will wireless internet use facilitate grea…
Netville Online and Offline: Observing and Surveying a Wired Suburb
Since the mid-1850s, scholars have debated how technological innovation would affect community. The debate continues as the Internet makes it increasingly possible for people to socialize, shop, work, learn, and participate in leisure activities all from within their home. Will the movement of these previously public activities into the private realm lead to reduced participation in public activities? What will be the fate of community and social…
Mobile Phones Will Not Eliminate Digital and Social Divides: How Variation in Internet Activities Mediates the Relationship Between Type of Internet Access and Local Social Capital in Detroit
This study examines the relationship between mode of Internet access, variety of online activities, and the potential for the Internet to contribute to local social capital in distressed, urban communities. Based on a sample of 525 telephone surveys in Detroit, findings show that breadth of access predicts participation in a larger variety of online activities, which is associated with higher levels of local social capital. Neither public Interne…
Change in the social life of urban public spaces: The rise of mobile phones and women, and the decline of aloneness over 30 years
This study illustrates that over the past 30 years, Americans have become less socially isolated while using public spaces. Based on content analysis of films from four public spaces over a 30-year period, the behaviour and characteristics of 143,593 people were coded. The most dramatic changes in the social life of urban public spaces have been an increase in the proportion of women and a corresponding increase in the tendency for men and women …
Computer-Assisted Interviewing: The Design and Application of Survey Software To the Wired Suburb Project
L'entretien assisté par ordinateur - La construction et application de logiciels d'enquête dans le projet 'Wired Suburb". Cet article examine l'utilisation d'Internet et de l'ordinateur personnel (PC) pour les entretiens dans le cadre du projet "Wired Suburb" (Netville) de l'Université de Toronto. L utilisation de l'entretien assisté par ordinateur (CAI. en anglais) dans ce projet diffère de multiples autres exemples par son utilisation de questi…
A restricted multiple generator approach to enumerate personal support networks: An alternative to global important matters and satisficing in web surveys
Social Media and Change in Psychological Distress Over Time: The Role of Social Causation
This article tests the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICT), such as the Internet, cell phones, and social media, and change over time in psychological distress (PD) and risk of serious psychological distress (SPD) associated with depression and anxiety disorders. Using a longitudinal panel design, survey data from a representative sample of American adults, findings revealed that home Internet and social network …
Why is Helping Behavior Declining in the United States But Not in Canada: Ethnic Diversity, New Technologies, and Other Explanations
This paper explores whether there has been a recent decline in helping behavior in the United States. In a lost letter experiment, 7,466 letters were “lost” in 63 urban areas in the United States and Canada in 2001 and 2011. There has been a 10 percent decline in helping behavior in the United States, but not in Canada. Two arguments anticipate change in the level of help provided to strangers: the rise of new technologies, and neighborhood racia…
Disconnection More Problematic for Adolescent Self-Esteem than Heavy Social Media Use: Evidence from Access Inequalities and Restrictive Media Parenting in Rural America
Some argue that social media use displaces time that adolescents spend with friends and family and is therefore associated with lower psychological well-being. They reason that young people who experience “disconnection,” because their parents actively restrict media use, or they have limited material access to the Internet, are better protected from psychological harm. Prior research has misspecified and exaggerated the magnitude of the relation…
Computer-Assisted Interviewing: The Design and Application of Survey Software To the Wired Suburb Project
L'entretien assisté par ordinateur - La construction et application de logiciels d'enquête dans le projet 'Wired Suburb". Cet article examine l'utilisation d'Internet et de l'ordinateur personnel (PC) pour les entretiens dans le cadre du projet "Wired Suburb" (Netville) de l'Université de Toronto. L utilisation de l'entretien assisté par ordinateur (CAI. en anglais) dans ce projet diffère de multiples autres exemples par son utilisation de questi…
Living Networked On and Offline
References Bromberg, Philip. 1994. Speak that I May See You: Some Reflections on Dissociation, Reality, and Psychoanalytic Listening. Psychoanalytic D alogues 4 (4): 517-47. Dennett, Daniel. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown. Erikson, Erik. [1950] 1963. Childhood and Society, 2nd Ed. New York: Norton. Haraway, Donna. 1991. Actors are Cyborg, Nature is Coyote, and the Geography is Elsewhere: Postscript o 'Cyborgs at Large.' In T…
Netville Online and Offline: Observing and Surveying a Wired Suburb
Since the mid-1850s, scholars have debated how technological innovation would affect community. The debate continues as the Internet makes it increasingly possible for people to socialize, shop, work, learn, and participate in leisure activities all from within their home. Will the movement of these previously public activities into the private realm lead to reduced participation in public activities? What will be the fate of community and social…
Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital: Social Networks, Participation, and Community Commitment
How does the Internet affect social capital? Do the communication possibilities of the Internet increase, decrease, or supplement interpersonal contact, participation, and community commitment? This evidence comes from a 1998 survey of 39,211 visitors to the National Geographic Society Web site, one of the first large-scale Web surveys. The authors find that people's interaction online supplements their face-to-face and telephone communication wi…
Long Distance Community in the Network Society: Contact and Support Beyond Netville
The authors examine the experience of the residents of Netville, a suburban neighborhood with access to some of the most advanced new communication technologies available, and how this technology affected the amount of contact and support exchanged with members of their distant social networks. Focusing exclusively on friends and relatives external to the neighborhood of Netville, the authors analyze community as relations that provide a sense of…
Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb
What is the Internet doing to local community? Analysts have debated about whether the Internet is weakening community by leading people away from meaningful in‐person contact; transforming community by creating new forms of community online; or enhancing community by adding a new means of connecting with existing relationships. They have been especially concerned that the globe‐spanning capabilities of the Internet can limit local involvements. …
Grieving for a Lost Network: Collective Action in a Wired Suburb Special Issue: ICTs and Community Networking
Critics have argued that information and communication technologies (ICTs) disconnect people from their social networks and reduce public participation. Research in support of this perspective has been biased by two assumptions. The first is a tendency to privilege the Internet as a social system removed from the other ways people communicate. The second is a tendency to favor broadly supportive strong social ties. Survey and ethnographic observa…
The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism
We review the evidence from a number of surveys in which our NetLab has been involved about the extent to which the Internet is transforming or enhancing community. The studies show that the Internet is used for connectivity locally as well as globally, although the nature of its use varies in different countries. Internet use is adding on to other forms of communication, rather than replacing them. Internet use is reinforcing the pre-existing tu…
Neighborhoods in the Network Society the e-Neighbors study
This study examines whether the Internet is increasingly a part of everyday neighborhood interactions, and in what specific contexts Internet use affords the formation of local social ties. Studies of Internet and community have found that information and communication technologies provide new opportunities for social interaction, but that they may also increase privatism by isolating people in their homes. This paper argues that while the Intern…
Simplifying the Personal Network Name Generator: Alternatives to Traditional Multiple and Single Name Generators
Researchers studying personal networks often collect network data using name generators and name interpreters. We argue that when studying social support, multiple name generators ensure that researchers sample from a multidimensional definition of support. However, because administering multiple name generators is time consuming and strains respondent motivation, researchers often use single name generators. We compared network measures obtained…
Community and social interaction in the wireless city: Wi-fi use in public and semi-public spaces
A significant body of research has addressed whether fixed internet use increases, decreases or supplements the ways in which people engage in residential and workplace settings, but few studies have addressed how wireless internet use in public and semi-public spaces influences social life. Ubiquitous wi-fi adds a new dimension to the debate over how the internet may influence the structure of community.Will wireless internet use facilitate grea…
The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces: Internet Use, Social Networks, and the Public Realm
This study explores the role of urban public spaces for democratic and social engagement. It examines the impact of wireless Internet use on urban public spaces, Internet users, and others who inhabit these spaces. Through observations of 7 parks, plazas, and markets in 4 North American cities, and surveys of wireless Internet users in those sites, we explore how this new technology is related to processes of social interaction, privatism, and de…
Internet Use and the Concentration of Disadvantage: Glocalization and the Urban Underclass
This article argues that the literature on digital inequality-in its focus on individual characteristics, behaviors, and outcomes-has overlooked change within the context of where social and civic inequalities are reproduced. This omission is the result of a failure to explore the role of ecological context within the study of the digital divide and the role of communication within the study of collective efficacy. Social cohesion, and an expecta…
Comparing Bonding and Bridging Ties for Democratic Engagement: Everyday use of communication technologies within social networks for civic and civil behaviors
The structure of people's social networks predicts democratic engagement. However, the relative contribution of different types of social ties to civic and civil behaviors is unclear. This paper explores the role of core networks – bonding social capital – to the role of overall network diversity – bridging social capital – for participation in formal civic institutions and informal civil behaviors. Emphasis is placed on the possible role of hete…
Core Networks, Social Isolation, and New Media: How Internet and mobile phone use is related to network size and diversity
Evidence from the US General Social Surveys (GSS) suggests that during the past 20 years, people have become increasingly socially isolated and their core discussion networks have become smaller and less diverse. One explanation offered for this trend is the use of mobile phones and the Internet. This study reports on the findings of a 2008 survey that replicates and expands on the GSS network methodology to explore the relationship between the u…
How new media affords network diversity: Direct and mediated access to social capital through participation in local social settings
This study examines how information and communication technologies – mobile phone, social networking websites, blogging, instant messaging, and photo sharing – are related to the diversity of people’s social networks. We find that a limited set of technologies directly afford diversity, but many indirectly contribute to diversity by supporting participation in traditional settings such as neighborhoods, voluntary groups, religious institutions, a…
Exploring the Use of Social Network Analysis to Measure Social Integration Among Older Adults in Assisted Living
Social integration is measured by a variety of social network indicators each with limitations in its ability to produce a complete picture of the variety and scope of interactions of older adults receiving long-term services and supports. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the feasibility of collecting sociocentric (whole network) data among older adults in one assisted living neighborhood. The sociocentric approach is require…
Explaining Communication Displacement and Large-Scale Social Change in Core Networks: A cross-national comparison of why bigger is not better and less can mean more
Decline in the size and diversity of American's core networks has been tied to the displacement of face-to-face interaction and to lower societal well-being. Comparing core networks in the United States, Norway, and Ukraine, we reject the conclusions that frequent in-person contact predicts individual well-being and that large/diverse networks predict broader societal well-being. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status (SES) and societies with …
Testing the validity of social capital measures in the study of information and communication technologies
Social capital has been considered a cause and consequence of various uses of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, there is a growing divergence between how social capital is commonly measured in the study of ICTs and how it is measured in other fields. This departure raises questions about the validity of some of the most widely cited studies of social capital and ICTs. We compare the Internet Social Capital Scales (IS…
Change in the social life of urban public spaces: The rise of mobile phones and women, and the decline of aloneness over 30 years
This study illustrates that over the past 30 years, Americans have become less socially isolated while using public spaces. Based on content analysis of films from four public spaces over a 30-year period, the behaviour and characteristics of 143,593 people were coded. The most dramatic changes in the social life of urban public spaces have been an increase in the proportion of women and a corresponding increase in the tendency for men and women …
Communication in City and Community: From the Chicago School to Digital Technology
Digital media and stress: The cost of caring 2.0
This research explores the relationship between the use of digital media and stress. Based on the findings of a national, probability sample of adults in the United States, the use of digital media was not directly associated with higher levels of psychological stress. Some uses of digital media were associated with lower levels of perceived stress for women but not for men. However, the evidence suggests that, for men and women, digital media pr…
Why is Helping Behavior Declining in the United States But Not in Canada: Ethnic Diversity, New Technologies, and Other Explanations
This paper explores whether there has been a recent decline in helping behavior in the United States. In a lost letter experiment, 7,466 letters were “lost” in 63 urban areas in the United States and Canada in 2001 and 2011. There has been a 10 percent decline in helping behavior in the United States, but not in Canada. Two arguments anticipate change in the level of help provided to strangers: the rise of new technologies, and neighborhood racia…
Beyond the power of networks: Differentiating network structure from social media affordances for perceived social support
Existing research suggests that social media use is associated with higher levels of social capital—the resources contained within a person’s network of friends, family, and other acquaintances. However, in predicting access to these resources, it has been impossible to distinguish the affordances of social media from the underlying advantage of maintaining a favorable social network of relationships on- and offline. Based on data from a represen…
Persistent and Pervasive Community: New Communication Technologies and the Future of Community
Two affordances of digital communication technologies, persistent contact and pervasive awareness, are ushering in fundamental change to the structure of community. These affordances break from the mobility narrative that has described community since the rise of urban industrialism, including accounts of networked individualism and a postindustrial or a network society. In contrast to images of late modernity, which suggest that mobility will be…
Social Media and Politics (28 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Psychology (24 works) · Computer Science (23 works) · Political science (22 works) · Impact of Technology on Adolescents (21 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · The Internet (17 works) · Social media (16 works) · World Wide Web (16 works)