Networked? (Social) Ties?: My Review

I thought that Rainie and Wellman provide an interesting overview of how sociability has been changing in the past decades due not only to the spread of the Web as such but also to the evolution of wireless connection and the establishment of innovative interaction patterns in digital environments. The authors give an interesting account of the multiplicity of factors converging to shape new social configurations.

According to the authors, there is a clear statistical correlation: Heavy web users have a more extended social network than do light users, so it is possible to assume that the web enhances people’s sociability. This assumption, however, raises a few questions in my mind: Are digital relationships influenced by pre-existing social capital, or is it the Web that broadens users’ networks? None of the results reported by Hampton, Sessions, Her, and Rainie in their 2009 survey should be “interpreted as explanations of cause and effect.” Although their results show that the use of technology is strongly associated with “larger social networks,” people adopting new technologies often come from the upper classes, and their social capital is generally high, even before accessing the Web.

Let’s take a look at the authors’ following statement: “On average . . . the size of people’s discussion networks . . . is 12 percent larger among mobile phone users, 9 percent larger for individuals who share photos online, and 9 percent bigger for those who use instant messaging (p. 119).” this correlation between the extension of offline and online networks reveals the grounded nature of Web consumption, which is far from being a disembedded experience; so much so that it is possible to talk about the end of the virtual. Rainie and Wellman suggest that there is nothing virtual in the way we use the Web: Immersive experiences are limited to online games and to a few other cases, such as Second Life, whose majority of users are, not surprisingly, inactive. The future of “networked individualism” will therefore be marked by the incorporation of virtual reality into everyday life, with the two becoming fully integrated into a kind of generalized augmented reality. This is what “social operating system” refers to—a sociotechnical pattern defining a new layer of reality, whose meaning is neither determined by individual interpretations nor is it the outcome of digital technologies.

Seen from a different perspective, however, the correlation between Internet use and the strengthening of social ties is not that revealing, because the use of social network services—here considered as an indicator of Internet consumption—is a socialization practice in itself. The Web is, however, used for many other purposes that have nothing to do with socialization: information, pornography, or, in the case of Facebook, to peek at someone’s profile or update a page, without interaction. What about these common practices? Are they associated with enhanced social capital? From this perspective, the following assertion by the authors does not appear surprising: “People who email the great majority of their core ties at least weekly are also in phone contact with more core ties than non-emailers.”

Practices such as e-mailing or sharing pictures are likely to be associated with a greater number of offline relationships and can therefore be taken more as an indicator of sociability than of Web usage. Internet use is indeed a multilayered experience combining different patterns of consumption and of mixing community-oriented and solipsistic behaviours. There is no evidence that the social uses of the Web are more frequent than are individual uses, such as watching videos, looking for gossip and pornography, and so forth. I would suggest that to fully investigate the transformations driven by technological innovation, it may be useful to measure the relation between offline social experiences and individual uses of the Web. We are indeed witnessing the development of social and individual uses of the Web, which are sometimes conflicting. What we need to do is make a neat distinction between the two, which is what Lull (1980) did with TV consumption when he distinguished between relational and structural uses. Unlike TV consumption, which is not just a solitary activity but is also embedded in everyday practices, Web surfing is not always a social experience; it can also involve a number of individual, even narcissistic, practices.

What I want to highlight here is, however, the difference between “network” as a sociological pattern, as it emerges from quantitative analysis, and “network” as a real social force. The shift toward network analysis can actually pose a risk: that of forgetting the importance of the main social operating system of modern history—social class.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you!

Lull, J. (1980). Inside family viewing: Ethnographic research on television’s audiences. London, UK: Routledge