Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
players worldwide, has been cited as an example of like-minded people voluntarily
entering a community of choice unfettered by the need for proximity (Li et al.
2010
).
The contrasting view of the potential of telemediated ties to enhance sociability
holds that precisely because it allows anonymity and nonverbal cues such as body
language, cyberspace discourages the growth of close, intimate ties. In this read-
ing, mobile phones, text messages, and email may complement, but not substitute
for, face-to-face interactions. For example, Fischer's (
1992
) social history of the
telephone showed that it strengthened pre-existing social networks rather than
created new ones; similarly, Wellman (
2001a
) found in an analysis of Canadian
internet users that email typically reinforced existing ties based on family or
friendship, and that a distance-decay effect existed farther from the physical
location of the users. Haythornthwaite (
2005
) holds that substantive connections
among social network users are almost always preceded or accompanied by off-
line relationships. Computer-mediated communities tend to be ephemeral and lack
significant levels of emotional commitment. After all, the 140 characters that limit
the maximum length of a tweet hardly allow room to convey much information
about oneself. Thus, telemediated interactions are ideal for weak ties, but not for
strong ones. For example, Hampton et al. (
2011
) note that the average Facebook
user has 229 ''friends,'' although an overabundance of friends is detrimental to
one's capacity to sustain close ties (Ellison et al.
2007
; Tong et al.
2008
). Few
Facebook users, however, deploy the site to cultivate ties with people of a different
cultural background (Vasalou et al.
2010
). Turkle (
2011
) makes a powerful
argument that social networks have isolated large numbers of users and deprived
them of intimate ties. She argues that social media lead people to be alone even
when they are together, and blames texting in particular for a decline in the art of
conversation: a new skill, for example, includes being able to maintain eye contact
with one person while texting another. Digital networking in this context inevi-
tably reverberates to shape self-perceptions: she argues that the identities of
teenagers increasingly are shaped not by self-exploration, but by the expectations
of their on-line audiences. In confusing connectivity with conversation, social
media users who are ''always on'' become unable to be alone, and consequently
often feel lonely. Indeed, the growth of ersatz intimacy on Facebook has coincided
with a surge in loneliness in the U.S. (Marche
2012
). Others (Jackson
2008
;Carr
2010
) worry that the internet is unleashing subtle but pervasive changes in brain
structure, including shortened attention spans, echoing Postman's (
1985
) devas-
tating critique of television.
The creation of close ties involves the exchange of tacit knowledge and the
cultivation of trust. Ettlinger (
2003
) helpfully differentiates between two types of
trust, emotive trust, which includes an emotional component, and capacity trust,
which centers on professional competence. While telemediated weak ties may be
instrumental in the formation of capacity trust, their potential to forge emotive
trust, which relies on tacit information that is typically communicated face-to-face,
is dubious. Given the widespread use of electronic communications, interpersonal
relations are increasingly, but never completely, freed from face-to-face contact
(Warf
1994
; Stutzman
2006
). As a considerable body of work has shown,
