The Social Impact of Wireless Internet in Public Spaces

Approximately 1000 words.
Synthesizing the theories (you do not need to draw from ALL
the theories/readings), use at least three readings to develop
your own view that describes and understands the relationship
between technology and society. In developing your view, take
the most important and persuasive parts of the existing theories
and explain them. In the end, be sure to clearly articulate and
define the relationship between technology and society: which
has more power or control? How do they relate to one another?
Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916
O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E
The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces:
Internet Use, Social Networks, and the Public
Realm
Keith N. Hampton, Oren Livio, & Lauren Sessions Goulet
Annenberg School for Communication, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
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 democratic
engagement. Findings reveal that Internet use within public
spaces affords interactions with
existing acquaintances that are more diverse than those
associated with mobile phone use.
However, the level of colocated social diversity to which
Internet users are exposed is less
than that of most users of these spaces. Yet, online activities in
public spaces do contribute
to broader participation in the public sphere. Internet
connectivity within public spaces
may contribute to higher overall levels of democratic and social
engagement than what is
afforded by exposure within similar spaces free of Internet
connectivity.
doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01510.x
Internet access in public parks, plazas, markets, and streets has
been made possible
through the proliferation of broadband wireless Internet in the
form of municipal
and community wi-fi (e.g., NYC Wireless) and advanced mobile
phone networks
(e.g., 3G). The experience of wireless Internet use in the public
realm contrasts with
traditional wired Internet use, which is confined primarily to the
private realm of the
home and the parochial realm of the workplace. An extensive
literature has addressed
the influence of Internet use on the composition of people’s
social networks
(Hampton, Sessions, & Her, in press), their engagement in
political, voluntary, and
other organizational activities (Boulianne, 2009), and their

interactions within home
and workplaces (Bakardjieva, 2005; Quan-Haase & Wellman,
2006). But, Internet
use in the public realm has remained relatively unexplored. This
type of use carries
with it significant implications for urban planning, the structure
of community, and
the nature of democracy.
Internet access in public spaces may reshape the public realm.
Because of its
location, it may revitalize, repopulate, and improve the safety of
public spaces.
Because of the electronic connectivity it offers, it may reduce
social inequalities and
Corresponding author: Keith N. Hampton; e-mail:
[email protected]
Journal of Communication 60 (2010) 701 – 722 © 2010
International Communication Association 701
The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces K. N. Hampton et al.
increase the use of public spaces. As a result of the diversity of
those who are colocated,
it may increase social cohesion, tolerance, and exposure to
diverse messages. Given
that participation in diverse physical and virtual spaces can
contribute to democratic
engagement, it may develop political action and stimulate
democracy or it may not.
Wireless Internet use may push out existing public life,
previously private activities
may shrink the public realm, and contribute to existing trends

toward privatism that
are augmenting the structure and composition of people’s social
networks.
The public realm and the public sphere
The public realm is a specific social setting. It typically
includes urban public spaces,
such as a city’s streets, parks, and plazas. The public realm
plays host to planned
encounters with existing acquaintances, as well as to
serendipitous encounters with
strangers. What differentiates the public realm from all public
spaces is that it includes
only those ‘‘locals’’ or social settings that minimize the
segregation of people based
on ‘‘lifestyles’’: values, opinions, gender, race, ethnicity, stage
in the life course,
and other forms of diversity (Strauss, 1961). The proportion of
copresent others
in the public realm is dramatically in favor of the unfamiliar
and leans toward
a diversity of interests, behaviors, and beliefs rather than to the
familiar or the
homophilous. It stands in deep contrast to the private realm,
those social settings that
are principally the domain of intimate, homophilous social ties
— generally kinship
ties, with whom people share many to most things in common.
The public realm
is also differentiated from the parochial realm or those spaces
that may be public
or ‘‘third places’’ (Oldenburg, 1989), but are nonetheless
‘‘home territory,’’ in that
people are surrounded by others with whom they share much in
common, such as
in a neighborhood, small town, or workplace (Lofland, 1998).

Whether a space is
part of the public realm is an empirical evaluation regarding the
existence of social
diversity and a low density of acquaintanceship.1
As a setting for exposure to, and interaction among, people with
diverse
backgrounds, opinions, and values, the public realm is a natural
and important
component of a broader public sphere. It is one source of
information and influence
in a multistep process, which involves mass media and
interpersonal communication
within social networks (Katz et al., 1998). However, exposure
to diversity of opinions
and issues within the public sphere is dependent on the range of
external inputs
available from the mass media and everyday interactions
embedded within the
private, parochial, and public realms.
During the last 2 decades, the structure of people’s social
networks has changed sig-
nificantly. The interpersonal component of the public sphere has
become increasingly
private. Participation in activities that are likely to be socially,
culturally, and ideolog-
ically cross-cutting (such as voluntary organizations) are in
decline (Putnam, 2000).
The number of people with whom most people discuss important
matters has
declined (Hampton, Sessions, & Her, in press; McPherson,
Smith-Lovin, & Bras-
hears, 2006). People’s closest social ties increasingly consist of
densely knit networks
that center on the home, with fewer strong ties to more loosely

coupled networks.
702 Journal of Communication 60 (2010) 701 – 722 © 2010
International Communication Association
K. N. Hampton et al. The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces
This trend toward privatism (Fischer, 1992) supports cohesion
within tightly knit
personal networks, but sacrifices interaction with more diverse
social ties. Dense
networks provide generalized social support and are high in
reciprocity, but they
can also be repressive and tend to be culturally and
ideologically homogeneous
(McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001). Close homophilous
ties are also the first
stop for social comparison and validation in attitude formation
(Cross, Rice, &
Parker, 2001; Erickson, 1997). The likelihood of attitudinal
similarity, reinforcement,
and conversion among strong, tightly bound, homophilous ties
means that these
ties are also likely to be the last stop in opinion formation.
Although other foci of
activity remain important for some (mainly the neighborhood
and workplace — the
parochial realm) and offer more diversity than the private realm
(Mutz, 2006), such
spaces are still more likely than the public realm to be a focus
of activity for those
with common interests, lifestyles, backgrounds, behaviors, and
beliefs (Marks, 1994).

As people’s personal discussion networks have increasingly
centered on the
private realm — they have become more intimate, closed, and
homogeneous — the
forces of consumerism and corporate and state control have
generated parallel
consolidating effects on the mass media. An increase in mass
media cross-ownership
and conglomeratization (Bagdikian & Bagdikian, 2004;
Klinenberg, 2007), the global
influences of media (Arsenault & Castells, 2008), the
convergence of media (Jenkins,
2006), intermedia surveillance (Boczkowski, 2010),
cooperation, and agenda setting
(Golan, 2006) act to reduce the diversity of messages and
exposure to local content
within the public sphere.
Interpersonal communication and the mass media are
experiencing a trans-
formation that constrains diversity. At the same time, while
undergoing their
own pressures toward privatization as a result of
commercialization, business
improvement districts, surveillance, and so forth, (Zukin, 1995)
urban public spaces
remain not unmediated but a less mediated medium for exposure
to diverse social
issues. The public realm has relatively few barriers to entry and
provides exposure
across ethnic, social, behavioral, and ideological boundaries. As
a result of physical
visibility and accessibility, such exposure potentially provides
access to messages that
are ideologically divergent or absent from the intimate networks
of the private realm.

Although exposure is generally primitive and fleeting, in
comparison to more formal
(Price & Cappella, 2002), informal (Mutz, 2006), or even casual
political discussion
(Wyatt, Katz, & Kim, 2000), the public realm can provide a
provocative, potentially
disruptive, and contested setting that, although incomplete
(Fishkin, 1995), is an
important component of public deliberation (Delli Carpini,
Cook, & Jacobs, 2004)
in an increasingly shrinking public sphere.
Wireless Internet
Starting in 1905, when the first pay phone was installed on a
street in Cincinnati,
urban public spaces have hosted a range of telecommunication
devices. In the 1980s
and 1990s it was the pager, followed by the mobile phone. Until
recently, mobile
phone networks were used almost exclusively for voice
communication and short
message exchange (‘‘texting’’). With broadband wireless
Internet access, people can
use a greater range of devices (e.g., laptops, the iPhone, and
‘‘smart phones”) and
applications and are not restricted to the limited processing,
display, and data entry
capabilities of the traditional mobile phone. Although mobile

phones have offered
limited forms of Internet access since the late 1990s, pervasive
wireless Internet
became widely available only recently. People can now readily
use mobile devices
in urban public spaces and expect an Internet experience that is
similar to wired
Internet access at home and work.
Mobile phone networks are only one example of a wireless
infrastructure that is
capable of providing broadband Internet access to phones,
laptops, and other mobile
devices. Wi-fi networks are an additional opportunity for
wireless connectivity. In
fact, at the time of this study 41% of Americans had used
wireless Internet access,
but only 16% had used the Internet on a smart phone or other
handheld device — by
2009 this had increased to 59% and 32% respectively (Purcell,
Entner & Henderson
2010)(Horrigan, 2008). Wi-fi networks range from the formal to
the accidental
and from corporate to counter-culture. The various options for
wi-fi connectivity
provide near universal, and often overlapping, capability for
Internet access in urban
public spaces. These options include the following:
1. Municipal wi-fi (muni wi-fi): Government-sponsored
networks that provide
broadband wireless Internet access over areas that range from a
full city to a few
blocks. In 2008, there were more than 300 muni wi-fi projects
in the United
States, covering a total of 6,750 square miles; more than one

third of them were
fully operational (ABIResearch, 2007; Farivar, 2008). Muni wi-
fi networks are
built on various business models. Some provide free access and
others charge a
monthly fee or subsidizing based on socioeconomic status.
2. Wireless community networks: Grassroots, not-for-profit
organizations that
provide local, typically free, wireless Internet access (Sandvig,
2004; Schmidt &
Townsend, 2003). Like muni wi-fi, wireless community
networks provide access
over areas that range from less than a city block to larger urban
areas.
3. Hotspots: Wireless internet access provided in and around a
limited location, such
as a coffee shop (Hampton & Gupta, 2008), bookstore, or
airport lounge. Access
is typically associated with pay-per-use or the purchase of a
product (e.g., a cup
of coffee). Hotspots have become a ubiquitous feature of the
urban environment.
4. Residential wi-fi: More than 19% of U.S. home Internet users
have a wireless
network (Horrigan, 2007) that typically extends beyond the
private walls where
the network originates. A study of Seattle neighborhoods found
that 52% of
wireless home networks were open to anyone on the street
(Howard, 2004). A
study of neighborhoods in Toronto found that 22% of wireless
home networks
allowed anyone to access the Internet (Wong & Clement, 2007).

Mobile phones and the public realm
There are few studies of how wireless Internet use influences
urban public spaces,
but there has been much research on the use of voice and
texting on mobile phones.
Within this body of work, there is considerable agreement on
the influence that
mobile phone users have on colocated others and on how the
adoption of the mobile
phone may be influencing the structure of social networks and
larger patterns of
engagement with the public sphere.
The mobile phone has been nothing short of revolutionary in
how people main-
tain their social networks. Mobile phones make those who are
already familiar always
available; they connect people with existing members of their
social network, anytime,
anywhere. Studies of mobile phone users have consistently
identified a tendency
for interactions over the phone to be dominated by intimate,
close social ties. This
includes both voice and text-based (‘‘texting”) contact (for a
review see Ling, 2008).
Some have pointed out that this may lead to intense
participation in closed networks

at the expense of broader social participation (Gergen, 2008).
Empirical evidence of
this retreat is preliminary and mixed (Castells, Fernandez-
Ardevol, & Sey, 2007), but
it is easily conceived that this trend may lead to homogenizing
of social networks,
so that the most familiar and most similar are frequently and
primarily the focus of
interpersonal interaction for companionship, support, and
opinion formation. The
result may be a contraction in the size and diversity of active
discussion networks.
In urban public spaces, the mobile phone is frequently lamented
as an unpleasant
distraction for strangers and colocated companions (Katz,
2006). Within the public
realm, mobile phone users tend to give precedence to phone
interactions over
those with colocated others, particularly those around them with
whom they are less
familiar (Hoflich, 2006). The result can be felt by strangers and
colocated companions,
who are suddenly more vulnerable and alone outside the
conversation (Humphreys,
2005). The resulting interaction space resembles other
temporary private or parochial
‘‘bubbles’’ that protrude into the public realm, such as
weddings, birthday parties, and
reunions held in public parks (Lofland, 1998). These bubbles
provide the individual
with a space of comfort, familiarity, and security within what is
primarily a realm
of strangers (Ito, Okabe, & Anderson, 2008). However, with the
mobile phone, such
bubbles need not be temporary. They can be used habitually to

insulate the individual
from the social diversity of urban public spaces and completely
remove the public
realm from everyday experience that provide access to messages
and people that are
absent from the intimate networks of the private realm.
Mobile bubbles of private and parochial interaction within the
public realm erase
or significantly curtail the potential for interaction between
strangers and mobile
users. These users who were once a source of social diversity
and a potential point
of interaction become little more than the microcosm of a
spectacle (Rousseau,
1758/1960; Sennett, 1977). Although interactions in the public
realm are admittedly
more likely to be primitive and fleeting than nearly all other
forms of democratic
engagement, the simultaneous physical presence and situational
absence of mobile
phone users nevertheless reduce the density of people available
for interaction within
the public realm. This creates a ‘‘contextual effect,’’ so that
those who might engage
with others are less likely to have the opportunity to do so, if
only because the
number of others available for interaction has decreased
(Hampton & Gupta, 2008).

This leads to the presence of silent spectators rather than
potential participants. The
mobile phone thus changes the character of urban public spaces
not only for the
mobile user, but for all participants in that space.
New media in the public realm
What differentiates wireless Internet use from traditional mobile
phone use is the
potential for access to a full range of applications and
experiences associated with
home- and work-based Internet use. It is not clear if the
experience of public wireless
Internet use will resemble that of the mobile phone or other
mobile media, such as
the portable music player (Katz, Lever, & Chen, 2008) or even
the book (Goffman,
1966). Because the range of applications available on devices
that connect to wireless
networks, it may be that wireless Internet use is likely to afford
behaviors that resemble
those of Internet use at home and work. Like the mobile phone,
traditional wired
Internet use has been linked to more frequent communication
with intimate social
relations (Boase, Horrigan, Wellman, & Rainie, 2006), but there
is also evidence that
participation in some types of online activities contributes to
larger and more diverse
social networks (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Hampton
et al., in press).
An extensive literature has developed around technical and
regulatory issues
related to the deployment of the infrastructure that supports

wireless networks, but
there has been limited empirical study of the social implications
of these networks
(Forlano, 2008; Hampton & Gupta, 2008; Powell, 2008). Policy
makers associated
with the deployment of large-scale wi-fi networks generally
describe the benefits
of wireless networks in terms of opportunities and efficiencies
for the provision of
city services, economic development, and the reduction of
social inequalities (Bar &
Park, 2006; Tapia & Ortiz, 2010). Pundits and providers of wi-fi
networks have also
speculated about additional social benefits, such as community
building, promotion
of social cohesion, stimulation of democracy, and revitalization
and repopulation
of parks, plazas, and other civic spaces (Middleton, Longford,
Clement, & Potter,
2006; Tapia & Ortiz, 2010). However, no study has attempted to
test these claims
or explore the implications of wireless Internet use in urban
public spaces on social
interactions, social networks, and the public realm.
This study examines the impact of wireless Internet use on
urban public spaces,
Internet users, and others who inhabit those spaces. The
approach is comparative
and the method is mixed. Qualitative and quantitative
observational methods, as
well as survey methods, are used to examine a variety of urban
public spaces in
four cities in two countries. Direct comparisons are made
between the observed
behaviors of wireless Internet users and those using other

media, such as mobile
phones, music players, and books, in order to evaluate the
complex ways in which
this new technology is implicated in contemporary social
processes in public spaces.
Method
Observations were conducted in seven public parks, plazas, and
markets located in
four cities in the United States and Canada. The sites were
selected to be geographically
and culturally diverse to capture a wide variety of wireless
Internet practices and to
identify sources of variation that might be specific to place,
local culture, or urban
design. All sites were serviced by high-speed mobile phone data
networks and had
some form of wi-fi service. The seven field sites were as
follows:
1. New York City: (a) Bryant Park and (b) Union Square — two
large public parks
with free wi-fi access provided by NYC Wireless.
2. Philadelphia: (c) Rittenhouse Square — a large public park
with paid wi-fi access
provided by Wireless Philadelphia (Earthlink) and some free wi-

fi provided
in portions of the park by nearby cafés, restaurants, hotels, and
residences.
(d) Reading Terminal Market — a large indoor public market
with free wi-fi
provided by Wireless Philadelphia.
3. San Francisco: (e) Union Square — a large public plaza
bordered by some green
space with free wi-fi access provided by Google.
4. Toronto: (f) Dundas Square — a public plaza with free wi-fi
access provided
by Toronto Wireless and paid wi-fi by OneZone (Toronto Hydro
Telecom);
(g) Nathan Phillips Square — a public plaza with paid wi-fi
access provided by
OneZone and sporadic-free wi-fi provided by neighboring hotels
and cafés.
Between May and August 2007, five different observers made a
total of 151 visits
to the seven sites. Each visit lasted between 1.5 and 5 hours,
with the average visit
lasting approximately 2.5 hours. Overall, each site was observed
for a minimum
of 44 hours. Each visit involved a series of standardized
observational procedures
that used a combination of person-centered and place-centered
behavioral mapping
approaches (Ittelson, Rivlin, & Proshansky, 1970; Sommer &
Sommer, 2001).
The place-centered approach required the observer to walk the
observation site
and complete a map and worksheet. The map recorded the

location of each wireless
Internet user within the site, as well as the people interacting
with the user. The work-
sheet recorded a series of observable demographic
characteristics (e.g., sex and age
range) and a predefined list of behaviors engaged in by the
people observed, includ-
ing the use of technologies, additional activities (e.g., eating
and people-watching),
socializing, and the level of involvement with the devices they
were using and their
nearby environment. The length of time required to complete a
place-centered map
and worksheet varied by site and time of day, but generally
ranged between 10 and 40
minutes. Extensive training and pretesting were carried out to
ensure interobserver
reliability. The place-centered approach was repeated
approximately every 30 min-
utes several times throughout the site visit, allowing observers
to record the laptop
users’ length of stay and changes in behavior over the duration
of the visit.
Between place-centered observations, observers used dice to
randomly select
one Internet user (and accompanying group) for detailed
observation. This person-
centered approach lasted for 30 minutes, unless the user left the
site earlier. In such
a case, a new place mapping was carried out and a new user
randomly selected for
observation. The person-centered observation included a more
detailed worksheet
of user behaviors and extensive ethnographic field notes that
documented everything

the user did. For comparative purposes, when no identifiable
Internet users were
present within a site, observers conducted observations on
people who were using
other media. Each observer’s field notes were reviewed on a
daily basis; observers
received regular feedback to ensure that they were all calibrated
to a similar level
of detail. Two hundred seventy-four person-centered
observations were completed
for laptop users; 79 for mobile phone users; 67 for readers of
books, magazines, or
newspapers; 9 for people listening to portable music players; 7
for personal digital
assistant (PDA) users; and 2 for those using portable gaming
devices.2
In August and September 2007, observers returned to the project
sites and
conducted 15 – 20-minute surveys with wireless Internet users.
The survey included
information about the participant’s past and current activities
within the site, use
of technology, and established social network measures
(McPherson et al., 2006).
Researchers attempted to interview every laptop user they
encountered. When there
were too many users present to make this possible, they sampled

randomly.
Observations and surveys were conducted at each site on several
days, on weekdays
and weekends, and during a range of daylight hours. In return
for participating in the
survey, participants received a $5 gift certificate for a coffee
chain. Sixty-five percent
of those contacted agreed to participate, providing 227
completed surveys.
Findings
Wireless urban public spaces
The number of wi-fi users was highest in Bryant Park (664),
followed by New York’s
Union Square (220), Union Square in San Francisco (180),
Reading Terminal Market
in Philadelphia (133), Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia (92),
and the two Toronto
locations (21).3 The average wi-fi user visited the same public
space two times per
week (with less than a 0.5 visit variation across sites), but used
wi-fi only 75% of the
time. Most users (61%) stayed in place between 1 and 2 hours;
visitors to Bryant Park
typically stayed somewhat longer, and users of Dundas Square
(Toronto) stayed for a
shorter period of time. Twenty-five percent of wi-fi users
reported that they had not
visited the public space before wi-fi became available. Of those
who had previously
visited, 70% reported that they visited more often because wi-fi
had become available;
none reported that they visited less frequently.

Site popularity appeared to be driven by a number of factors.
Reputation was
central, but there was a strong correlation between the length of
time the primary
wi-fi network had been operating (i.e., when the technology was
launched) and the
total number of observed wireless Internet users at each
location. However, a number
of other factors influenced use and, in some cases, were more
important than early
site adoption. These included the availability of free wi-fi
access, population density,
urban design, surveillance/harassment, and local culture.
The most active wi-fi space that was observed — Bryant Park
— was one of the first
urban parks to provide free wi-fi access. Located in the heart of
New York City, Bryant
Park has a near constant flow of pedestrian traffic and park
users. The design of Bryant
Park also offers a mix of public uses, including three acres of
open green space, tree
shade, food and beverage kiosks, a children’s carousel, and
more than 1,000 moveable
chairs. Other popular spaces for wireless Internet use offered
some combination of
free wi-fi access, high population density, and good urban
design, but rarely all three.

This was particularly evident in the case of the two Toronto
sites, where there were
fewer than two dozen wi-fi users in over 40 visits and 90
observation hours.
Nathan Phillips Square (Toronto) offered ubiquitous paid wi-fi
access and was
part of a large and well-known wi-fi network, yet it was the
only site observed that
offered very limited free access. Although the square is located
in the heart of the
city, directly in front of the City Hall, and is surrounded by
considerable pedestrian
activity, it is not heavily utilized. The modernist design —
predominantly concrete
construction, with a large ornamental pool and few trees —
makes it a popular
architectural attraction, and it is regarded as Toronto’s most
important public space
for community events (Design Exchange, 2008). Yet, it offers
little shade or green
space and has been criticized for being underutilized by the
public when planned
community events are not taking place.
Dundas Square is located at one of the busiest pedestrian
intersections in Toronto.
It is geographically the smallest and the newest of the places
studied. It lacked open
green space but did provide free wi-fi access. In addition,
Dundas Square is operated
through a public – private partnership that occasionally limits
park use to commercial
events (e.g., fashion shows) and is far more restrictive of public
use than similar
partnerships, such as the one that manages Bryant Park. For

example, Dundas
Square employs private security guards who boldly enforce a
norm that ‘‘anybody
who is doing anything needs a permit’’ (Kuitenbrouwer, 2008).
On one occasion, a
researcher observed a security guard approach a wireless …
Social capital, self-esteem, and use of online social network
sites:
A longitudinal analysis
Charles Steinfield ⁎, Nicole B. Ellison, Cliff Lampe
Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and
Media, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Available online 17 August 2008 A longitudinal analysis of
panel data from users of a popular online social network site,
Facebook,
investigated the relationship between intensity of Facebook use,
measures of psychological
well-being, and bridging social capital. Two surveys conducted
a year apart at a large U.S.
university, complemented with in-depth interviews with 18
Facebook users, provide the study
data. Intensity of Facebook use in year one strongly predicted
bridging social capital outcomes in
year two, even after controlling for measures of self-esteem and
satisfaction with life. These
latter psychological variables were also strongly associated with
social capital outcomes. Self-
esteem served to moderate the relationship between Facebook
usage intensity and bridging

social capital: those with lower self-esteem gained more from
their use of Facebook in terms
of bridging social capital than higher self-esteem participants.
We suggest that Facebook
affordances help reduce barriers that lower self-esteem students
might experience in forming
the kinds of large, heterogeneous networks that are sources of
bridging social capital.
© 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Facebook
Online social networks
Social capital
Social network sites
Emerging adults
Self-esteem
Life satisfaction
Internet use
Longitudinal research
1. Introduction
Social network sites constitute an important research area for
scholars interested in online technologies and their social
impacts,
as evinced by recent scholarship in the area (boyd & Ellison,
2007; Donath, 2007; Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007;
Golder,
Wilkinson, & Huberman, 2007; Lampe, Ellison, & Steinfield,
2007; Valkenburg, Peter, & Schouter, 2006). Social network
sites (SNSs)
are “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a
public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2)
articulate

a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3)
view and traverse their list of connections and those made by
others
within the system” (boyd & Ellison, 2007, p. 211). The first
social network site was launched in 1997 and currently there are
hundreds
of SNSs across the globe, supporting a spectrum of practices,
interests and users (boyd & Ellison, 2007).
One of the largest social network sites among the U.S. college
student population is Facebook, created in February 2004 by
Mark
Zuckerberg, then a student at Harvard University. According to
Zuckerberg, “The idea for the website was motivated by a social
need at Harvard to be able to identify people in other residential
houses” (Moyle, 2004, Dec. 7). Facebook has become very
popular
among undergraduates, with usage rates upwards of 90% at most
campuses (Lampe, Ellison, & Steinfield, 2006; Stutzman, 2006).
It
has also stimulated much recent research on various aspects of
Facebook use, such as the use of Facebook in academic settings
(Hewitt & Forte, 2006) and the demographic predictors of
Facebook use (Hargittai, 2007). One strand of research focuses
on the
outcomes of Facebook use.
Among young adults, relationships with peers are important
both for generating offline benefits, commonly referred to as
social capital, and for psychosocial development. Social capital
is an elastic construct used to describe the benefits one receives
from one's relationships with other people (Lin,1999). Ellison et
al. (2007) suggest that intense Facebook use is closely related
to
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 29 (2008) 434–

445
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Steinfield).
0193-3973/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights
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doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2008.07.002
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
mailto:[email protected]
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01933973
the formation and maintenance of social capital. In their survey
of undergraduates at a large university, Facebook use was found
to be associated with distinct measures of social capital,
including bridging social capital (which emphasizes the
informational
benefits of a heterogeneous network of weak ties) and bonding
social capital (which emphasizes emotional benefits from strong
ties to close friends and family). Moreover, Ellison et al. (2007)
found evidence that self-esteem may operate as a moderator of
the relationship between social network site use and social
capital. That is, young people with lower self-esteem appeared
to
benefit more from their use of Facebook than those with higher
self-esteem. However, with data at only one point in time, it
was
not possible for Ellison et al. (2007) to establish any time order
to the relationships among Facebook use, self-esteem, and
social

capital.
These findings suggest that more research on the role of social
network sites among young adults is needed, since maintaining
friendships through SNSs like Facebook may play an important
role in psychological development. Arnett (2000) has
distinguished
the period between ages 18 and 25 as a phase of “emerging
adulthood,” a liminal period between adolescence and
adulthood.
Arnett posits that this stage is critical to an individual's adult
development because during this time a person builds long term
social skills, including those critical for self-dependence, career
orientation and relationship maintenance. Other researchers
studying the emerging adulthood stage have called for more
research on the effect of new media, including social network
sites, on
adult development and relationships (Brown, 2006). The
development and maintenance of friendships during this period
has been
shown to influence identity formation, well-being and the
development of romantic and family relationships over the long
term
(Connolly, Furman, & Konarksi, 2000; Montgomery, 2005).
Social network sites offer a new set of tools to develop and
maintain
relationships and are thus of particular importance in emerging
adulthood.
The present study contributes to prior work on young adults and
their use of social network sites by investigating the
relationship between Facebook use and bridging social capital
over time, using data from a panel of college students who
reported
on their use of Facebook at two points a year apart. Based on
prior work by Ellison et al. (2007), a particular focus was on

whether
and to what extent users' self-esteem moderates the relationship
between Facebook use and social capital outcomes. We
specifically focus on Facebook in this study because of its
pervasive use on college campuses across the country and
increasingly
throughout the world. Indeed, estimates of the proportion of
students who have joined Facebook on college campuses in the
U.S.
range between 85% and 95% (Lampe et al., 2006), making it the
most important social network site for this particular cohort of
emerging adults.
A longitudinal study is warranted in this area of inquiry for two
reasons. First, it can help answer questions regarding the
appropriate causal direction of influence among key variables
— does greater use of a social network site lead to greater
social
capital, or do those with more social capital simply have a
greater incentive to use social network sites? Second, a
longitudinal
analysis can help shed light on the development of social capital
over time among young people, exploring the possibility that
social capital can evolve from relationships that began at an
earlier point in time.
1.1. Social capital, relationships and Internet use
There are two complementary perspectives on the importance of
friendship maintenance, particularly in the U.S. college-aged
population. First, relationships help generate social capital
(Lin,1999) and are important components of psychosocial
development
for emerging adults (Sullivan, 1953). For the college-age
populations, sites like Facebook may play a vital role in
maintaining

relationships that would otherwise be lost as these individuals
move from the geographically bounded networks of their
hometown. Second, there is also growing evidence that Internet
use in general, and social network sites like Facebook in
particular,
may be associated with a person's sense of self-worth and other
measures of psychosocial development, although the positive or
negative contributions of Internet use to psychological well-
being are hotly debated (Kraut, Patterson, Lundmark, Kiesler,
Mukhopadhyay, & Scherlis, 1998; Kraut, Kiesler, Boneva,
Cummings, Helgeson, & Crawford, 2002; Shaw & Gant, 2002;
Valkenburg
et al., 2006).
1.1.1. Relationships and social capital
Although social capital is an elastic term with a variety of
definitions in multiple fields (Adler & Kwon, 2002), there is
general
consensus that it refers broadly to the benefits we receive from
our social relationships (Lin, 1999). It can be conceived in
negative
terms, such as when non-group members are excluded from
having access to the same benefits as members (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992; Helliwell & Putnam, 2004), but is generally
perceived to be positive (Adler & Kwon, 2002). It has been
linked to
such diverse outcomes as career advancement (Burt, 1997),
organizational success (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998), and many
other
positive social outcomes such as better public health and lower
crime rates (Adler & Kwon, 2002). Social capital has also been
linked to the psychological and physical well-being of young
people. In a wide-ranging review, Morrow (1999) found that
despite a
lack of consistent definition and measurement, prior work

suggests that young people with more social capital are more
likely to
engage in behaviors that lead to better health, academic success,
and emotional development.
The ability to form and maintain relationships is a necessary
precondition for the accumulation of social capital. For
example,
Coleman (1988) describes social capital as resources
accumulated through the relationships among people. Lin (1999)
extends this
notion by emphasizing the importance of developing a social
network, considering social capital to arise from “investments
in social
relations with expected returns” (p. 30) and suggests that the
benefits arise from the greater “access to and use of resources
embedded in social networks” (p. 30). Bourdieu and Wacquant
(1992) define social capital as “the sum of the resources, actual
or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of
possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized
relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (p. 14).
435C. Steinfield et al. / Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology 29 (2008) 434–445
1.1.2. Forms of social capital
It is important to distinguish between conceptions of social
capital at the individual and relationship level, and conceptions
at
the community level (Lin, 1999), although we might consider
the latter to be an aggregate of the former. For example,
community
social capital has been viewed as being on the decline in the

U.S. for the past several years (Putnam, 2000), a trend
associated with
increased social disorder, reduced participation in civic
activities, and potentially more distrust among community
members. On
the other hand, greater social capital increases commitment to a
community and the ability to mobilize collective actions, among
other benefits. At the individual level, social capital allows
individuals to capitalize on their connections with others,
accruing
benefits such as information or support.
Our focus is on individual-level social capital, where research
has generally distinguished between two broad types: bonding
and bridging social capital (Putnam, 2000). Bonding social
capital is found between individuals in tightly-knit, emotionally
close
relationships, such as family and close friends. Bridging social
capital, the focus of the present paper, stems from what network
researchers refer to as “weak ties,” which are loose connections
between individuals who may provide useful information or new
perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support
(Granovetter, 1983). Access to individuals outside one's close
circle provides access to non-redundant information, resulting
in benefits such as employment connections (Granovetter,
1973).
Although bridging social capital is viewed as an individual-
level construct, prior research has conceptualized it in a
community
context (Putnam, 2000; Williams, 2006). Williams (2006)
includes dimensions such as the extent to which people see
themselves
as part of a broader group and exhibit norms of giving within a
broader community in the construct.
1.1.3. Psychological well-being and social capital

Social capital researchers have found that various forms of
social capital, including ties with friends and neighbors, are
related
to indices of psychological well-being, such as self-esteem and
satisfaction with life (Bargh, McKenna, & Fitzsimons, 2002;
Helliwell & Putnam, 2004). However, most research examining
the connections between self-esteem, measures of well-being,
and
social capital emphasize the importance of family, intimate
relationships, and close friends (Bishop & Inderbitzen, 1995;
Keefe &
Berndt, 1996). There is a need for additional research exploring
the potential linkages between psychological well-being and the
kinds of weak ties thought to enhance bridging social capital.
Constant, Sproull, and Kiesler (1996) argue for such a linkage
in their
research documenting how people show gains in self-esteem
when they provide technical advice to strangers over the
Internet.
1.1.4. Internet use, relationship development, and psychosocial
well-being
In the past decade, a number of studies have explored how
Internet use might be related to psychological and social well-
being
with mixed results (e.g., Kraut et al.,1998; Kraut et al., 2002;
McKenna & Bargh, 2000; Nie, 2001; Shaw & Gant, 2002;
Valkenburg &
Peter, 2007). Kraut et al. (1998) found that heavier Internet use
was associated with various measures of loneliness, depression
and
stress. They argue that this was because weaker ties generated
online were replacing stronger offline ties with family and
friends.

In a follow-up study, Kraut et al. (2002) found that when
examined over a longer period of time, Internet use was no
longer
associated with decreased communication and involvement with
family (and the associated measures of loneliness and
depression). Indeed, the effects were generally positive. Of
particular interest was their finding that measures of
introversion and
extraversion moderated the outcomes from Internet use, with
extraverts more likely to experience benefits from their Internet
use
than introverts. Other researchers also argue that Internet use
has positive impacts on psychological well-being (Bargh &
McKenna,
2004; McKenna & Bargh; 2000; Shaw & Gant, 2002). Bargh and
McKenna (2004) attribute this to the increases in online
interactions, which mitigate any loss in communication with
others due to time spent online. In an experiment, Shaw and
Gant
(2002) found decreases in perceived loneliness and depression
as well as increases in perceived social support and self-esteem
following engagement in online chat sessions. In related
research, Valkenburg and Peter (2007) found that socially
anxious
adolescents perceived the Internet to be more valuable for
intimate self-disclosure than non-socially anxious respondents,
leading
to more online communication.
Despite the plethora of research on Internet use in general,
research examining the complex relationships between
psychological well-being and use of online social network
services is scarce. In a notable exception, Valkenburg et al.
(2006) found
that the more people used social network sites, the greater the
frequency of interaction with friends, which had positive

benefits on
respondents' self-esteem and ultimately their reported
satisfaction with life.
While considerable research shows that relationships are
important elements of social development for young adults, this
is
also a time of life when relationships are interrupted as people
move from one location to another. Entering college, moving
between residences, graduating and entering the professional
workforce are all events that could disrupt the maintenance of
relationships of people in this demographic (Cummings, Lee, &
Kraut, 2006). These individuals have an especially urgent need
to be
able to maintain connections with their previously inhabited
networks while still being open to new experiences and
relationships
in their current geographical context. Hence, we would expect
the Internet-based social networking services to play a role in
the
maintenance of relationships among this population of users.
1.1.5. Social capital and use of social network sites
Researchers have started to explore the possibilities social
network sites have for building social capital among users.
Resnick
(2001), for example, suggests that new forms of social capital
and relationship building will occur in social network sites due
to the
way that technologies like distribution lists, photo directories,
and search capabilities support online linkages with others.
Donath
and boyd (2004) hypothesize that social network sites could
increase the number of weak ties a user might be able to
maintain

because their affordances are well-suited to maintaining these
ties cheaply and easily. In particular, bridging social capital
might be
436 C. Steinfield et al. / Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology 29 (2008) 434–445
augmented by social network sites like Friendster or Facebook
because they enable users to create and maintain larger, diffuse
networks of relationships from which they could potentially
draw resources (Donath & boyd, 2004; Resnick, 2001; Wellman,
Haase, Witte, & Hampton, 2001). In one of the few attempts to
examine the effect of social network site use on social capital
among
young people, Ellison et al. (2007) surveyed users of Facebook
at a large Midwestern University. They assessed levels of
bridging
and bonding social capital as well as “maintained” social
capital, a form of social capital that speaks to one's ability to
stay
connected with members of a previously inhabited community.
They found that intensity of Facebook use was a significant
predictor of bridging social capital, even after controlling for a
range of demographic, general Internet use, and psychological
well-
being measures. The mean number of friends reported by these
participants was between 150 and 200. This relatively high
number
of friends suggests that these networks consist of larger, less
intimate relationships as opposed to tightly-knit small groups.
Moreover, Ellison et al. (2007) found that the relationship
between Facebook use and bridging social capital was greater
for low
self-esteem students than for high self-esteem students, a

finding that contradicts the Kraut et al. (2002) “rich get richer”
finding
that high extraversion subjects gained more from their Internet
use than low extraversion subjects. Although introversion/
extraversion is not the same variable as self-esteem, such
findings suggest that there is value in exploring the extent to
which an
individual's propensity to form relationships can be influenced
in some way by their use of social network sites like Facebook.
Ellison et al. (2007) looked only at cross-sectional relationships
between Facebook use and the existence of social capital.
Facebook use was strongly associated with the existence of
bridging social capital, possibly indicating that young adults
were using
Facebook to maintain large and heterogeneous networks of
friends. However, an equally plausible interpretation is that
young
adults with a large and heterogeneous network of friends had
more motivation to manage this network with a service like
Facebook. This would also result in a positive correlation, and a
cross-sectional study cannot rule out such an explanation.
Moreover, even if Facebook use did influence bridging social
capital, it is not clear if such impacts are transient or enduring.
Hence,
the present study focused on the longitudinal effects of
Facebook use.
1.2. Summary and hypotheses
We summarize this review of literature with three broad
research questions, and a series of hypotheses that are suggested
by
prior research.
RQ 1. How does Facebook use among a college population

change over time? We make no explicit hypotheses here, but a
longitudinal study enables an examination of the extent to
which Facebook usage increases or decreases over a year among
students, as well as the growth or decline in the size of students'
online social network.
RQ 2. What is the directionality of the relationship between
Facebook use and development of bridging social capital? Based
on
earlier work conceptualizing bridging social capital as an
outcome of social network site use (Donath & boyd, 2004;
Ellison et al.,
2007), we hypothesize that:
H1. The more intense the use of Facebook, the greater the
perceived bridging social capital.
H2. The direction of influence is from Facebook use to bridging
social capital rather than from bridging social capital to
Facebook use.
RQ 3. How does an individual's psychological well-being
influence the relationship between social capital and social
network site
use? Based on earlier work relating psychological well-being
and self-esteem to social capital (e.g., Bargh et al., 2002;
Helliwell &
Putnam, 2004), we hypothesize that:
H3. The greater the psychological well-being, the greater the
perceived bridging social capital.
In addition, given the earlier findings by Ellison et al. (2007),
we propose that:
H4. Psychological well-being will moderate the relationship

between Facebook use and bridging social capital.
2. Method
A combination of survey methods and in-depth interviews with
a small number of students form the core of the data that were
used for this study. To test the relationships over time between
Facebook use and social capital, survey data were collected at
two
points in time a year apart. Respondents were all students at a
large Midwestern university. Initially, in April of 2006, a
random
sample of 800 undergraduate students was sent an email
invitation from one of the authors, with a short description of
the study,
information about confidentiality and an incentive for
participation, and a link to the survey. Participants were
compensated with a
$5 credit to a university-administered spending account. The
survey was hosted on a commercial online survey-hosting site.
We
focused on undergraduate users and did not include faculty,
staff, or graduate students in our sampling frame. A total of 286
students completed the online survey, a response rate of 35.8%.
Demographic information about non-responders was not
available;
therefore we do not know whether a bias existed in regards to
survey participation. However, the demographics of our sample
compare favorably to the undergraduate population as a whole
with a few exceptions. Female, younger, in-state and on-campus
students were slightly over-represented in our sample.
In April of 2007, the survey was re-administered to a new
random sample of 1987 undergraduate students as well as to 277
respondents from the previous year. The 2007 survey was
hosted on the same survey-hosting website as the 2006 version,

and
437C. Steinfield et al. / Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology 29 (2008) 434–445
compensation was limited to an opportunity to win a $50 raffle.
A total of 477 usable surveys from the new random sample were
obtained, yielding a 24% response rate. We received 92
completed surveys from the 277 prior respondents (33%) from
2006 who
were invited to retake the survey. These 92 respondents
comprised our “panel” for investigating the potential over time
influences
of Facebook use.
As a follow-up to the first year survey, we conducted in-depth
interviews with 18 students primarily drawn from the April
2006
sample in order to learn more about the ways in which students
used Facebook to maintain existing friendships and make new
ones. We asked survey respondents if they were willing to be
interviewed about their Facebook use in person, and 176 (62%)
said
yes. We then wrote to a number of these individuals and from
those who responded with availability we were able to schedule
10
women and 6 men for in-depth interviews. To achieve more
gender balance, we added two men through referrals from
interviewees, resulting in a total of 18 interviews. We were
particularly interested in how the affordances of Facebook
translated
into usage strategies that resulted in the kinds of bridging social
capital outcomes found in the first survey. Although we do not
report an extensive analysis of our qualitative data in this paper,

we include quotations from these interviews to help explicate
the
survey findings and suggest how Facebook use might be
operating to influence social capital outcomes.
Table 1 provides sample descriptive characteristics, revealing
that the 92 members of the panel sample did not substantially
differ from the random samples in each period on the
demographic data we obtained. There were also no demographic
differences
between the 2006 and 2007 samples, despite the somewhat
lower response rate in 2007. However, there was significant
growth in
Internet and Facebook usage from 2006 to 2007 (discussed in
the Results section). The statistical analyses we report here
focus only
on the panel sample, exploring how usage of Facebook in year 1
relates to outcomes in year 2.
2.1. Measures
In addition to demographic measures noted above, the study
relied on four sets of measures drawn from Ellison et al. (2007).
Independent measures included general Internet use, Facebook
use, and two measures of psychological well-being: self-esteem
and satisfaction with life. Our dependent measure is bridging
social capital. In general, these variables were assessed in 2007
using
the same survey items as in 2006. In a few instances described
below, some items were reworded, and we had to do some
conversion to allow cross-year comparisons.
2.1.1. Internet use
In order to investigate the unique effects of social network site
use that might be distinct from other uses of the Internet, we

included a measure of general Internet use. Internet use was
assessed using a measure adapted from LaRose, Lai, Lange,
Love, and
Wu (2005), which required respondents to indicate how many
hours they actively used the Internet each day during a typical
week
Table 1
Summary of descriptive statistics for Facebook panel in 2006
and 2007
2006 2006 2007 2007
Full sample a Panel Random sample Panel
(N = 288) (N = 92) (N = 481) (N = 92)
M/% (N) SD M/% (N) SD M/% (N) SD M/% (N) SD
Sex
Male 34% (98) 26% (24) 33% (155) No change
Female 66% (188) 74% (68) 67% (312)
Age 20.1 1.64 20.1 1.36 20.6 2.33 20.99 1.38
Ethnicity
White 87% (247) 90% (83) 83% (375) No change
Non-white 13% (36) 10% (9) 17% (78)
Year in school b 2.55 1.07 2.51 1.04 2.71 1.11 3.34 .89
Home residence
In-state 91% (259) 91% (83) 92% (428) No change
Out-of-state 09% (25) 09% (8) 08% (36)
Fraternity/sorority member 08% (23) 07% (6) 09% (42) No
change
Daily hours Internet use c 2:56 1:52 2:58 1:52 4:16 4:26 4:04

4:54
Facebook member (%) 94% (268) 98% (90) 94% (440) No
change
Daily minutes Facebook use d 29.48 36.7 32.56 38.96 63.57
53.03 53.76 42.71
Number of Facebook friends e 200.62 113.62 223.09 116.36
302.08 217.39 339.26 193.26
a Source: Ellison et al. (2007).
b 1 = first year, 2 = sophomore, 3 = junior, 4 = senior.
c For comparison purposes, the 2006 data were converted from
an ordinal scale by assigning the score of the mid-point of each
response category (e.g., 1–2 h =
1 h 30 min). In 2007, Internet use was measured by filling in the
value in hours and minutes for weekends and weekdays, and
then taking weighted average.
d For 2006, minutes of Facebook use were converted from an
ordinal scale by assigning the mid-point of each response
category, where less than 10 = 5 min,
10–30 = 15, 31–60 = 45, 1–2 h = 90, 2–3 h = 150, more than 3 h
= 180 min. In 2007, Facebook minutes were measured by filling
in the value in hours and minutes
for weekends and weekdays, and then taking weighted average.
e To compare 2006 and 2007 friends data, the 2006 number of
friends was converted from the original 10 point ordinal scale
by assigning the score of the mid-
point of each response category: 10 or less = 5, 11–50 = 30, 51–
100 = 75, 101–150 = 125, 151–200 = 175, 201–250 = 225, 251–
300 = 275, 301–400 = 250, more than
400 = 400. In 2007, respondents simply wrote in their estimated
number of Facebook friends. Outliers were capped at 800.
438 C. Steinfield et al. / Journal of Applied Developmental

Psychology 29 (2008) 434–445
and weekend day. In 2006, respondents selected from a set of
options such as 1–2 h (up to a maximum of 10 h), while in 2007,
a text
box for hours and minutes was provided in order to obtain more
exact estimates. The mid-point of the scale was used to estimate
actual hours per day for the 2006 …
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[email protected]
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19 Key Essays on
How Internet Is
Changing Our Lives
Manuel Castells
The Impact of the Internet on Society:
A Global Perspective
bbvaopenmind.com

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
––––––––––
Manuel Castells
Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor of Communication
Technology and Society,
University of Southern California
https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/author/manuel-castells-en/
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bbvaopenmind.com
Manuel Castells
manuelcastells.info
Illustration
Emiliano Ponzi
http://www.manuelcastells.info/es/index.htm
bbvaopenmind.com
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7

Manuel Castells is the Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor
of Communication Technology and Society at the University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. He is also Professor Emeritus
of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley;
director of
the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University
of Catalonia (UOC); director of the Network Society Chair at
the
Collège d’études mondiales in Paris, and director of research
in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.
He is académico numerario of the Spanish Royal Academy of
Economics and Finance, fellow of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science, fellow of the British Academy,
and fellow of the Academia Europea. He was also a founding
board member of the European Research Council and of
the European Institute of Innovation and Technology of the
European Commission. He received the Erasmus Medal in
2011, and the 2012 Holberg Prize. He has published 25 books,
including the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society

and Culture (Blackwell, 1996–2003), The Internet Galaxy
(Oxford University Press, 2001), Communication Power
(Oxford
University Press, 2009), and Networks of Outrage and Hope
(Polity Press, 2012).
bbvaopenmind.com
bbvaopenmind.com
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9
Introduction
The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age,
as the electri-
cal engine was the vector of technological transformation of the
Industrial
Age. This global network of computer networks, largely based
nowadays on
platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous
capacity of mul-
timodal, interactive communication in chosen time,

transcending space. The
Internet is not really a new technology: its ancestor, the
Arpanet, was first de-
ployed in 1969 (Abbate 1999). But it was in the 1990s when it
was privatized
and released from the control of the U.S. Department of
Commerce that it
diffused around the world at extraordinary speed: in 1996 the
first survey of
Internet users counted about 40 million; in 2013 they are over
2.5 billion, with
China accounting for the largest number of Internet users.
Furthermore, for
some time the spread of the Internet was limited by the
difficulty to lay out
land-based telecommunications infrastructure in the emerging
countries.
This has changed with the explosion of wireless communication
in the early
twenty-first century. Indeed, in 1991, there were about 16
million subscrib-
ers of wireless devices in the world, in 2013 they are close to 7
billion (in a
planet of 7.7 billion human beings). Counting on the family and
village uses
of mobile phones, and taking into consideration the limited use
of these
devices among children under five years of age, we can say that
humankind
is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of
inequality in the
bandwidth as well as in the efficiency and price of the service.
At the heart of these communication networks the Internet
ensures the
production, distribution, and use of digitized information in all

formats.
According to the study published by Martin Hilbert in Science
(Hilbert and
López 2011), 95 percent of all information existing in the planet
is digitized
and most of it is accessible on the Internet and other computer
networks.
The speed and scope of the transformation of our
communication envi-
ronment by Internet and wireless communication has triggered
all kind of
utopian and dystopian perceptions around the world.
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As in all moments of major technological change, people,
companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but
they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its
effects.
The media aggravate the distorted perception by dwelling into
scary
reports on the basis of anecdotal observation and biased
commentary. If
there is a topic in which social sciences, in their diversity,
should contribute
to the full understanding of the world in which we live, it is
precisely the

area that has come to be named in academia as Internet Studies.
Because,
in fact, academic research knows a great deal on the interaction
between
Internet and society, on the basis of methodologically rigorous
empirical
research conducted in a plurality of cultural and institutional
contexts.
Any process of major technological change generates its own
mythology.
In part because it comes into practice before scientists can
assess its ef-
fects and implications, so there is always a gap between social
change and
its understanding. For instance, media often report that intense
use of the
Internet increases the risk of alienation, isolation, depression,
and with-
drawal from society. In fact, available evidence shows that there
is either
no relationship or a positive cumulative relationship between
the Internet
use and the intensity of sociability. We observe that, overall,
the more so-
ciable people are, the more they use the Internet. And the more
they use
the Internet, the more they increase their sociability online and
offline,
their civic engagement, and the intensity of family and
friendship relation-
ships, in all cultures—with the exception of a couple of early
studies of
the Internet in the 1990s, corrected by their authors later
(Castells 2001;
Castells et al. 2007; Rainie and Wellman 2012; Center for the
Digital Future

2012 et al.).
Thus, the purpose of this chapter will be to summarize some of
the key re-
search findings on the social effects of the Internet relying on
the evidence
provided by some of the major institutions specialized in the
social study
of the Internet. More specifically, I will be using the data from
the world
at large: the World Internet Survey conducted by the Center for
the Digital
Future, University of Southern California; the reports of the
British Computer
Society (BCS), using data from the World Values Survey of the
University
of Michigan; the Nielsen reports for a variety of countries; and
the annual
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reports from the International Telecommunications Union. For
data on
the United States, I have used the Pew American Life
and Internet Project
of the Pew Institute. For the United Kingdom, the Oxford
Internet Survey
from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, as well
as the Virtual

Society Project from the Economic and Social Science Research
Council.
For Spain, the Project Internet Catalonia of the Internet
Interdisciplinary
Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC);
the various
reports on the information society from Telefónica; and from
the Orange
Foundation. For Portugal, the Observatório de Sociedade da
Informação
e do Conhecimento (OSIC) in Lisbon. I would like to emphasize
that most
of the data in these reports converge toward similar trends. Thus
I have
selected for my analysis the findings that complement and
reinforce each
other, offering a consistent picture of the human experience on
the Internet
in spite of the human diversity.
Given the aim of this publication to reach a broad audience, I
will not
present in this text the data supporting the analysis presented
here.
Instead, I am referring the interested reader to the web sources
of the
research organizations mentioned above, as well as to selected
biblio-
graphic references discussing the empirical foundation of the
social trends
reported here.
Technologies of Freedom, the Network Society,
and the Culture of Autonomy
In order to fully understand the effects of the Internet on

society, we should
remember that technology is material culture. It is produced in a
social
process in a given institutional environment on the basis of the
ideas, val-
ues, interests, and knowledge of their producers, both their
early producers
and their subsequent producers. In this process we must include
the users
of the technology, who appropriate and adapt the technology
rather than
adopting it, and by so doing they modify it and produce it in an
endless
process of interaction between technological production and
social use. So,
to assess the relevance of Internet in society we must recall the
specific
characteristics of Internet as a technology. Then we must place
it in the
context of the transformation of the overall social structure, as
well as in
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relationship to the culture characteristic of this social structure.
Indeed,
we live in a new social structure, the global network society,
characterized
by the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy.

Internet is a technology of freedom, in the terms coined by
Ithiel de Sola
Pool in 1973, coming from a libertarian culture, paradoxically
financed by
the Pentagon for the benefit of scientists, engineers, and their
students,
with no direct military application in mind (Castells 2001). The
expansion
of the Internet from the mid-1990s onward resulted from the
combina-
tion of three main factors:
- The technological discovery of the World Wide Web by Tim
Berners-Lee
and his willingness to distribute the source code to improve it
by the
open-source contribution of a global community of users, in
continuity
with the openness of the TCP/IP Internet protocols. The web
keeps run-
ning under the same principle of open source. And two-thirds of
web
servers are operated by Apache, an open-source server program.
- Institutional change in the management of the Internet,
keeping it under
the loose management of the global Internet community,
privatizing it,
and allowing both commercial uses and cooperative uses.
- Major changes in social structure, culture, and social behavior:
networking
as a prevalent organizational form; individuation as the main
orientation
of social behavior; and the culture of autonomy as the culture of

the net-
work society.
I will elaborate on these major trends.
Our society is a network society; that is, a society constructed
around
personal and organizational networks powered by digital
networks and
communicated by the Internet. And because networks are global
and know
no boundaries, the network society is a global network society.
This histori-
cally specific social structure resulted from the interaction
between the
emerging technological paradigm based on the digital revolution
and some
major sociocultural changes. A primary dimension of these
changes is what
has been labeled the rise of the Me-centered society, or, in
sociological
terms, the process of individuation, the decline of community
understood
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in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. This
is not the
end of community, and not the end of place-based interaction,

but there is
a shift toward the reconstruction of social relationships,
including strong
cultural and personal ties that could be considered a form of
community,
on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects.
The process of individuation is not just a matter of cultural
evolution, it
is materially produced by the new forms of organizing economic
activities,
and social and political life, as I analyzed in my trilogy on the
Information
Age (Castells 1996–2003). It is based on the transformation of
space (met-
ropolitan life), work and economic activity (rise of the
networked enterprise
and networked work processes), culture and communication
(shift from
mass communication based on mass media to mass self-
communication
based on the Internet); on the crisis of the patriarchal family,
with increas-
ing autonomy of its individual members; the substitution of
media politics
for mass party politics; and globalization as the selective
networking of
places and processes throughout the planet.
But individuation does not mean isolation, or even less the end
of
community. Sociability is reconstructed as networked
individualism
and community through a quest for like-minded individuals in a
process
that combines online interaction with offline interaction,

cyberspace and
the local space. Individuation is the key process in constituting
subjects
(individual or collective), networking is the organizational form
constructed
by these subjects; this is the network society, and the form of
sociability is
what Rainie and Wellman (2012) conceptualized as networked
individual-
ism. Network technologies are of course the medium for this
new social
structure and this new culture (Papacharissi 2010).
As stated above, academic research has established that the
Internet
does not isolate people, nor does it reduce their sociability; it
actually
increases sociability, as shown by myself in my studies in
Catalonia
(Castells 2007), Rainie and Wellman in the United States
(2012), Cardoso in
Portugal (2010), and the World Internet Survey for the world at
large (Center
for the Digital Future 2012 et al.). Furthermore, a major study
by Michael
Willmott for the British Computer Society (Trajectory
Partnership 2010) has
shown a positive correlation, for individuals and for countries,
between the
frequency and intensity of the use of the Internet and the
psychological
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indicators of personal happiness. He used global data for 35,000
people
obtained from the World Wide Survey of the University of
Michigan from
2005 to 2007. Controlling for other factors, the study showed
that Internet
use empowers people by increasing their feelings of security,
personal
freedom, and influence, all feelings that have a positive effect
on happiness
and personal well-being. The effect is particularly positive for
people with
lower income and who are less qualified, for people in the
developing
world, and for women. Age does not affect the positive
relationship; it is
significant for all ages. Why women? Because they are at the
center of the
network of their families, Internet helps them to organize their
lives. Also, it
helps them to overcome their isolation, particularly in
patriarchal societies.
The Internet also contributes to the rise of the culture of
autonomy.
The key for the process of individuation is the construction of

autono-
my by social actors, who become subjects in the process. They
do so by
defining their specific projects in interaction with, but not
submission
to, the institutions of society. This is the case for a minority of
individu-
als, but because of their capacity to lead and mobilize they
introduce a
new culture in every domain of social life: in work
(entrepreneurship), in
the media (the active audience), in the Internet (the creative
user), in the
market (the informed and proactive consumer), in education
(students as
informed critical thinkers, making possible the new frontier of
e-learning
and m-learning pedagogy), in health (the patient-centered health
man-
agement system) in e-government (the informed, participatory
citizen), in
social movements (cultural change from the grassroots, as in
feminism or
environmentalism), and in politics (the independent-minded
citizen able
to participate in self-generated political networks).
There is increasing evidence of the direct relationship between
the
Internet and the rise of social autonomy. From 2002 to 2007 I
directed in
Catalonia one of the largest studies ever conducted in Europe on
the
Internet and society, based on 55,000 interviews, one-third of
them face to
face (IN3 2002–07). As part of this study, my collaborators and

I compared
the behavior of Internet users to non-Internet users in a sample
of 3,000
people, representative of the population of Catalonia. Because
in 2003
only about 40 percent of people were Internet users we could
really com-
pare the differences in social behavior for users and non-users,
something
that nowadays would be more difficult given the 79 percent
penetration
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rate of the Internet in Catalonia. Although the data are
relatively old, the
findings are not, as more recent studies in other countries
(particularly in
Portugal) appear to confirm the observed trends. We constructed
scales of
autonomy in different dimensions. Only between 10 and 20
percent of the
population, depending on dimensions, were in the high level of
autonomy.
But we focused on this active segment of the population to
explore the
role of the Internet in the construction of autonomy. Using
factor analysis
we identified six major types of autonomy based on projects of

individuals
according to their practices:
a) professional development
b) communicative autonomy
c) entrepreneurship
d) autonomy of the body
e) sociopolitical participation
f) personal, individual autonomy
These six types of autonomous practices were statistically
independent
among themselves. But each one of them correlated positively
with
Internet use in statistically significant terms, in a self-
reinforcing loop
(time sequence): the more one person was autonomous, the more
she/he
used the web, and the more she/he used the web, the more
autonomous
she/he became (Castells et al. 2007). This is a major empirical
finding.
Because if the dominant cultural trend in our society is the
search for
autonomy, and if the Internet powers this search, then we are
moving
toward a society of assertive individuals and cultural freedom,
regardless
of the barriers of rigid social organizations inherited from the
Industrial
Age. From this Internet-based culture of autonomy have
emerged a new
kind of sociability, networked sociability, and a new kind of
sociopolitical
practice, networked social movements and networked
democracy. I will

now turn to the analysis of these two fundamental trends at the
source of
current processes of social change worldwide.
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The Rise of Social Network Sites on the Internet
Since 2002 (creation of Friendster, prior to Facebook) a new
socio-technical
revolution has taken place on the Internet: the rise of social
network sites
where now all human activities are present, from personal
interaction to
business, to work, to culture, to communication, to social
movements, and
to politics.
Social Network Sites are web-based services that allow
individuals to
(1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded
system,
(2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a
connection,

and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those
made by
others within the system.
(Boyd and Ellison 2007, 2)
Social networking uses, in time globally spent, surpassed e-mail
in
November 2007. It surpassed e-mail in number of users in July
2009.
In terms of users it reached 1 billion by September 2010, with
Facebook
accounting for about half of it. In 2013 it has almost doubled,
particularly
because of increasing use in China, India, and Latin America.
There is in-
deed a great diversity of social networking sites (SNS) by
countries and
cultures. Facebook, started for Harvard-only members in 2004,
is pres-
ent in most of the world, but QQ, Cyworld, and Baidu dominate
in China;
Orkut in Brazil; Mixi in Japan; etc. In terms of demographics,
age is the
main differential factor in the use of SNS, with a drop of
frequency of use
after 50 years of age, and particularly 65. But this is not just a
teenager’s
activity. The main Facebook U.S. category is in the age group
35–44, whose
frequency of use of the site is higher than for younger people.
Nearly 60
percent of adults in the U.S. have at least one SNS profile, 30
percent two,
and 15 percent three or more. Females are as present as males,
except

when in a society there is a general gender gap. We observe no
differences
in education and class, but there is some class specialization of
SNS, such
as Myspace being lower than FB; LinkedIn is for professionals.
Thus, the most important activity on the Internet at this point in
time goes through social networking, and SNS have become the
chosen
platforms for all kind of activities, not just personal friendships
or chatting,
but for marketing, e-commerce, education, cultural creativity,
media and
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entertainment distribution, health applications, and
sociopolitical activism.
This is a significant trend for society at large. Let me explore
the meaning
of this trend on the basis of the still scant evidence.
Social networking sites are constructed by users themselves
building
on specific criteria of grouping. There is entrepreneurship in the
process of
creating sites, then people choose according to their interests
and projects.
Networks are tailored by people themselves with different

levels of profil-
ing and privacy. The key to success is not anonymity, but on the
contrary,
self-presentation of a real person connecting to real people (in
some cases
people are excluded from the SNS when they fake their
identity). So, it is a
self-constructed society by networking connecting to other
networks. But
this is not a virtual society. There is a close connection between
virtual
networks and networks in life at large. This is a hybrid world, a
real world,
not a virtual world or a segregated world.
People build networks to be with others, and to be with others
they want
to be with on the basis of criteria that include those people who
they al-
ready know (a selected sub-segment). Most users go on the site
every day.
It is permanent connectivity. If we needed an answer to what
happened to
sociability in the Internet world, here it is:
There is a dramatic increase in sociability, but a different
kind of sociability, facilitated and dynamized by permanent
connectivity and social networking on the web.
Based on the time when Facebook was still releasing data (this
time is
now gone) we know that in 2009 users spent 500 billion minutes
per month.
This is not just about friendship or interpersonal
communication. People
do things together, share, act, exactly as in society, although the

personal
dimension is always there. Thus, in the U.S. 38 percent of
adults share
content, 21 percent remix, 14 percent blog, and this is growing
exponen-
tially, with development of technology, software, and SNS
entrepreneurial
initiatives. On Facebook, in 2009 the average user was
connected to 60
pages, groups, and events, people interacted per month to 160
million
objects (pages, groups, events), the average user created 70
pieces of
content per month, and there were 25 billion pieces of content
shared per
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month (web links, news stories, blogs posts, notes, photos).
SNS are living
spaces connecting all dimensions of people’s experience. This
transforms
culture because people share experience with a low emotional
cost, while

saving energy and effort. They transcend time and space, yet
they produce
content, set up links, and connect practices. It is a constantly
networked
world in every dimension of human experience. They co-evolve
in perma-
nent, multiple interaction. But they choose the terms of their co-
evolution.
Thus, people live their physical lives but increasingly connect
on multiple
dimensions in SNS.
Paradoxically, the virtual life is more social than the physical
life, now individualized by the organization of work and urban
living.
But people do not live a virtual reality, indeed it is a real
virtuality, since
social practices, sharing, mixing, and living in society is
facilitated in the
virtuality, in what I called time ago the “space of flows”
(Castells 1996).
Because people are increasingly at ease in the multi-textuality
and multi-
dimensionality of the web, marketers, work organizations,
service agencies,
government, and civil society are migrating massively to the
Internet, less
and less setting up alternative sites, more and more being
present in the net-
works that people construct by themselves and for themselves,
with the
help of Internet social networking entrepreneurs, some of whom
become

billionaires in the process, actually selling freedom and the
possibility of
the autonomous construction of lives. This is the liberating
potential of the
Internet made material practice by these social networking sites.
The largest
of these social networking sites are usually bounded social
spaces managed
by a company. However, if the company tries to impede free
communication
it may lose many of its users, because the entry barriers in this
industry are
very low. A couple of technologically savvy youngsters with
little capital can
set up a site on the Internet and attract escapees from a more
restricted
Internet space, as happened to AOL and other networking sites
of the first
generation, and as could happen to Facebook or any other SNS
if they are
tempted to tinker with the rules of openness (Facebook tried to
make us-
ers pay and retracted within days). So, SNS are often a
business, but they
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bbvaopenmind.com
are in the business of selling freedom, free expression, chosen
sociability.

When they tinker with this promise they risk their hollowing by
net citizens
migrating with their friends to more …
First Monday, Volume 18, Number 5 - 6 May 2013
In just under seven years, Twitter has grown to count nearly thr
ee percent of the entire global population
among its active users who have sent more than 170 billion 140
–character messages. Today the service plays
such a significant role in American culture that the Library of C
ongress has assembled a permanent archive of
the site back to its first tweet, updated daily. With its open API,
Twitter has become one of the most popular
data sources for social research, yet the majority of the literatur
e has focused on it as a text or network
graph source, with only limited efforts to date focusing exclusiv
ely on the geography of Twitter, assessing the
various sources of geographic information on the service and th
eir accuracy. More than three percent of all
tweets are found to have native location information available,
while a naive geocoder based on a simple
major cities gazetteer and relying on the user–
provided Location and Profile fields is able to geolocate more
than a third of all tweets with high accuracy when measured aga
inst the GPS–based baseline. Geographic
proximity is found to play a minimal role both in who users com
municate with and what they communicate
about, providing evidence that social media is shifting the com
municative landscape.
Contents
Introduction

The native geography of Twitter: Georeferenced tweets
The linguistic geography of Twitter
From text to maps: The textual geography of Twitter
Accuracy and language
The geography of communication on Twitter
The geography of linking disccourse
User profile links
Twitter versus mainstream news media
Twitter’s geography of growth and impact
Conclusions
Introduction
Since its founding in 2006, Twitter has grown at an exponential
rate, today counting among its active users
more than 2.9 percent of all people living on Earth (Fiegerman,
2012) and 9.1 percent of the population of
the United States and “has become the pulse of a planet–
wide news organism, hosting the dialogue about
everything from the Arab Spring to celebrity deaths” (Stone, 20
12). In its advertising materials, Twitter calls
itself “the global town square —
the place where people around the globe go to find out what’s h
appening
right now” and that it is “increasingly the pulse of the planet” (
Twitter, 2013a). In just the past 12 months
alone Twitter has doubled from 100 million to 200 million activ
e users (Twitter, 2011; Fiegerman, 2012),
while over the last seven years, more than 170 billion tweets tot
aling 133 terabytes have been sent, 149
billion of them in just the last 24 months (Library of Congress,
2013).
Twitter offers “an unprecedented opportunity to study human co

mmunication and social networks,” (Miller,
2011) while the rising role of Twitter in the consumption of trad
itional media like television even led Nielsen
to create a new Twitter “social TV” rating system (Shih, 2012).
During major disasters, governments are
increasingly turning to Twitter to provide realtime official infor
mation streams and directives (Griggs, 2012),
while emergency services are taking the first steps to monitor T
witter as a parallel 911 system, especially in
cases where traditional phone service is unavailable (Khorram,
2012). Yet, perhaps the greatest indication of
Twitter’s cultural significance is that the Library of Congress n
ow maintains a permanent historical archive
going back to the site’s founding and updated daily (Library of
Congress, 2013).
Unlike most social network sites, Twitter and its redistributors
make nearly all of its data available via APIs
that enables realtime programmatic access to its massive seven–
year archive. This availability and ease of
use has made Twitter one of the most popular data sources for st
udying social communication, with Google
Scholar listing more than 3.2 million papers mentioning the serv
ice. Yet, the majority of the literature that
has studied Twitter has focused on the text of the tweets or the
network graph connecting users (Miller,
2011). Few studies make use of the geographic information atta
ched to tweets, while papers like Poblete, et
al. (2011) have used it primarily as a filtering mechanism rather
than focusing on the geography itself. Most
have relied either on natively georeferenced tweets or passing th
e user’s self–reported location to the Google
Geocoder or Yahoo! Placemaker API. Others, like Takhteyev, et

al. (2012), have integrated geography more
closely into their analyses, but have limited themselves to just a
few thousand tweets out of the 170 billion
sent to date.
More critically, Takhteyev, et al. (2012), like most studies that
have attempted to geolocate tweets, have
relied on the user Location field, making the assumption that it
yields the most accurate reflection of a user’s
geographic position. Social media monitoring companies, like S
emiocast (2012), each use their own
proprietary technology to locate tweets geographically, but offe
r no detail on the data fields or algorithms
they rely on or estimates of the accuracy of their approaches. In
fact, no major study to date has focused
exclusively on the geography of Twitter, examining all availabl
e sources of geographic information in the
Twitter stream and assessing their accuracy. As location is playi
ng an increasing role in everything from
monitoring for natural disasters (Earle, et al., 2011) to “the first
ever official United Nations crisis map
entirely based on data collected from social media” (Meier, 201
2), there is a critical need to better understand
the geography of Twitter.
In Fall 2012, supercomputing manufacturer Silicon Graphics Int
ernational (SGI), the University of Illinois, and
social media data vendor GNIP collaborated to create the “Glob
al Twitter Heartbeat” project
(http://www.sgi.com/go/twitter) in order to map global emotion
expressed on Twitter in realtime. GNIP
provided access to the Twitter Decahose, which consists of 10 p
ercent of all tweets sent globally each day,
while SGI provided access to one of its new UV2000 supercomp
uters with 256 processors and 4TB of RAM
running the Linux operating system. The result of this collabora

tion, which debuted at the annual
Supercomputing 2012 conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah,
processed the Twitter Decahose in real–time,
producing a sequence of heatmaps once per second visualizing g
lobal emotion and displayed on an 80” LCD
monitor and a large 12’–
diameter inflatable sphere known as a PufferSphere. In order to
construct these
visualizations, the project needed to construct one of the most d
etailed geographic representations of Twitter
ever created in order to assign a geographic location to every tw
eet possible and to understand the
geographic biases in the Twitter stream that could affect its resu
lts, the results of which form the basis of this
paper.
From 12:01AM 23 October 2012 through 11:59PM 30 November
2012, the Twitter Decahose from GNIP
streamed 1,535,929,521 tweets from 71,273,997 unique users, a
veraging 38 million tweets from 13.7 million
users each day. The JSON file format in which the stream is enc
oded generated just over 2.8TB of data over
this 39 day period, but the majority of this consists of metadata,
with the actual total tweet text weighing in
at 112.7GB, containing over 14.3 billion words. The average tw
eet is 74 characters long and consists of 9.4
words. In all, this dataset encompasses just over 0.9 percent of a
ll tweets ever sent since the debut of Twitter
and 35.6 percent of all active users as of December 2012.
Figure 1 shows the total number of tweets received per day from
the Decahose over this period, while Figure
2 shows the average number of tweets received per hour. Twitte
r exhibits strong temporal change, from a
low of just over one million tweets per hour from midnight to 2
AM PST to just over two million from 7–9AM

PST. Twitter’s content stream is dominated by a small number o
f users. The top 15 percent of users account
for 85 percent of all tweets, while the top five percent of all use
rs account for 48 percent of all tweets and the
top one percent of all users (just 720,365) account for 20 percen
t of all tweets. A very small number of core
users thus drive the majority of Twitter’s traffic. A quarter of us
ers active during this period tweeted just
once, while half tweeted between one and four times. Roughly 3
0 percent of users were active a single day
(sending one or more tweets that day), while half were active on
e–three days, and 75 percent of users were
active 10 days or less. The top 10 percent of users were active 2
4–39 days, with about one percent of users
active all 39 days.
Figure 1: Total tweets per day in the Twitter Decahose 23 Octob
er 2012 to 30 November 2012.
Figure 2: Average tweets per hour in the Twitter Decahose 23 O
ctober 2012 to 30 November 2012
(Pacific Standard Time zone).
The native geography of Twitter: Georeferenced tweets
Since August 2009, Twitter has allowed tweets to include geogr

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