The Diversity of Personal and Neighborhood Networks in the Informational City.

The 1990s were characterized by rapid technological change and ramped speculation about the social ramifications of a new information society. Pundits argued that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) would allow people to form new "virtual communities," or that ICTs would destroy community all together. The common link within research on community and the Internet has been an argument for the declining importance of place-based relations. Neighborhood interactions are lost through isolation in the home, or are replaced by social ties that are more easily maintained online. Existing studies of the impact of Internet use on community have focused on 1) studies of inexperienced technology users, 2) observations of online relationships that ignored the crosscutting nature of social networks, and 3) broadly supportive social ties while ignoring other sources of support. This paper uses a network "position generator" to examine social ties regardless of tie strength. Using survey data from the MIT E-neighbors study this paper argues that Internet use both encourages and discourages network diversity. This paper finds that those who use the Web more frequently (for other than email use) have personal networks that are less extensive than those with less frequent Web use. Online experience counters some of the negative affects of Web use. There is no evidence that Web use has a negative impact on social networks at the neighborhood level. However, while having no affect on social ties outside of the local setting, frequent email users have more extensive neighborhood based social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]