AJ Jarrard

December, 16, 2010

Dr. R. Wimberley
An Analysis of Community Evolution and the use of Facebook
A sociological battle over the definition of what community is has been occurring
throughout the literature for more than a century. The concept of evolutionary community
is to be considered in the following analysis of Facebook and its direct correlation to
community development. Community however can never be concretely defined, it is a
fluid evolutionary concept that is relative to the population, organization, environment,
and technology (POET). In an attempt to explain the evolutionary process of community
I will define a plethora of definitions, from traditional to contemporary ideas. In the study
of communities it is important to have a realization of the basic fundamental elements
needed by a community in order to exist as part of the POET; one being the physical
realm and the other being social interactions.
As it stands there is no holistic term for community, for it is an evolutionary idea
that finds itself in continuous flux. O. Duncans model of POET 1 (Population,
Organization, Environment, and Technology) describes these evolutionary ideas with a
more subtle approach, which I recommend sourcing for further detail, for I am only
covering briefly on the subject. As we go further into my analysis we will discuss the two
basic principles of community (places and transactions) as well as explain three macro
concepts of evolutionary community (localization, glocalization, and networked
individualism). I will correlate Facebook directly to community development by
explaining how it changes patterns of behavior in particular areas like social ties, and
human capital and logic. This is a critical transformation of community relations and
boundaries.
It is argued by some sociologists that community is declining and the social fabric
of our society is fraying. Some argue that the physical realm is critical; this is the
traditional sense from our relative degree. Another group believes community to be
evolutionary and predictable under the eyes of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. This
third conceptualization along with Barry Wellmans explanations of locales, glocales,
and eventually indivualalities, compliment one another in such a way as to be easily
1

Duncan, O., 1959. Cultural, Behavioral, and Ecological Perspectives in

the Study of Social Organization. The American Journal of Sociology.
65(2). P.132-153.
1

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
understood. A further look up the roots of this tree lead us to an understanding of how
complex feedback mechanisms, like our use of technology, adjust the way in which
community is performed. As we will discover, social networking sites like Facebook,
affect the community in a certain ways, both facilitating and shaping its boundaries.
The term social capital is used to describe this particular process of facilitating
and shaping boundaries. The use of Facebook changes how we develop and maintain
social ties with others; it affects our language and interactional ways.
As we maintain increasing ties amongst others in a flux of physical/non-physical
manners we increasingly become more specific with whom our friends are. This leads to
peculiar rational choices that continue the treadmill of specialization, heterogeneity, and
egoism.
Technology acts as a medium of transaction increasingly in todays society
amongst individuals, locales, regions, nations, and globally. As technology creeps further
into our everyday lives we become intertwined and we find ourselves using tools like
Facebook to enhance and facilitate our social capital, the ties and bonds of society.
I will attempt to explain the current evolutionary trends occurring to the concept
of community by describing how it has shifted from little-boxes (purely physically
constrained), to a contemporary state of glocalization (both local and global), and then
to a future of total networked individualism (pure personal community, not constrained
by space). There are arguments saying community is breaking down and arguments
saying it never has and is only changing shape. I will show how technology is shifting
our way in which we conceptualize community and provide a specific example,
describing the social networking site of Facebook and its particular relation to
community.
The Basics of Community
Most people are in basic agreement that the community consists of person in a
social interaction within a geographic area and having one or more additional common
ties.2 The traditional view of this perspective believes community to be rooted in
neighborhoods that are spatially bounded and the local population knows one another and
2

George A. Hillerym Jr., Definitions of Community Areas of

Agreement, Rural Sociology, 20 (1955) p.111.
2

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
may walk door-to-door (Chua, Made, and Wellman 2009). Some consensus say
community has three basic elements. One, community is a social unit of which space is
an integral part; community is a place. (Kaufman). Two, community indicates an
organizational way of life. And the third element is collective action, which is to interact
together for a common life concern (Kaufman).
While others, like Wilkenson, believes community to be natural interactions.
Schwalenbach says it is people naturally connected. Tonneeis and Mead call it an
aggregate of people who share common interest in a particular locality. (Wilkenson)
Although I argue that the term locality may never be fully developed.
Amos Hawleys perspective from a Human Ecological perspective, along with
Hillers and Parsons, classified community as a structure of relations through which a
localized population provides its daily needs. (Wilkenson)
The Human Ecological perspective requires that a physical realm is needed. I
have trouble believing this to be the absolute definition of community and therefore
critique its breadth. This particular perspective, ibid, has flaws in the focusing of solely
defining community through the use of direct concepts of locality and daily needs.
This is too narrow a perspective, although it carries validity in a more specialized lens of
the community. In a physical perspective it is precisely true that we need a geographic
setting in which a particular social organization provides our needs for survival:
resources, and services.
The human ecological model is too specific in its definition of a holistic
community. What it is failing to consider within its lens is the other root of community,
which is just pure social interactional, crossing all boundaries of relative defined locales.
Many sociologists using the traditional sense of community are debating the breakdown
of community, especially under the lens of a more localized concept of boundaries and
traditional aspects. How one considers the definition of community effects how one may
or may not believe the argument that community is declining. The traditional community
argument especially blames generational change and its use of technology for a
degradation of community.

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley

Decline of Community?
Robert Putnam, a scholar and writer, argues that community is breaking down and
civic participation is on a steady decline (Putnam, 2000). Putnam says that the loss of
what he defines civic particpation is the main element dissolving the foundations of
community. He argues that the number of strong ties or bonded capital one has is
dwindling as well.3 In traditional communities people have less ties, but stronger bonds.
These strong bonds contain emotions like empathy for one another. We are like a pack of
wolves, communal by instinct and made for local groups of close others.
Putnam goes on to measure that civic participation in the dimensions of formal
organizations is at its lowest rates ever. Church groups, sport teams, clubs, bowling
leagues, and any formal organizations are suffering from both a loss of participatory
members and a continual divide from one another in the creation of more heterogenic
organizations. The decline of civic participation is shadowed by a lessened ability of
citizens to articulate and organize requests for good government, the movement away
from community life, and increased psychological alienation (Putnam, 1996, 2000).
Putnams view on the community is a very physically based traditional outlook,
relative to our degree of understanding. Putnam argues that there is a decline in
engagement with one another and that face-to-face interacting is occurring less
frequently. Things like the Internet, draws people away from family and friends and
reduces interest in the local community and its politics (Nie, Hillygus, & Erbring, 2002;
Wellman, 2003). The Internet also shuts people off to their immediate physical
environment, because being online means you pay less attention to your surroundings
(Wellman, 2001). Putnam explains how technologies, like the television, hinder
interaction with others in the physical realm. Technology he believes is the cause of
degradation within the family and amongst community, the loss of interpersonal
interaction4 with one another. The consequences of this, according to Putnam, are loss of
3

Strong ties/bonded capital, refer to the emotional strength and

commitment reciprocated to another individual.
4
Interpersonal is considered under most interpretations to mean direct
physical face-to-face transactions.
4

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
empathy for one another, trust, and identity. We reach a point, Putnam states, where we
do not even know our neighbors, are isolated, and loose the aspiration to pay it forward
when in public surrounded by strangers (Putnam, 2000).
Putnam continues to hold strong to his arguments, saying he has validity in his
variables of measurements, numbers, and calculations through tools like regression
analysts. If people are tucked away in their homes instead of being out in public maybe
they are chatting online: one-to-one, schmoozing, ranting, and participating in blogs
(discussion groups) (Kraut, Lundmark, et al., 1998; Smith, Drucker, Wellman, & Kraut,
1999). What if Putnam is only measuring the old forms of community and participation
while new forms of communication and organization underneath his radar are connecting
people (Wellman, 2001)? What he fails to conceptualize in his data is the fact that, yes
formal organizations are on a decline, but those formalities are being replaced with
informalities. This means that community is not falling apart, but is just shifting in the
way it organizes itself as consequence of the adaptation and use of technology. Putnam
did not foresee the cultural lag5 that occurs with the power of technology, the
innovation that follows, and the adaptation to technology, to better suit our needs as
humans. Social networking sites, like Facebook, enhance community ties through the
medium of technology, thus reshaping how community is performed and defined.
Transition of Community
The evolutionary aspect of community can be understood and explained through
the discussion of Barry Wellmans macro perspective. The Community Question is to
ponder how increased information, computer use, bureaucracy, industry, and urbanization
alters society (Wellman, 1979). The history of community formation, according to
Wellman, can be seen as a series of three ideal types, which reflect changes in technology
and mobility (2009). Wellman describes community as a shifting adaptive concept that
found its roots in strictly place-based, face-to-face interaction. This Wellman refers to as
little boxes, where interaction involved traveling by foot, door-to-door. He advances the
idea that community shifts from this original state to a glocalized community, of both
place-based and global systematic interactions between individuals. Glocalization
5

William Ogburns defenition of cultural lag is the delayed adaptation

and reaction of the populations use of technology relative to its
invention.
5

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
occurred with the invention of things like, the telephone, car and plane, this created the
ability for individuals to be based in place-to-place interactions, where you call Sallys
house from your house. Eventually community reaches a state of total networked
individualism, interactions absent of place and locality.
Traditional little boxes can be stereotyped as having high social control and
limited resources of what is available within the group (Wellman, Gloc). The little box
community is socially and cognitively bounded by homogenous, broadly-embracing
groups (Wellman, Gloc). The individuals in this community deal with only a few formal
organizations in which they belong and identify with. Each situation occurs in a place,
one group at a time. This kind of organization builds strong solidarity, trust, and empathy
for one another within the community. The people live in densely knit, hierarchically
arranged bounded groups, where they experience work, community, and domesticity
together (Wellman, Gloc).
Community is evolutionary and is shifting from spatially-defined communities to
relationally-defined communities (Chua, Made, and Wellman, 2009; Kayhara, 2006). We
are moving from densely and tightly-knit groups to sparsely-knit and loosely-bounded
networks (Wellman, 2003). This is a move from the traditional neighborhood
community of bounded geographical area, a pastoral ideal of community (Wellman &
Leighton, 1979), to a personalized community. This transition is facilitated by
technology and its ability to adapt an ever increasing population to its environment,
through specialization. No longer are communities locally constrained, but instead people
have a multitude of glocalized ties. This change to a networked society allows for
boundaries to be permeable, interactions to become diverse, ties and associations can
switch easily between multiple networks, and the hierarchies become flatter, but more
complex (Wellman, Gloc). Each person highly develops his or her own personal
community. The technological development of computer networks and social networks
give rise to increased individualism and heterogeneity. This gives rise to demand for
collaborative communication and information sharing, which nourishes societal
transitions from group-based societies to network-based societies (Castells, 1996, 2000;
Wellman, 2002, 2003).

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
The rise of the networked individual from a glocalized system has been
developing for decades. Examples affecting this transition include: social changes, like
birth control and dual-career families which facilitate in a transition from place-to-place
to a person-to-person mode of domestic and community life; separation of land areas, like
commercial industrial zones and residential; and technological changes, like car
ownership, highways, and affordable air transportation (Wellman, 2003).

These

influences change how people contact, interact, and obtain resources from each other.
The Internet has become embedded in the daily lives of people in much of the
developed worlds (Wellman, 2003; Wellman & Haythornthwaite, 2002; DiMaggio et al.,
2001; Howard, Rainie & Jones, 2002). We must consider how the Internet is affecting
interpersonal relationships and organization involvement in their social networks of
community. Do people communicate more because of the Internets capabilities? Are
physical relations still important for creating closeness and emotional support? What
sense of belonging to communities do networked individuals have?
Social Networking Online:
Today information and connectivity is at an all time high and continually
increasing. Everything moves so fast we have become accustomed to immediate solutions
and connections; this has raised the ability of one to make many personalized choices. At
any instance we can connect with anyone of our friends or family, from texting, calling,
emailing, and now Facebooking. The use of Facebook has helped increase the ease and
convenience of connecting with friends and family, as well as allowed for people to
create a larger network of social capital, whether they be maintained friends from a far, or
your neighbor, co-worker, student peer, or just an acquaintance.
Facebook members can also join virtual groups based on common interest, or see
what classes they have in common with others. Users may learn about others' hobbies,
interests, relationships, and much more. One has the ability to portray themselves as they
please, thus maintaining a particular identity they want others to assume about them. This
new way of social networking is allowing for people to bridge online and offline
connections, according to Ellison et al. (2007). This may allow for us to enhance placebased community and facilitate the generation of social capital (Hampton, 2003).

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
Facebook can support the creation of new social ties as well as maintain old ones,
thus allowing for people to remain connected with one another no matter geographical
distances. Many times these on-line connections through Facebook bring about face-toface interactions, which according to Putnam, is highly needed within the declining
community he observes. Facebook allows for individuals to further increase the density
and velocity of interactions with those from our physical environment.
Facebook:
Facebook was created in 2004, by December of the first year had 1 million users
(Ellison, 2007; Krisanic, 2008) and within three years had more than 21 million members
and created 1.6 billion page views a day (Ellision; Krisanic, 2008). Facebook works in
two ways; by consuming existing content (reading others profiles), or by contributing
new content, publishing. Contributing to Facebook, which involves impression
management (later discussed), includes posting comments, sending messages, tagging
pictures, uploading contents, posting website links, and filling out profiles. A typical user
of Facebook may check their page two or three times a day for updates and news of what
others have done. This enhances our relations by keeping people in touch with one
another.
Facebook also provides complete transparency and allows for users to know what
is going on within their community of friends; like where the next party or get together is,
or what last weeks party was like. The site allows for research and learning,
entertainment, communication and social interaction, something to do when bored, access
to material otherwise unavailable, and games. The site allows for users to write down
their thoughts and share aspects of their selves with others, aspects that may be hard to
share in face-to-face interactions.
All of this brings into question whether individuals are becoming too concerned
with the Me and the self-gratification of the enjoyment received from superficial
actions of others? It also leads me pondering, if and how, Facebook changes the way
individuals choose to portray themselves physically and virtually? And how the power of
personalized choice of friendships, interactions, and entertainment may cause a shift in
reality.

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
Social networking sites, like Facebook, allows for further advancement of
personalized, specifically tailored, friendships, interactions, and information. Facebook
has the power to provide you with your own personalized daily newspaper tailored
specifically for you; it is called the News Feed, which acts as your own personal news
editor. News Feed brings about more online satisfaction because it feeds you information
that Facebook has calculated as important to you. This may be one reason why Facebook
can become so addicting and is checked often by its members.
The personalized news feed of Facebook can adjust information it calculates as
important to you. Facebook has this capability because of all the variables programmed to
monitor your actions while on Facebook. These news filters include: friend filter, putting
only the people who are your friends on your news feed; brand filter, which only shows
particular products you have indicated you are interested in; content rank, this filter
measures the popularity of an event amongst your common friends, the relevance of the
event, and the importance; friend rank is a variable that measures the interactivity of you
with a particular friend; how much you visited their profile, chatted with them, or sent
invites to one another; application rank, which looks at what applications, like games,
you use and how often; and trained behavior, which is an overall assumption of what you
do on Facebook.
All of this comes together to form your customized Facebook news feed, created
just for your interest and probably the reason why so many people check it frequently.
The satisfaction of increased social interaction is addicting. A human species is naturally
communal, thus a medium like Facebook, which can bring more social interactions, feeds
that drive of social satisfaction through interaction.
Social Capital:
Increased interaction on Facebook leads to increased social capital, the resources
accumulated through the relationships among people (Coleman, 1988). Bourdieu and
Wacquant 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 or mutual acquaintance and recognition (1992, p.14).
Increased social capital is linked to many positive outcomes, such as better public health,

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
lower crime rates, improved community and better financial markets (Adler & Kwon,
2002).
For individuals, social capital allows for the accumulation of resources from other
members of the same network, including useful information, personal relationships, and
the capacity to organize groups (Paxton, 1999). Granovetter believes this gives
individuals access to people outside one's close circle of friends which provides new
ideas and also may bring about employment opportunities (1973). Facebook has vastly
increased the amount of social capital one may acquire. Individuals may make short-term,
one-time acquaintances that are able to last much longer because of Facebook, thus
leading to more weak ties and bridged capital, which can bring further benefits.
Social networks of capital change over time as relationships are formed or
abandoned. There are three kinds of social capital: bonding, bridging, and maintained.
Putnam distinguishes bonding capital as close friends and family, people who you have
an emotional tie with (2000). While bridging capital refers to weak ties, which are
acquaintances who may provide useful information or new perspectives, but contains no
emotional support (Granovetter, 1982). This particular relationship, weak ties, describes
the majority of the friends one obtains on Facebook.
Maintained social capital is the keeping of old friendships, which normally, before
social networking like Facebook, would have been abandoned due to geographic
location, time elapse, and effort. Facebook allows for individuals to keep close bonded
capital with their old friends from high school for example, which prevents the loss of
social capital that before would have occurred. In new settings these maintained friends
allows students to maintain prior identities (Stryker, 2008).
Granovetter believes that weak ties with many others may provide more benefit
than less stronger ties (1973, 1982). This use of technology may support a variety of
individuals for things like professional research, neighborhood and communities,
employees of companies, and many others who benefit from the use of maintained ties
(Ellison, 2007).
Granovetter believes that interpersonal networks provide the most fruitful micromacro bridge...that small scale interaction becomes translated into large-scale patterns.
(Granovetter, 1973). When individuals have many weak ties they are able to reach many
10

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
more groups or cliques of friends, thus influencing a larger group of people. These weak
ties link members of different smaller groups together (Granovetter, 1973). Individuals'
opportunities and integration into communities become reliant on weak ties, while strong
ties may lead to fragmentation (Granovetter, 1973). Stryker believes that these particular
bridges of weak ties can generate novel insights unavailable if communication is limited
to persons sharing the same ideas (2008, p.22). This can bring further enhancement,
enlightenment, and innovation amongst individuals and society.
Social networking sites, like Facebook, enhance, shape, and increase interactions.
Facebook is one particular variable, within a whole of many more, which plays a
substantial role in the transformation of how community is conceptualized. Facebook is a
transitional tool used by the population to evolve community. This evolution of
community is not a decline, or an incline, but a change in organization of the populations
use of technology on the environment. This, Putnam and others, fail to assess in their
definition of community, which to them lies strictly within particular locales of
organizations.
Change:
This shift of community from little boxes6 of interactions to a glocalized7
system of interactions is Wellmans macro view of the evolutionary change occurring in
communities. Wellman argues that tools like Facebook are stirring up and refreshing
community in a new way. The privatization of community is happening and the fact that
people are not interacting in formal organizations of visible public spaces does not mean
they are in isolation (Wellman, 2003). Facebook allows for inexpensive and convenient
communication with people of shared interest from inside ones home or on your mobile
phone. This brings together widely dispersed communities of shared interest, which come
to dominate neighborhood communities. Personal communities are personal, but also
intensively social, with no boundaries, crossing the regional and national borders, as well
as social divisions and other networks (Wellman, 2010).
6

Wilkensons defines little boxes as a strictly place-based community

where interactions with others are set by the small boundaries of
traditional community.
7
Wilkenson defines glocalization as a community that is
symitanously local and global.
11

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
A move towards networked society places an increased importance on ones ability
to use network capital to retrieve desirable resources, along with financial capital,
human capital, organizational capital, and cultural capital (Wellman, Gloc). Network
capital may provide resources like information, knowledge, material aid, financial aid,
alliances, emotional support, and a sense of being connected (Wellman, Gloc).
Many Facebook ties are both physical and virtual. Facebook just fills in the gaps
between times of physical interaction. The stronger the tie, the more Facebook is used.
The time spent online is not reducing the time in face-to-face contact but rather taking the
time of other less social activities such as eating, television watching, and sleeping
(Boase, Horrigan, Wellman and Rainie, 2006; Rainie and Wellman, 2010). It
supplements, arranges, and amplifies communications with others, rather than replacing
them (Wellman, Gloc). The Internet is fully integrated into our personal communities
and is rarely a separate second life in itself (Veenhof, Wellman, Quell, and Hogan, 2008;
Quan-Haase and Wellman, 2002). One study of Americans show that the mean number
of friends in weekly in-person contact has increased by 20 percent between 2002 and
2007: from 9.4 to 11.3 (Wang and Wellman, 2009).
Facebook is just another means of communication, like the telephone, it
facilitates existing social relations and follows patterns of civic engagement and
socialization (Wellman & Gulia, 1999).

Facebook is a personal community, which

provides the essentials of community separately to each individual: support, sociability,

information, social identities, and a sense of belonging (Wellman, 2003). The person
becomes the portal of communication, not the place (household) or group. Separate
personal community networks turn every person into their own switchboard between ties
and networks. We remain connected, but as individuals, not being rooted in work or the
household, while we gather multiple partial associations in which we identify with.
The volume and velocity of communication has increased as well. As broadband
increases so does the rapid exchange of data, messaging, and multimedia. People can
share the simplest idea in the form of a text or a large posting of images, graphics, and
videos. As soon as an idea is thought about, it can be sent immediately and easily to
others who share the same partial association.

12

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
People now have larger social networks of more people, more communication,
and at a faster pace. Wireless portability allows for the potential of quick dispersion of
knowledge and ideas amongst an associated community. Its creates the everywherenowhere phenomenon: Communication will be everywhere, but because it is
independent of place, it will be situated nowhere (Randall, 2001, p.5). We are becoming
more specialized and more mobilized as our social capital does too. This increase in the
amount of communication mixed with the specialization of each partial association gives
one the ability to have specialized support for particular social needs (Wellman and
Wortley, 1990). People will reciprocate with the same kind of help that their specialized
tie has given to them (Plickert, Cote and Wellman, 2007).
It is not clear whether the high use of social networking sites, like Facebook, will
foster densely-knit communities, good for conserving resources, or a more sparsely-knit
community, good for obtaining new information and resources. It is a fact that as social
networks become larger it is going to be harder to maintain density. As the size of the
network increases arithmetically, the number of ties must increase geometrically to
maintain the same level of density (Wellman, 2003).
Networked Individualism:
As community continues to evolve from locales to glocalizations and then finally
to networked individualism, one will notice particular changes in specific opportunities
presented to ones self. No longer are communities all encompassing or stable, but
instead have multiple shifting sets of glocalized ties. The local becomes only one kind of
special interest (Wellman, 2003).
The abundance of choice becomes a key variable in a networked individualistic
society. In personalized networks, individuals have control over the messages from,
when, and about what. This facilitates a more individualized way of interacting in fluid
networks of partial commitments (Wellman, 2003). In this kind of society personalization
of everything comes from the increasing availability of choice in every aspect of ones
life, especially in the realm of social interactions. Kinship and neighboring ties become
more of a choice than a requirement (Greer, 1962; Wellman, 1999, 2003). The increasing
amount of choices leads to partial identities and associations that may tend to create
fragmentation of citizenship. Rather than a unified whole, a person operates in multiple
13

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
specialized associations, which rarely grab the full attention or passion of an individual
(Wellman, 2003).
This

personalized

world is

ironically

homogenous

and heterogeneous

simultaneously (Blau, 1977; Marsden, 1988; Wellman, 2009, 2003). This is because an
individuals partial personalized associations will often be homogenous, because one will
be linked with other like-minded individuals, thus a reconstruction of a very small partial
little box. People are typically matched on attributes such as race, class, and cultural
interests (Lin and Dumin, 1986; Erickson, 1988; Marsden, 1988; Wellman, 2009).
Peoples overall community will be heterogeneous, because others may share one
partiality but not another. These particular choices will expand the homogenous
discussion because the larger the net the more heterogeneous the participants (Feld,
1982), this provides you with a higher percentage of finding a like minded individual.
Choosing personalized associations that are similar to you because of your
particular social contexts that shape your personal attributes is called homophily, or love
for the same (Wellman, 2009). This creates particular personalizations that are still
shaped by the larger physical realm that the individual finds his reality in. Personal
communities can also be influenced and shaped by an individuals income, education,
gender, age, and ethnicity. These social contexts play a larger role in how a networked
individual finds and participates within partial associations, thus a continual spread of
social stratification and inequality will prove to persist.
Reflecting trends in marketing and community, individuals now shop for support
at specialized interpersonal networks, rather than in a physically bound community.
Rational choices shape how people come to learn about what kinds of networks work for
what kinds of purposes, therefore people invest in multiple partial associations that will
full-fill the needs in their life (Wellman, 2009). The increase in choices leads to
commodification of yourself and others. You increasingly take a rational perspective of
self-gratitude, what can they do for ME?
As a networked individual system increases over time, it will become apparent
that the theories of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber are correct. People now go through
the day, week, and month in a variety of narrowly defined relationships with changing
sets of network members (Wellman, 2001). This may reduce the commitment to an actual
14

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
community because of the high amount of partial commitment. Durkheims theory of
specialization occurs to a point of extreme egoism and loss of identity through the
multitude of anomic partial associations. A networked individual will suffer from extreme
compartmentalization, which will lead to anomie and lack of a sense of direction or
purpose. As this occurs one will also find a sense of desynthesization because of a lack of
a knowing what the whole self is. Over stimulation of constant entertainment and
distractions also creates a sense of desynthesization, like the over use of a drug will do to
you. You become addicted to the excess stimulation, which overtime becomes the norm,
thus you reach a point of only feeling very little. This is referred to by Max Weber as
disenchantment , which occurs once an individual becomes locked in an iron cage of
rational choice, which is exactly what occurs as friendship choices become partial,
superficial, and in constant flux.
Summary:
Facebook may be seen to have both positive and negative effects on the individual
and society as the concept of community evolves. Social networking is a revolution in the
way people interact; one that is not fully understood or developed yet. Our society is
transiting into a real time culture of networked individualism; the wanting to know
what to your specific taste is going on now, not last week or even two hours ago.
Changing from place-based community to person-based community involves Wellmans
concepts of community transformation: localization, glocalization, and networked
individualism. Our personal relationships are becoming bounded and intertwined by the
virtual world. I believe that Facebook can bring about positive change by the way it
allows us to maintain past friends, share pictures of real life interactions, talk about those
events, and share ideas. Facebook is supplementing community and transforming and
supplementing a glocalized community, both local and global. This can be seen by the
invites that are created for events, which are then sent to more people much more
conveniently, thus putting more ease in organizing and participating in particular physical
actions.
Facebook allows for groups of people to create a community of common interests,
which allows for others to connect and perpetuate their knowledge and beliefs about
particular interests without the impediment of geography. The creation of many weak ties
15

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
offers more available resources to a Facebook member, like job employment. These weak
ties also have the potential to eventually become strong ties, depending on how a
particular individuals situation changes, like if you move or become interested in
something that a common acquaintance is proficient in. The best part of Facebook is the
pictures. This is like a reality-tv show of yourself and your friends. People love to look at
each others lives and as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures
allow for an individual to remember past events very easily, since our memories are
easily triggered visually. Pictures of my life are simply shared and discussed with others;
normally conversations about the pictures are with the other people that are in them. This
creates even stronger bonds with the people in the pictures because of the continual
discussion of the particular face-to-face interaction captured.
Facebook does bring full transparency of society to the table. We constantly have
to monitor our performance and image on Facebook because all is publicly available to
be scrutinized by others, thus changing our behavior through impression management,
possibly for the better. Transparency encourages us, thorough fear of being ostracized, to
think about our words, actions, and consequences more deeply. This brings about selfregulation within the Facebook community and thus solidarity. No one wants their
identity ruined by negative images or words. The problem is that this increased amount of
comparisons and judgments of others with ourselves begins to drive a wedge between
individual interest and collective interests.
Facebook breeds a symbolic self, an Avatar, caught within a fantasy world, where
actions contain superficial meanings. We become so hooked to our virtual selves and
friends that we develop check-in behavior, or a yearning to know what is happening on
our custom tailored news feed in virtual land. This addiction is easy to get hooked on
considering we are by nature social beings, curious if others like us and eager to compare
and judge ourselves and others. From the creation of civil society humans have always
been interested in gossip (knowledge) of others; technology has allowed for this
particular knowledge to increasingly get larger. But is this increase a bad thing, are our
virtual selves our real selves, and is the knowledge we are obtaining relevant to our
physical lives in the real world?

16

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
Constantly worrying about what others think about you, Cooleys looking glass
self, creates anxiety and low self-esteem. This may become problematic as we
increasingly watch and compare what others are doing with our own lives. Even if we are
more heterogeneous, we still fit into social norms of acceptance. As we develop these
comparisons of Meads generalized others, we continually feel a lack of fulfilling our
roles within society. Individuals who are consumed with Goffmans front stage
performance, and the impression management involved for this performance, causes
individuals to lose grasp of who they truly are or what they should be doing.
Narcissism begins to plague our society, as media constantly tells us we are not
good enough if we do not consume or look a particular way; now Facebook friends show
and tell us as well. Facebook acts as a tool of conformity within society; people follow
and do what they assume others are doing and thinking. Friends become more superficial,
as weak ties increase, and lack the feelings and emotions that close bonded capital ties
provide. Although, we can maintain capital with past or distant bonded ties, we lose faceto-face contact.
The losses of face-to-face interpersonal connections hinder an inherent ability of
humans. We increasingly are losing the ability to show emotions and connect with one
another in person; the ability to connect with people in a deeper and more traditional way.
Now our social comfort and interaction comes from online worlds. As Eberhardt points
out, rather than investing in relationships with new peers who are physically around
them, some students rely on virtual networks and other technological means of
connecting with friends elsewhere to fill their need for social comfort and interaction.
(2007). We are moving away from relationships in which we spend actual time with
people physically around us, to ones in this virtual world, as we sit alone at our computer.
Now we can see a Facebook friends profile and read particular items such as
relationship status, political views, personal interests, hobbies, favorite books and
movies, educational backgrounds, their particular friends, academic coursework, and
much more, the commoditization and concrete partial associations we make with others.
Although this gives a good insight into who these people are, it does not provide you
with their back stage personality, the true selves, what you know is essentially a persons
living obituary. Eberhardt says, These students do not form important bonds with friends
17

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
in their current social context by experiencing early emotional highs or sharing low
points together, and they are likely to soon find themselves isolated outsiders (2007).
We are impairing our development of interpersonal skills as we become hooked to a
virtual self and way of socializing; we lose this ability to physically connect. So not only
are we losing the ability to look each other in the eyes or shake hands when we meet, we
are also taking away the experiences that helps us learn basic elements of human
interaction.
Putnam is still proven to be correct in his analysis that strong ties and community
are still declining. We live in a Gilded age where the social interactions taking place on
Facebook appear to enhance community, but as we can see it only leads to continual
isolation through individualistic tendencies of the abundance of choice. Church groups,
sports teams, social clubs, neighborhood associations, etc. are all currently suffering from
the lowest participation rates ever. Even conversations with family and spouses are
declining. This is important to recognize because as Putnam suggest, close connections
provide physical and mental health as well as community health (2000). We have
different types of conversations with different kinds of relations, like with kids, coworkers, parents, neighbors, etc., but as Mcpherson et al. proves, important conversations
are sharply going down (2008).
Real or important conversations include topics that are relevant to your particular
beliefs, ideologies, religion, and feelings. People with 4 or more discussion friends have
dropped from one-third of the population to one-fifth in the period from 1985 to 2004
(Mcpherson et al. 2008). The social world thus becomes more limited even though you
have more weak ties and access to certain things. This is because of the select few people
you have real conversations with. Individuals speak with fewer outside members of
their family on important life issues, which then socially trap them in the same mode of
thought within the same social-class, religion, and race. Family conversations have
dropped in the past twenty years from 59% to 43% and people who talk to at least one
person outside of the family have gone from 80% to 57% (Mcpherson, 2008). Although,
Mcpherson (2008) discovers that education reverses this decrease in conversation
partners. Putnams (2000) studies in Bowling Alone, parallels this finding where he finds
that increased newspaper reading leads to increased community activity. People with no
18

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
one to communicate face-to-face feelings and beliefs with are on the rise, these particular
individuals are socially isolate. They may feel a sense of happiness and connectivity by
the use of Facebook, but in a case of an emergency will be left stranded. Mcpherson et al.
says, We may be missing the chance to understand and interact with whole segments of
our social world. We may cease to care about them because we have no strong bonds that
span the social divides that separate us, because the social fabric that underlies our civil
society continues to fray. (2008).
Technology creates possibilities, opportunities, challenges, and constraints. It
shapes and constructs how we perform community, from localized areas of high
solidarity and homogeneity to loosely-knit heterogeneity. It neither makes nor breaks a
community, but just brings about a change in the way people do things. Facebook is an
enabler in the evolution of community and how we conceptualize it. Technology in the
past has brought about huge changes, like the invention of the telephone, automobiles, or
the plane. Facebook is just another advancement in technology that changes the way
people do things. Which if used in moderation, like everything in life, then glocalization
will remain for sometime. This will only help in our ability to interact with one another
because we have the best of both worlds, local and global. Facebook complements faceto-face interaction, just as the telephone did, by increasing the volume of contact and
repertoire with others. As technology has brought about this ease of connectivity, we have
moved from a place-based community to a person-based community, which means we
can now personalize our own communities because we are not restricted by geography.

References
Adler, P., & Kwon, S. (2002). Social capital: Prospects for a new concept.
Academy of Management Review, 27 (1), 17-40.
19

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
Boase, Jeffrey, Horrigan, John, Wellman, Barry and Rainie, Lee
(2006) 'The strength of Internet ties', The Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Washington, D.C.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Oxford : Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Oxford : Blackwell.
Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital.
American Journal of Sociology, 94 (Supplement), S95-S120.
DiMaggio, P., Hargittai, E., Neuman, R. W., & Robinson, J. P. (2001). The Internet's
implications for society. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 307336.
Ellison, Nicole, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe. 2007.
The Benefits of Facebook Friends: Social Capital and College Students Use of
Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
Erickson, Bonnie (1988) 'The relational basis of attitudes', in Barry Wellman and
Stephen Berkowitz (eds.), Social Structures. New York: Cambridge University
Press. pp. 99-121.
Feld, S. (1982). Social structural determinants of similarity among associates. American
Sociological Review, 47, 797801.
Granovetter, Mark. 1973. The Strength of Weak Ties. The American Journal of
Chicago Press.Vol.78, No. 6:1360-1380.
Granovetter, M. S. (1982). The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited. In P. V.
Hampton, K., & Wellman, B. (2003). Neighboring in Netville:
How the Internet supports community and social capital in a wired suburb. City &
Community, 2 (4), 277-311.
Greer, Scott (1962) The Emerging City. New York: Free Press.
Haythornthwaite, C., & Wellman, B. (2002). The Internet in everyday life: An
introduction. In B.Wellman & C.Haythornthwaite (Eds.), The Internet in everyday
life (pp. 344). Oxford : Blackwell.
Howard, P. E. N., Rainie, L., & Jones, S. (2002). Days and nights on the Internet: The
impact of a diffusing technology. In B.Wellman & C.Haythornthwaite (Eds.),
Internet in everyday life (pp. 4573). Oxford : Blackwell.
20

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
Kayahara, Jennifer (2006) Community and communication, in
Patrick Purcell (ed.), Networked Neighbourhoods: The Connected Community in
Context. London: Springer. Pp. 127-58.
Kaufman, Harold (1959). Toward an Interactional Conception of Community. Social
Forces, 38(1), pp. 8-17.
Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W.
(1998). Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and
psychological well-being American Psychologist, 53(9), 10171031.
Krisanic, Kara. 2008. Motivations and Impression Management: Predictors of Social
Networking Site Use and User Behavior. Thesis presented to Faculty of the
Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Lin, Nan and Dumin, Mary (1986) 'Access to occupations through social ties', Social
Networks, 8: 365-383.
Marsden, Peter (1988) 'Homogeneity in confiding networks', Social Networks, 10(1): 57
76.
Mardsen & N.
Lin (Eds.), Social Structure and Network Analysis (pp. 105-130). Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications.
Mcpherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew Brashears. 2008.
The Ties That Bind are Fraying. American Sociological Association. Summer
2008, Vol. 7, No. 3: 3236
Nie, N. H., Hillygus, D. S., & Erbring, L. (2002). Internet use, interpersonal relations and
sociability: A time diary study. In B.Wellman & C.Haythornthwaite (Eds.),
Internet in everyday life (pp. 215243). Oxford : Blackwell.
Paxton, P. (1999). Is social capital declining in the United States? A multiple indicator
assessment. American Journal of Sociology, 105 (1), 88-127.
Plickert, Gabriele, Ct, Rochelle, and Wellman, Barry (2007) 'It's not who you know,
It's how you know them', Social Networks, 29(3): 405-29.
Putnam, Robert (1995) 'Bowling alone, Journal of
Democracy, 6(1): 65-78.
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Quan-Haase, Anabel and Wellman, Barry with Witte, James and Hampton, Keith (2002)
21

AJ Jarrard
December, 16, 2010
Dr. R. Wimberley
'Capitalizing on the net', in Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite (eds.),
The Internet in Everyday Life. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 291-324.
Rainie, Lee and Wellman, Barry (2010) Connected Lives. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stryker, Sheldon. 2008. From Mead to a Structural Symbolic Interactionism and
Beyond. The Annual Review of Sociology. 34:15-31.
Randall, N. (2001). Stay in touch. PC Magazine, January 2, 101104.
Veenhof, Ben, Barry Wellman, Carsten Quell and Bernie Hogan. (2008) How
Canadians' use of the Internet affects social life and civic participation.
Connectedness
report
series:
F0004M-16,
December
4.29
pp.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/56f0004m/56f0004m2008016-eng.pdf.
Wang, Hua and Wellman, Barry (2009) Social connectivity in America, American
Behavioral Scientist, 52: forthcoming.
Wellman, B. (1979) 'The community question,
American Journal of Sociology 84: 1201-31.
Wellman, Barry (ed.) (1999) Networks in the Global Village. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Wellman, Barry, and Leighton, Barry . (1979) Networks, neighbourhoods and
communities, Urban Affairs Quarterly, 14: 363-90.
Wellman, Barry and Wortley, Scot (1990) 'Different strokes from different folks,
American Journal of Sociology, 96: 558-88.
Wellman, B. (2001). Physical place and cyber-place: The rise of networked
Individualism. International Journal for Urban and Regional Research, 25, 227
52.
Wellman, B. (2002). Little boxes, glocalization, and networked individualism. In
M.Tanabe, P.van denBesselaar, & T.Ishida (Eds.), Digital cities II: Computational
and sociological approaches (pp. 1025). Berlin : Springer-Verlag.
Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1999). Net surfers don't ride alone. In B.Wellman (Ed.),
Networks in the global village (pp. 7286). Boulder , CO : Westview.
Wellman, Barry, Vincent Chua, and Julia Madej (2009). Personal Communities: The
World According to Me. Netlab, University of Toronto. March 29.
Wilkinson, Kenneth P. (1991). The community in rural America. Wesport, CT.
Greenwood Press.
22