TABLE OF CONTENTS AND ABSTRACTS, JCMC, VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1: STUDYING THE NET

Collab-U

CMC Play

Usenet

Table of Contents, Volume 3, No. 1: "Studying the Net"

In this issue:

Studying Online Social Networks
Laura Garton
Sociology Department and
Centre for Urban and Community Studies,
University of Toronto

Caroline Haythornthwaite
Graduate School of Library and Information Science,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Barry Wellman
Centre for Urban and Community Studies,
University of Toronto

When a computer network connects people or organizations, it is a social network. Yet the study of such computer-supported social networks has not received as much attention as studies of human-computer interaction, online person-to-person interaction, and computer-supported communication within small groups. We argue the usefulness of a social network approach for the study of computer-mediated communication. We review some basic concepts of social network analysis, describe how to collect and analyze social network data, and demonstrate where social network data can be, and have been, used to study computer-mediated communication. Throughout, we show the utility of the social network approach for studying computer-mediated communication, be it in computer-supported cooperative work, in virtual community, or in more diffuse interactions over less bounded systems such as the Internet.

Assessing the Structure of Communication on the World Wide Web
Michele Jackson
Department of Communication,
Florida State University

This paper examines closely the nature of the hypertext link as a communication tool for Web designers and authors. The strategic nature of the link raises important questions for the representation and interpretation of Web structure. Network analysis is suggested as a methodology that can be used by researchers investigating the World Wide Web from a communication perspective.

Casting the Net: Surveying an Internet Population
Christine Biship Smith
Annenberg School for Communication,
University of Southern California and
Department of Systems Management,
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey

At any given moment there are thousands of surveys and polls being conducted on the web, yet surprisingly little scholarly research is reported about this new technique. After a summary review of the comparative literature on e-mail and "snail mail" and a more extensive review of research involving web-based methods, this article contrasts e-mail and web-based survey techniques used in an ongoing study of the web presence provider industry. Practical issues of web-surveying methods are highlighted, such as programming pitfalls, sample-building, and incentives.

Getting the Seats of Your Pants Dirty:
A Methodology for Ethnographic Research on Virtual Communities

Luciano Paccagnella
Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali,
Università di Torino - Italy and
Dipartimento di Sociologia ,
Università di Milano - Italy

The study of social worlds built by people on computer networks challenges the classical dimensions of sociological research. CMC scholars are prompted to exploit the possibilities offered by new, powerful, and flexible analytic tools for inexpensively collecting, organizing, and exploring digital data. Such tools could be used within a Weberian perspective, to aid in systematic examination of logs and messages taken from the actual life of a virtual community. A proposal can then be made for a longitudinal strategy of research which systematically compares specific aspects of virtual communities over different periods of time and different socio-geographical contexts. The article summarizes a case study on an Italian computer conference, and concludes with a short outline of the new graphical CMC environments and their consequences for the rise of a multimedia cyber-anthropology.

Evaluating the World Wide Web: A Global Study of Commercial Sites
James K. Ho
Department of Information and Decision Sciences and
Applied Research and Consulting Services
College of Business Administration,
University of Illinois at Chicago

While commercial applications of the Internet proliferate, particularly in the form of business sites on the World Wide Web, on-line business is still relatively insignificant. One reason is that truly compelling applications have yet to be devised to penetrate the mass market. To help identify approaches that may eventually be successful, one must address the question of what value is being created on the Web. As a first step, this paper proposes a framework to evaluate Web sites from a customer's perspective of value-added. A global study covering 1,800 sites, with representative samples from diverse industries and localities worldwide, is conducted to give a profile of commercial use of the World Wide Web in 1996.

Brief Reports
On-line Services in India : A Market Analysis
Kaushik Banerjee
Tata Elxsi India

Unlike the on-line service providers in the USA or Western Europe, the growth of the on-line service providers in India has started tapering off. Major factors affecting the growth of Internet access in India have been partial deregulation of the telecom sector as opposed to complete liberalization, poor telecom infrastructure, a narrower home PC base, a high level of price sensitivity among the target audience, and a lack of effective exploitation of the on-line services for delivering content. For these reasons private sector service providers are slowly becoming marginalized in India. Any emerging country which wants to exploit this medium successfully needs to keep these constraints in mind while planning for the future.

Demographics and Behavior of the Chilean Internet Population
Miguel R. Mendoza H.
Jose A. Alvarez de Toledo
Programa de Extensión en Computación e Informática
Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas Universidad de Chile

This paper presents the results of a study of Internet users in the city of Santiago. A random sample of 1145 households representing three strata of the population was selected. The results show that the typical Internet user is young, male, highly educated, with a high income level, connecting to the Internet from the place of work or study, spending most of the time on-line browsing through the World Wide Web. As far as the use of the Net for commercial transactions is concerned, only 10% of users have bought something on-line. It appears from the study that, for the time being, the Internet is more useful as a communication medium for building relationships and generating leads than it is to buy or sell products.

\