LINKED OR DIVIDED BY THE WEB?: Internet use and sociability in four European countries

Abstract

It is often assumed that the increased use of the new information and communication technology (ICT) can displace traditional face-to-face sociability. At the same time, it has been argued that the new ICT can also strengthen traditional forms of sociability. This article evaluates these opposite views by examining how the frequency of Internet use is connected with two forms of sociability: civic engagement and interpersonal involvement. Empirical interest is narrowed down to four European countries. The data utilized are the Finnish, British, French and Italian sections of the European Social Survey 2002–2003 (N = 6,762). The methods of analysis include cross-tabulations and logistic regression models. The findings indicate that frequent Internet use is positively associated with both forms of sociability in all countries. However, there are also cross-country differences in the strength of these associations and in the effects of sociodemographic control variables. The findings thus suggest that the contemporary development of the information society has different implications for different types of societies.

Keywords:

• Internet
• civic engagement
• interpersonal involvement
• social capital
• comparative research

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous iCS reviewers for valuable comments. The study has been funded by the Academy of Finland (decision no. 213151).

Notes

1. The distribution of the original five-point scale was relatively skewed. It is therefore not feasible, even after conducting transformations based on normal logarithmic functions, to use the original variable to estimate the average values between the respondents. In addition, a dichotomous variable can be argued to provide an effective method of measuring interpersonal involvement, since it makes a clear distinction between those respondents who take part in social activities more or about the same than most and those who take part less than most.

2. Activities were defined in the questionnaire as ‘events/encounters with other people, by choice and for enjoyment rather than for reasons of work or duty’.

3. This is also why we treat Internet use as synonymous with more particular use purposes such as web browsing or emailing.

4. Basically, the odds ratio is the probability of being in one group divided by the probability of being in the other group. It indicates the increase (or decrease if the ratio is less than one) in the odds of being in the examined outcome category when the value of the independent increases by one unit. The chi-squared reduction, on the other hand, reports the difference in the chi-squared statistic between the reduced model and a model with the intercept term only. In the analyses, chi-squared changes are used to estimate the differences between the models including different independents.