HOW LOCALITY, FREQUENCY OF COMMUNICATION AND INTERNET USAGE AFFECT MODES OF COMMUNICATION WITHIN CORE SOCIAL NETWORKS

Abstract

The number of ways that people communicate with their social networks has changed dramatically in the last 50 years. Traditionally, the local community was the basis for people's social interactions; most of people's closest friends resided locally and face-to-face communication was the predominant mode of communication. Yet, today face-to-face meetings are no longer the primary way to communicate as one can use a landline telephone or any number of the computer mediated communications such as email. This paper explores the modes of communication rural individuals use most often with their three closest friends and how these modes of communication vary by three factors: (1) social tie locality, (2) frequency of communication, and (3) degree of Internet usage. Using a 2005 random sample mail survey of 1,315 residents in an isolated region of the Western United States, the results show that people actively use email to maintain core social networks, particularly when alters live at a distance. However, contradictory to previous research, the results suggest that increases in Internet usage are associated with decreases in other modes of communication, with proficiency of Internet use serving as a mediating factor in this relationship.

Keywords:

• Internet
• social networks
• computer mediated communication
• rural communities

Acknowledgments

Support for conducting this research was provided by the Department of Community and Rural Sociology and the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center at Washington State University, Pullman, WA. Additional support was provided by the USDA-National Agricultural Statistics Service and the National Science Foundation Division of Science Resource Statistics under Cooperative Agreement No. 43-3AEU-1-80055 with the Washington State University Social and Economic Sciences Research Center. I wish to acknowledge with thanks Don A. Dillman, Jolene D. Smyth, Kendra W. Stern, and Nicholas Parsons for their thoughtful comments on this paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented online at the CITASA mini-conference. Montreal, Quebec Canada and on-line. August 2006.

Notes

1 It must be noted that there are reasons to expect differences between friends and relatives concerning choice in mode of communication. For example, due to work and school relationships many people have friends who live locally, whereas family members, in our highly mobile society, tend to live at a greater physical distance (Sampson 1988; Myers 1999; Stern & Messer forthcoming). Since it is likely that people choose different modes of communication to overcome some of the challenges that physical distance can pose, we should expect differences for friends and family. However, these concerns are not given full empirical attention in this paper. This methodological issue affects the degree to which the data from this study can be used to build on the work of McPherson et al. (2006) because the General Social Survey asked questions about a range of kin and non-kin relations, which then comprise one's ‘core discussion network’. However, because of the differences in kin and friends, it is not theoretically prudent to aggregate these different types of core ties in this analysis.