Singapore.
The final presenter in this session at ICA 2010 is Homero Gil de Zúñiga, whose interest is in civic engagement. How is this related to interpersonal and computer-mediated networks, and how does this play out differently for weak and strong ties in the networks? Is the effect of interpersonal and computer-mediated networks mediated by access to weak ties? Which setting is more predictive of civic engagement?
Past research in this area has shown connections between demographics and civic engagement; social orientations and civic engagement; and media use and civic engagement; the presence of citizen communication networks also has a positive effect. Finally, there are differences between strong and weak ties: being exposed to a wider range of connections through weak ties can variously have positive and negative effects - providing a greater diversity of information that may spark civic action, for example.
Homero's work explored a number of hypotheses around this, then - whether larger (personal and/or online) networks led to greater participation, whether weak-tie networks led to greater participation, whether weak ties mediated the relationship between networks and civic participation; and whether the role of weak ties would be stronger for online than for interpersonal (i.e. offline) networks. This was explored through a national survey of some 1,400 respondents in the US.
The results showed (ugh - inasmuch as tables of r-squared values in a conference presentation ever show anything) that weak ties discussion is the strongest predictor of civic engagement - discussion with a diverse group is a strong predictor of engagement. Offline and online networks both predict weak ties; only online networks also predict strong ties - so that having larger networks both on- and offline ended up also leading to greater civic participation.
Network size predicts engagement, then - the more people you talk to, the more likely are you to participate in civic action. Weak ties are the strongest predictor of engagement, though - so the diversity and heterogeneity of the community that the presence of weak ties tends to point to is likely to be more important than simply being part of a large network. Weak tie networks mediates the association between the size of one's networks and the level of one's participation in civic engagement, in other words - and most importantly, being connected through online networks leads to a greater exposure to weak-tie networks than do offline networks.
