Author Archives: legallysociable

Study finds significant overlap of online Facebook friends and offline friendships

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A new study reinforces a consistent finding about Facebook friendships: people tend to associate online with people they know offline.

On Facebook, all of these complex and differentiated relationships get collapsed — flattened — under the label “friend.” But researchers at UC San Diego wanted to see whether it could figure out — just from people’s Facebook activity — who their closest friends were. They asked a survey group to list their close friends and then, using a model based on comments, messages, wall posts, likes, photo tags, etc. tried to see if they could say whether any given pair of people were close. They could do so accurately 84 percent of the time. These Facebook clues are “successful proxies for such real-world tie strength.”

Jason J. Jones, one of the study’s lead authors, say the findings contradict the common belief that people use Facebook to keep in touch with those whom they would otherwise lose touch with and use other means of communication (such as the phone) for their closest relationships. Rather, Facebook is just another space in which our social lives take place. The researchers found that comments were the most revealing of a friendship’s strength, followed by messages, wall posts, and likes. Least revealing were demographic information, such as having had the same employer or gone to the same school, and being invited to join the same Facebook groups. Additionally, the study’s authors found that public interactions such as comments and wall posts were just as revealing as private messages.

“This is a useful study even if it comes from the ‘duh’ department,” writes social-media theorist Nathan Jurgenson over email. “The notion that the Internet is, or ever really was, some other, cyber, space, is wrong headed.” In other words, of course our Facebook interactions reveal the reality of our friendships — they are part and parcel to our friendships. There aren’t two separate spheres of online and offline, but one continuous reality, which is at various points augmented by technology — the phone or Facebook, for examples — or the tools of the voice, gestures, and facial expressions. Terms like “real world,” “virtual world,” and “IRL,” which the study’s authors rely on heavily, undermine a better understanding of this integration.

This corroborates a consistent finding in academic work about Facebook and social networking sites: users don’t go out and meet a bunch of “random” other users. Rather, they tend to reproduce existing friendship and social networks in the online world. Some of these relationships might have faded away in the past, like making friends with people from grade school or past jobs, but much of the online interaction is a continuation of the interaction that is taking place offline.

The article does contain an interesting ending:

This is all follows pretty neatly from Jurgenson’s point that Facebook is a tool that augments our one reality, not a separate reality altogether. If we understand that Facebook is a space where our friendships occur and develop, we can begin to think about what the contours of that space do to us.

In other words, putting existing relationships in the online sphere can shape these relationships in unique ways. Thus, there is a two-way interaction going on: Facebook allows people to interact but it also shapes that interaction and what might be possible down the road in that relationship.

Do “Anthropological Video Games” lead to anthropological learning?

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The New Yorker has a short article about several anthropological video games including “Guess My Race,” “The Cat and the Coup,” and “Sweatshop.”

A cluster of teen-agers gathered around a small table, and passersby could hear them exclaim, “Asian! Yeah, I knew it!” and “Aryan? That seems ridiculous.” They hovered over two iPads in the Grand Gallery of the Museum of Natural History during the Margaret Mead Film Festival, playing a game called “Guess My Race.” It was one of five video games in the Mead Arcade; the others included “The Cat and the Coup,” which traces the downfall of Iran’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and “Sweatshop,” in which you hire and fire workers for your loathsome factory.

Aiding the swarms of museum patrons who stopped to play were volunteers from Games for Change, a New York City-based nonprofit that encourages the development of what it calls “social-impact games.” (All of the games at the arcade are also available for free through the organization’s Web site.) I sat down at a laptop to try my hand at running a sweatshop. To a bouncy techno soundtrack, the boss floor manager, who keenly evoked Hitler, spewed insults and directions—”Lazybones! How are you today? Shh-h-h-h. I don’t care!”—and the orders started pouring in for shoes, shirts, hats, and bags…

In 1940, Margaret Mead created a card game along with her husband, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson. Called “Democracies and Dictators,” its cards contained instructions such as “Dictator! Crippled Industries: You have put your leading industrialists into concentration camps. (lose a card in 5).” Mead wrote that it was based on “the basic ideas that democracies and dictators play by different rules and work with different values.” She tried to sell the idea to Parker Brothers, but it was never produced for public consumption. The games on display at the Mead Arcade have been markedly more successful. “Sweatshop” had a million plays during its first three months, and “The Cat and the Coup” has received acclaim from gamers around the world—including one German reviewer who wrote that it is “like Monty Python being dropped in a bowl full of Persian kitsch.”…

But if games train players in the rules of culture, what happens when those rules become too complicated to follow, or, perhaps, obsolete? Settling down to play “Guess My Race,” the player looks at photographs of ten faces—no artifacts here, the subjects are familiarly modern. You choose from six possible races that vary widely from one round to the next—descriptions might be nationalities, skin colors, religions, or loaded epithets like “Illegal” or “East Coast.” The player might have to select from options that would seem to be simultaneously plausible (i.e., Asian versus Indonesian, or Black versus Caribbean) with answers that suggest race is self-defined, not regionally or ethnically determined.

And so the gamification of the world continues. I’m not surprised these games are featured at a museum; when recently visiting the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for the first time in a few years, I was struck by the number of hands-on exhibits and games that allow one or two users to explore some dimension of science. It is interesting to see that these games have had so many downloads – people are either interested in the topics or there are a lot of gamers out there willing to trying a lot of things.

My biggest question about these games is whether players learn the intended lessons. As the article notes, games have been used and proposed for decades to teach players different lessons. We know, for example, that Monopoly is partly about capitalism. It seems to me that the crop of more recent Euro games, from Settlers of Catan on downward, tend to teach about what is needed to grow a community or society. Even new video games like Assassin’s Creed III are related to historical events. However, having played a lot of games over recent years, I wonder how much I’ve actually learned about anything as opposed to enjoyed competing. Is the point of the board game Agricola to teach me that Germans living in the 1600s needed a diverse base of multiple foodstuffs? Did the video game Civilization (II-IV) teach me something meaningful about how civilizations actually develop? I’m not sure.

Also, I have to ask: what would a sociological game look like?

A hard look at Washington, DC’s economic boom

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In light of the recent fiscal cliff showdown, Annie Lowery at the New York Times writes a long profile on “Washington’s Economic Boom, Financed by You“:

Billions in federal spending, largely a result of two foreign wars, were pouring into the local economy by the early 2000s. Then came the housing bubble. But after it burst, a remarkable inversion occurred: as the country withered, Washington bloomed. Since 2007, the regional economy has expanded about three times as much as the overall country’s. By some measures, the Washington area has become the richest region in the country. It is now home to the three highest-income counties in the United States, and seven out of the Top 10.

The growth has arrived in something like concentric circles. Increased government spending has bumped up the region’s human capital, drawing other businesses, from technology to medicine to hospitality. Restaurants and bars and yoga studios have cropped up to feed and clothe and stretch all those workers, and people like [developer] Jim Abdo have been there to provide the population — which grew by 650,000 between 2000 and 2010 — with two-bedrooms with Wolf ranges.

Despite its recent success, however, the article suggests that “Peak Washington” is already here, that there is nowhere to go but down:

And yet there is a sense that the capital is headed for a slowdown. Among the Pentagon’s plans to cut nearly $500 billion over the next decade could be reductions not only in materiel but also to all manner of support staff. The homeland-security budgets look certain to see significant reductions, too. One recent estimate noted that more than two million jobs would be at stake if the sequester comes into effect.

Lowery suggests that a tempering of expectations in metro DC would, on balance, be a good thing:

There’s something unsavory about having a capital city doing outrageously well while the rest of the country is limping along — especially when its economy is premised in part on capturing wealth rather than creating it.

To the extent that DC’s economy is indeed “premised in part on capturing wealth rather than creating it,” I agree.  Nevertheless, Lowery cites plenty of evidence that “creative” (as opposed to “capturing”) work is being done in metro DC (“Google has opened an outpost….LivingSocial owns a huge, hiply decorated space….Audi, Intelsat, Hilton Worldwide and dozens of other firms have opened up offices or moved their headquarters to the region”).  Presumably, every urban area “captures” some of its wealth and “creates” some.  How much “capture” is too much, thus making a whole region “unsavory”?

Along these lines, I’m also intrigued by the quote from Virginia Congressman Jim Moran (D), who observes that “Maryland got the life sciences [centered around the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD], and Virginia got the death sciences [centered around the Pentagon in Arlington, VA]….Of course, NoVa [Northern Virginia], given the two wars, it’s done even better than suburban Maryland.”  Does this suggest that DC’s Maryland suburbs are less “unsavory” than DC’s Virginia suburbs?  Or does it only matter that the National Institutes of Health and the Pentagon both spend tax revenue, making them equally offending because they “capture” the country’s wealth?

New Halal subdivision planned for Sydney suburb

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A new 145-lot development in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia is drawing reactions from residents:

Qartaba Homes is promoting its 145-lot subdivision at Riverstone, near Rouse Hill, as Australia’s “very first project of its kind for the Muslim community”, The Daily Telegraph revealed yesterday…

Many residents expressed their concerns that non-Muslims would be excluded from the site, while others said the developers were welcome to the land, which they said was flood prone.

Qartaba director Wajahat Rana said the company was happy to sell blocks of land to anyone…

University of Technology Sydney sociology professor Andrew Jakubowicz said the creation of religious enclaves was not a new concept: “The phenomenon of creating an environment where people of a particular religious faith feel comfortable is a very old Christian tradition, associated particularly with the Anglican church.

More on this from the Daily Telegraph:

While the company has insisted people from all religious backgrounds are free to take up the offer, it advises that the loans are “100 per cent Halal” and a “chance to escape Riba (interest)” because interest is a sin under Islamic law.

Qartaba Homes director Khurram Jawaid said it was the real estate deal of a lifetime, open to Australians of all faiths and backgrounds, but the state MP for Hawkesbury Ray Williams said the project was divisive.

“I can only imagine the repercussions if a developer were to advertise a new Judeo-Christian housing estate; they would be hung, drawn and quartered,” Mr Williams said…

Land parcels range from 400sq m to 800sq m and are being offered at $85,000 plus charges, including a booking deposit of 30-35 per cent and a 24-30 month interest-free payment plan.

Sounds like an interesting project. I wonder how a similar proposal might fare in the American suburbs. America has a history of ethnic neighborhoods, particularly in immigrant gateway cities, though the percent of the ethnic group living in that neighborhood may not have been anywhere near 80-100%. In the last few years, I have tracked some of the opposition to mosque proposals in DuPage County (see here and here for examples) but the controversy seems to have died out for the time being. I imagine a proposal for a Halal neighborhood would really raise NIMBY concerns from certain local and national groups.

Just curious: could a process of obtaining homeownership without having to pay interest be appealing to a lot of potential homeowners, particularly in tougher economic times?

Teaching sociology through the zombie apocalypse

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A sociology professor describes how his new class “Impact of the Zombie Apocalypse on the Pacific Northwest” helps him teach sociology theories and concepts:

The zombie apocalypse is the subject of a sociology course I am teaching during winter term at Linfield College in Oregon, and the class is packed. When I tell friends and colleagues, the reaction ranges from “Wow! Nice!” to giving me looks once reserved only for “Underwater Basket Weaving 101” courses taught back in the 1970s…

Sociologically speaking, one of the most fascinating aspects of zombies has been their persistence as “the Other,” something against which we can mirror our fears. Early zombie movies such as White Zombie (1932) or I Walked with a Zombie (1943) are laced with racial overtones. These morphed into George Romero’s classic critiques of white middle-class fears of black America, to more recent movies that feed off our love-hate relationship with technology and our fear of eco-disasters. While we express anxieties about 9/11 subpopulations, our movies portray zombies that are actually dormant cells, ready to unleash themselves on an unsuspecting populace. Unlike vampires, werewolves, aliens or orcs, zombies present a relatively blank slate against which we can project our fears.

Most sociological theory focuses on the concept of utopia or dystopia. In dystopic societies, people grapple with things that are undesirable or frightening, and they respond to their fears. For many in 21st century America, those fears include capitalism, racism, rapid technological change, urban shifts or even semi-automatic rifles.

The zombie apocalypse class provides a pedagogical tool to spark conversation. In the face of change, how do we survive as a society? How do we maintain group cohesion? In The Walking Dead, survival requires greater brutality and physical strength. In that scenario, how do women avoid being reduced to “women’s work?” And how would nations react to an environmental disaster or apocalypse, as in World War Z? How do zombie-like events influence foreign policy

The class sounds reasonable to me – provided that the class has sufficient sociological content – though I know classes like these tend to draw attention from people who think colleges (and sociologists?) aren’t teaching much (or not teaching the right stuff) in the first place. Using current themes, such as those found in numerous television shows and movies that students are particularly immersed in, is one way to hook students and encourage them to think more deeply about social life. In this case, it seems to me that pushing students to think more about what they would consider an utopia or dystopia could be revealing in how they individualistically approach the world and encourage them to pull back a bit and consider the bigger social forces at work and other people involved. This is a bit tongue in cheek but we don’t have to blow up major cities or have major diseases or creatures to get to this point. Imagine if college students could not have access to their smartphones and computers – imagine at least the short-term apocalypse! But, of course, the world is bigger than just zombies or a loss of cellphones and studying apocalypses may help students see the basics of society that we all tend to take for granted.

Designing schools to be safer and encourage learning

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Architectural Record takes a look at how schools might be designed differently after the December 2012 Newtown shootings:

While fortress-like buildings with thick concrete walls, windows with bars, and special security vestibules may be more defensible than what is currently in vogue, they are hardly the kind of places that are optimal for learning. Edmund Einy, a principal at GKKWorks, says that what’s been done so far in many urban schools in the name of safety—such as slapping bars on the windows—has had a pernicious effect on students’ morale and performance. Einy’s new Blair International Baccalaureate Middle School, in Pasadena, foregoes bars. But administrators must greet students before they are allowed to go inside, which led GKKWorks to create an entry plaza. “There’s not much more we can do,” he says. “What are we going to do, put kids in prisons?”…

In recent years, glass has become the material of choice for the walls of many schools, which have cottoned to the idea that students will be more stimulated in rooms bathed in natural light. An example—according to Thomas Mellins, an architectural curator—is Ennead Architects’ Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, N.Y., where a transparent façade allows close-up views of ballet and other classes. (Mellins’ exhibition, “The Edgeless School: Design for Learning,” is on view at New York’s Center for Architecture through January 19, 2013.)

For his part, Mellins doesn’t rule out that the shootings may result in design changes; he just hopes law enforcement talks to architects early in the design process. But, Mellins says, “I don’t think safety concerns translate into a simple and direct agenda, like build this way, don’t build that way.”

In a sense, school design has baked-in security concerns ever since the mass school shooting in Columbine, Colorado, in 1999. Doors now routinely lock after the first bell. Metal detectors are also common. Possibly, more steel could be used in doors, but “that seems to be sort of in the opposite direction of where schools have been headed,” says architect Jerry Waters, of Portland, Oregon’s Dull Olson Weekes Architects. School buildings make up 70 percent of the firm’s portfolio. Waters adds, “When someone has the intent to kill, I’m not sure if architecture can solve that problem.”

I have multiple questions after reading this:

1. It sounds like there might be different designs based on the primary purpose of a school’s architecture: is it to help encourage learning or to keep kids safe? How much should the two be mixed?

2. I wonder about lockdown procedures in buildings with a lot of glass and open space. Where can students and staff hide if need be?

3. I’m intrigued that there is no reference here to any studies of this issue. Isn’t there any data on what environments are safer? I wonder if this is similar to the zeal that was once expressed in the US and elsewhere for high-rise public housing but these ideas were reversed decades later when the results weren’t as expected. Architectural determinism can be misused.

Remembering the cable car era in Chicago

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A new book highlights the cable-car era in Chicago around the turn of the 19th century:

Chicago historian and transportation author Greg Borzo has chronicled that forgotten era, which lasted not quite 25 years (1882 to 1906), in his new book, “Chicago Cable Cars,” published by The History Press.

These horseless street railway cars were pulled by the quiet, invisible force of continuously moving underground cables that crisscrossed the city, starting on the South and West sides and Loop district and leading to a nationwide cable-car boom in almost 30 cities, according to Borzo…

His research revealed that the cable-car experience, which debuted Jan. 28, 1882 on State Street, from Madison to 21st streets, became “a rich part of the very fabric of everyday life” in Chicago and led to people from different ethnic and economic classes rubbing shoulders, if only for the duration of a ride…

Borzo, who has written three other books about Chicago, said he took on his latest project because history books about the city either confused cable cars with trolleys or skipped over cable cars in describing the timeline from horsecars to electric trolley cars.

He said he hopes the book will foster a wider recognition of Chicago’s cable-car history, perhaps in the form of a monument, a plaque or, better yet, construction of a short cable-car line.

I knew Chicago had electric street cars but was not aware there was a thriving cable car system as well. Find a preview of Borzo’s findings at Forgotten Chicago. The site includes these two interesting pieces of information:

1. Here is the track mileage comparison between Chicago and San Francisco:

During Chicago’s cable car era (1882 to 1906), three companies provided more than one billion rides using an estimated 3,000 cars. Chicago ended up with the second most miles: 41.2 double-track miles compared with a peak of 52.8 double-track miles in San Francisco. And to operate its systems, Chicago’s cable car companies built 13 powerhouses and countless car barns, office buildings, waiting rooms, repair shops, car building shops and other structures. With a mile of single track costing about $150,000, Chicago’s huge investment in cable car track, infrastructure and equipment added up to $25 million ($600 million in current dollars).

2. A map of the cable car system in the Loop in 1894:

For a city looking for new revenues and already having a decent tourist base, I could imagine some people might want to look at a short cable car line that would sell nostalgia like it does in San Francisco. How about a short line from Michigan Avenue to Navy Pier? Not quite an authentic route but it would connect two important tourist spots and replace the buses made to look like trolleys. Perhaps they could even create a little hill to ride over…

“The typical American home” is a reminder not all American homes are new

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The 2011 American Housing Survey provides a summary of the traits of the typical American house:

This Is What the Typical American Home Looks Like Now

A little bit more on the changes to American houses over time:

Some aspects of the American home have changed dramatically since the first survey was conducted in 1973 (which makes sense because half of the occupied homes today were built in 1974 or later). Central air conditioning was a luxury that only 18% of households enjoyed back then, but the number grew to 43% in 1993, and today 66% of dwellings have central AC.

The number of bathrooms in a typical home has also grown. From 1973 to 1991, one bathroom was the norm, and for the next 20 years, it was one and a half bathrooms. The 2011 survey is the first time that the median residence was found to have 2 or more.

What strikes me most about this summary is that this is a very different picture of housing than we typically see and hear about. A lot of attention is lavished on new housing: people are interested in the size (new homes are on average about 2,500 square feet so way above the full average for US homes), new building trends (McMansions, green homes, homes of the future), new features (less granite countertops and stainless steel appliances?), and new housing starts. There are good reasons for all of this: housing is a big industry with lots of money involved.

At the same time, most houses in the United States are not new houses. They are homes that need maintenance, updating, and aren’t necessarily bringing in similar amounts of money into the economy. They are probably more accessible to average Americans and are probably located in older, more established communities. In other words, we need to also pay attention to the existing housing stock to think how both the existing and new stock can be effectively utilized.

Call for more social science modeling for Social Security

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An op-ed in the New York Times explains how poorly financial forecasts for Social Security are made and suggests social scientists can help:

Remarkably, since Social Security was created in 1935, the government’s forecasting methods have barely changed, even as a revolution in big data and statistics has transformed everything from baseball to retailing.

This omission can be explained by the fact that the Office of the Chief Actuary, the branch of the Social Security Administration that is responsible for the forecasts, is almost exclusively composed of, well, actuaries — without any serious representation of statisticians or social science methodologists. While these actuaries are highly responsible and careful and do excellent work curating and describing the data that go into the forecasts, their job is not to make statistical predictions. Yet the agency badly needs such expertise.

With considerable help from the actuaries and other officials at the Social Security Administration, we unearthed how the agency makes mortality forecasts and uses them to predict the program’s solvency. We learned that the methods are antiquated, subjective and needlessly complicated — and, as a result, are prone to error and to potential interference from political appointees. This may explain why the agency’s forecasts have, at times, changed significantly from year to year, even when there was little change in the underlying data.

We have made our methods, calculations and software available online at j.mp/SSecurity so that others can replicate or improve our forecasts. The implications of our findings go beyond social science. As the wave of retirement by the baby boomers continues, doing nothing to shore up Social Security’s solvency is irresponsible. If the amount of money coming in through payroll taxes does not increase and if the amount of money going out as benefits remains the same, the trust funds will become insolvent less than 20 years from now.

Sociologists seem to be looking for ways to get involved in major policy issues so perhaps this is one way to do that. It is also interesting to note this op-ed is based on a 2012 article in Demography titled “Statistical Security for Social Security.” Not too many articles can make such a claim…

Also, I’m sure this doesn’t inspire confidence among some for the government’s ability to keep track of all of its data. Does the federal government have the ability to hire and train the kind of people it needs? Can it compete with the private sector or political campaigns (think of what the lauded 2012 Obama campaign big data workers might be able to do)?