Academic communication and Internet Discussion Groups: transfer of information or creation of social contacts?

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of Internet Discussion Groups (IDGs) in informal academic communication. It examines the claims in the literature that there are general benefits of academic mailing lists and newsgroups for researchers. Different hypotheses relating to potential contact and information benefits are tested with data of a random sample of English and Dutch university researchers within the humanities, the social and natural sciences. The outcomes support hypotheses about a few information effects and, more often, contact benefits of IDGs. Researchers build up weak contacts that make their research more visible and that make them more aware of other researchers' work. These weak contacts are useful for the reception of new research papers. As a result, IDGs provide access to social capital. However, contrary to what is stated in the literature, the data shows no evidence for expectations about equalizing effects on the general structure of academic communication. IDGs do not reduce inequalities in the opportunities to use informal communication channels.

Requesting and providing information in blogs and internet discussion forums

“…The use of bulletin boards, discussion groups and Usenet newsgroups has been reviewed in numerous studies since the 1980s both in work-related and non-work contexts (see, for example, Matzat, 2004;Savolainen, 2001). Some of the early studies reviewed information seeking in discussion groups.…”

Bowling alone but tweeting together: the evolution of human interaction in the social networking era

“…It is also remarkable that some studies on Facebook rely on server log data provided by the platform itself, which provides large samples, higher representativeness, objective information on what people really do on the platform, allowing for the distinction between social activities and individual pastimes like taking quizzes (see for example Burke et al 2010;2011). According to this strand of the literature, SNSs support the strengthening of bonding and bridging social capital (Steinfield et al 2008, Park et al 2009Pénard and Poussing 2010;Bauernschuster et al 2011), allow the crystallization of weak or latent ties that might otherwise remain ephemeral (Haythornthwaite 2005, Ellison et al 2007: 2011Miyata and Kobayashi 2008), facilitate the establishment of new collaborations in the academic community (Matzat 2004), support teenagers' selfesteem -encouraging them to relate to their peers (Ellison et al 2007;2011;Steinfield et al 2008), stimulate social learning (Burke et al 2010), enhance social trust (Matzat 2010), civic engagement (Stern and Adams 2010;Zhang et al 2010) and political participation (Gil de Zúñiga et al 2011), facilitate the creation of electronic networks of practice (Vasko and Faray 2005), and help the promotion of collective action (Landqvist and Teigland 2010). Drawing on survey data from a random sample of 800 undergraduate students, Ellison et al (2007) find that certain types of Facebook use can help individuals accumulate and maintain bridging social capital.…”

The Impact of Time Delay on the Content of Discussions at a Computer- Mediated Ergonomics Conference

“…According to Matzat (2004), many studies have shown that users of online discussions find that they are helpful for creating new ideas as well as providing research information. Garrison et al (2000) indicated that due to a greater time for reflection within text-based communications, they may be more preferable to oral communication when the objective is higher-order cognitive learning.…”

“…Previous research has looked at the length of messages and has concluded that while longer messages tend to be "richer" (in part resulting from more social presence cues), shorter messages generate more discussion postings (Schoberth et al, 2003). Similarly, in comparison to face-to-face communication, computer-mediated communication has found to be leaner and more task-oriented (Garrison et al, 2000;Matzat, 2004). This study investigates the ability of online textual communication, within an academic conference environment, to facilitate the depth of knowledge construction and critical debate.…”