Social policy literature

I'm looking at Anthea Tinker"s: Older people in modern society.
* I"ve learnt that the assumption of 3 generation households is overestimated, even in Victorian times household consisted of parents-children household only p195
* The desirability of close links, but family is not always best option for care (frustration, restrictions, abuse) - in a national survey: if you need help who would you turn to - more than 50% responded they don't need to turn to anyone', and 30% to family p196
* There is greater stress on the independence of older people - compared to the development with disabled people "paying for care' - disabled people wanted to be independent from the good grace of a family member p197
* Care given by professional service can help the family relationships, but does not undermine self-help or responsibility p201
* Reduction of family size vs child survival rate + long life expectancy = soon parent + child can grow old together p199

Different types of community plat forms

examples:
Bob's bulletin board - a personally owned community
Listserver - makes it easy to create mailing lists
Drkoop.com (health content) - has a community embedded, including scheduled chats with experts and general chats
educational communities - MUDs and MOOs

• State clearly the purpose of the community
• Consider the different user groups e.g. moderators and mediators help to govern the communities, professionals and lurkers
• Participants - provide options to add pictures or other forms of self-representation
• Critical mass is important
• Netequitte

Social relations - strong and weak ties

A bit of jargon (Preece p.173):
social relations
communities & groups
strong and weak ties
social capital

The Internet supports existing strong ties, but developing strong ties with friends met online is rarer. Converting weak ties into strong ties may require face-to-face social interaction.
Putnam explains that the purpose of 'interest' groups appear to be for people to talk about themselves in the presence of the group and not to participate in a community. (Preece p23)

There are many reports of people receiving support and empathy from online relationships (Hiltz 1985, Preece & Ghozati 1998, Sproull & Faraj 1997, Sproull & Kiesler 1991). For people who are unable to attend local functions, meeting in online communities and developing weak ties is better than not meeting at all.

For well-working online communities you need good usability and socialbility:
Socialbility is concerned with planning and developing social policies that are understood and accepted by the community (registration policies).

Online communities

I just got the Jenny Preece book out about online communities. Reading the initial chapters it becomes quite clear that online communities work best when there is already a 'community'. Generally speaking face-to-face communities work better.

A working definition of an online community is:

• people - who interact socially as they strive to satisfy their own needs or perform special roles, such as leading and moderating
• shared purpose - such as an interest, need, information exchange, or service that provides a reason for the community
  
• policies - in the form of tacit assumptions, rituals, protocols, rules, and laws that guide people's interactions
• computer systems - to support and mediate social interaction and facilitate a sense of togetherness
  

Sociologists map the strength of online relationships using the technique of network analysis.

My first blog entry

Here we go! My first blog entry.
I'm interested in researching older peoples' behaviour with family and friends, in particular their online behaviour. I'm interested to see whether there is a design that facilitates online contact with family and friends. We all know that good and likable design gives us pleasure and we're likely to use it more frequently.