Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman. Journal
of the American Society for Information Science 49, 12 (Oct., 1998): 1101-1114.
ABSTRACT
We
use a social network approach to examine how work and friendship ties in a university
research group were associated with the kinds of media used for different kinds
of information exchange. The use of electronic mail, unscheduled face-to-face
encounters, and scheduled face-to-face meetings predominated for the exchange
of six kinds of information: Receiving Work, Giving Work, Collaborative Writing,
Computer Programming, Sociability, and Major Emotional Support. Few pairs used
synchronous desktop videoconferencing or the telephone. Email was used in similar
ways as face-to-face communication. The more frequent the contact, the more
"multiplex" the tie: a larger number of media was used to exchange a greater
variety of information. The closeness of work ties and of friendship ties were
each independently associated with more interaction: a greater frequency of
communication, the exchange of more kinds of information, and the use of more
media.