Even though it's been long since I graduated, I'm still part of my high school community. I still occasionally visit my school website to catch up on the latest news and events. I also maintain regular contact with fellow alumni both inside and outside my graduating class. Within the community, each member is an actor. Actual interaction and direct friendship create a web of strong ties in the network, while mutual associations create a series of weaker ties. Entering college, many of the stronger ties have become weaker ties, due to the distribution and involvement of actors in different college communities. However, through the Cornell community, some of the weaker ties have actually become stronger ties because of actors common to both communities. After entering the Cornell community, I interacted more with actors that came from my high school.
The community definitely shares a common ground. We all went through the same unique experience that my high school offered. We can all make the same jokes about aspects of our high school. Consequently, we are tied together by inside information. In terms of reciprocity, the mutual friendships that form strong ties create a mesh that connects one another. Even the mutual associations, weak ties resulting from knowing a friend of a friend, criss cross as new ties form in the community. In this way, I am able to trace weak ties to underclassmen in high school. The reciprocity is especially evident when certain underclassmen in high school know several stronger tied alums.
CMC has made an impact on the high school community. It provides an easier way to maintain strong ties with individuals that are part of the high school alum community and outside of the college community. This allows communities to transcend geographical limitations. The community can be distributed and effectively communicate at the same time. There are websites for both the alum specific community and the general high school community. This allows a central point for actors to link together, enabling the creation of more ties. I also periodically receive e-mail from school lists. Although I am severed from the actual location of this community, CMC has allowed me to stay connected. From my experience, I can see how a physical location isn't absolutely required for communities.
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Hi Henry, interesting post. I tend to find my online relationships with my former classmates very interesting. The tightly-knit social network that was formerly our entire social lives, with all our interactions carried out in very close FtF proximity, has suddenly lost all its physical existence and been transformed into a CMC hub. Your school has this website, while mine exists merely as a “[my high school name]” Facebook group. You do a good job analyzing this particular social network using Haythornewaite’s concepts, but it would be interesting to discuss a few more points.
Call me pessimistic, but a high school social network, now that you are here in college, has no strong future. Your strong-ties have become weaker ones, and the reciprocity seems very brief and more relevant to the younger students. I may be saying this because as a Junior, I find that as I spend less and less time in the same location as my high school friends, I am finding it similarly difficult to maintain focused participation in our online networks.
Hi Henry. You brought up an especially interesting point; actors from one of your community can also be actors in another one of your communities. I think it is especially interesting looking at the ties between the same actors in one community and those same actors in a different community. Since high school is a much smaller community than the Cornell community, I could definitely see actors having very strong ties in the high school community and very weak ties in the college community. I could also see those actors having very strong ties (best friends in high school and best friends in college) or very weak ties in both communities.
Hi Henry,
High School is a great example of a community. I am also still part of my high school community and we even now have a facebook group "Class of 2004" which allows my class to keep in touch.
I think you make a great point about actors in the community and how weak ties have become strong ties and vice versa. I can completely relate to your point about actors from your high school becoming strong ties now that they too go to Cornell. I find it interesting that sometimes common ground as a result previous community can make people closer.
Overall, your post was very clear and descriptive and easy to understand. You did a great job explaining how high school can be applied to SNA. Awesome job!
I liked your post, especially since I am also pretty connected with my high school. I am from Ithaca so I still interact with a lot of students and staff, and have strong ties to many of them. Much like you, I am also connected with the majority of my high school friends through Facebook and AIM. CMC is such a great tool because it allows us to stay connected with ones we grew up with. I enjoyed your post Henry!!
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