Abstract
Abstract In which social worlds does gender homophily operate more strongly – offline or online? To address this question, the following two aspects must be considered. First, people currently use many types of online communication media. Second, to examine the homophily effects exclusively, it is necessary to control for other network formation mechanisms such as ‘foci’ and ‘triadic closure.’ For this study, I conducted a mixed-method research in a high school in rural Japan. I asked students about who they interacted with face-to-face (F2F), through instant messenger (IM), and social networking services (SNS) and then analyzed the social networks using exponential random graph models (ERGMs). Subsequently, I conducted semi-structured interviews to uncover the practices and social contexts of each communication media and explain the results of the quantitative analysis. The results showed that SNS was more gender heterogeneous than offline. In the IM network, a small gender homophily effect was initially observed. However, three months later, its strength decreased to almost the same as that in the SNS networks. From the qualitative research, some key mechanisms producing the difference in gender homophily are specified, such as precedence of F2F communication to IM interaction, independence of SNS communication from F2F, recommending functions, and hobby homophily. Overall, this study implies that considering offline or online alone may cause misunderstanding regarding homophily in organizations because the observed strength of homophily effects depends on whether the space is examined offline or online, what kind of media is examined, and when the online social network data are collected.
Highlights
IntroductionThis study implies that considering offline or online alone may cause misunderstanding regarding homophily in organizations because the observed strength of homophily effects depends on whether the space is examined offline or online, what kind of media is examined, and when the online social network data are collected
In which social worlds does gender homophily operate more strongly – offline or online? To address this question, the following two aspects must be considered
To make it easier to visually compare each layer, nodes in each network are arranged with the same coordinates obtained by the Fruchterman– Reingold algorithm applied to the F2F network of Wave 1 data
Summary
This study implies that considering offline or online alone may cause misunderstanding regarding homophily in organizations because the observed strength of homophily effects depends on whether the space is examined offline or online, what kind of media is examined, and when the online social network data are collected. Social interactions occur in both offline and online spaces This raises an important question: Are there differences in homophily between offline and online spaces within a single social group?. To address the ‘offline vs online’ question in a modern setting, it is necessary to consider that nowadays people use multiple online media tools such as instant messenger (IM) and SNSs. The present study distinguishes between online communication in IM and SNSs and compares the homophily mecha nisms in each network with the face-to-face (F2F) network
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