Daily deal Internet sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial are popular with consumers, but the extent of benefits for participating merchants — who agree to significant price cuts and experience subsequent social media reviews — remains a subject of debate.
While online social contact can be traced back to the 1980s, online dating began to gain more prominence — and participants — around 1997, according to a 2011 study by the Oxford Internet Institute. The incorporation of Web 2.0 interactive technologies and database support helped online dating to steadily expand: Before 1997, only 6% of singles searched for potential companions online; after 1997, 30% of singles did.
Twitter saw a surge in its number of users between 2009 and 2010, particularly among teens. Content on the character-limited blogging and social networking ranges from the mundane to important world news, and from personal exchanges to advertisements. This broad range of content leaves open a range of possible explanatory factors driving increased usage.
The Internet is thick with social networks, but it is not clear which conditions favor the rapid spread of information or the adoption of behaviors offline. One theory maintains that an online network with more “weak ties” and overall connections can quickly and efficiently encourage the adoption of a given social behavior. A competing theory suggests that a network with more clusters of overlapping connections can better promote that behavior by delivering the same message to an individual multiple times.
As part of our ongoing collaboration with Nieman Journalism Lab, we’ve rounded up the latest in digital- and media-oriented scholarship — picking highlights from disciplines such as computer science, political science, journalism research and communications.
