Research Proposal: Glocalized Netizens

Glocalization: A derivative of the networked individual

In 2001 The Pew Internet & American Life project reported that at least 84% of online Americans had used the Internet to contact to an online group. The face of online group membership is diverse and not confined to transnational or global membership where face-to-face communication is rare among group members. Increasingly, Americans are using the Internet to strengthen local ties to their communities, and in turn, the local ties of communities to national and transnational groups. Is this lateral connection of private citizens to others of similar interest in their hometowns or across the globe a version of the “Global Village” envisioned by media visionaries like Marshall McLuhan? Howard Rheingold stated that America’s progress toward an equitable Information Age would not be measured by the number of people dependent upon the Internet. Rather, he contends it “will be measured by the number of local systems we can build, using local resources, to meet local needs.” This research project will explore whether current trends in Internet communication development represent a contribution to the kind of local-needs brand of progress expressed in Mr. Rheingold’s statement.

Internet visionary JCR Licklider held prescient expectations for the nascent online network that years later grew into the Internet we know today. In 1962 he supervised the US Defense Department’s early Internet development under an ARPA funded department called the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). Licklider foresaw a network that would enable the creation of a community of researchers where online information would strengthen available education to the whole society by affording citizens access to ever expanding coffers of information. Moreover, Licklider was highly interested in the computer as a communications device and predicted that social contact would be increased via the computer and networks that would someday form the Internet. Current research and the terminology used in describing the online community conveys the scale of Internet innovation since Licklider’s days at ARPA. As members of an Internet enabled information economy and society, today's users have come a long way since the early predictions of Licklider.

The words “glocal” and “glocalization” prove helpful in understanding ways in which the Net has produced change in the press, private civic life, and government. Credit for creating this neologism has at times been attributed to business theory gurus, as well as media theorists and experts in the social sciences. Socioligist Barry Wellman of the University of Toronto is perhaps the most well known custodian of the term. His definition of glocalization is expressed as “the capacity of the Internet to expand users’ social worlds to faraway people and simultaneously to bind them more deeply to the place where they live.” Wellman’s Netlab research association’s efforts study the consequent changes which accompany living a “wired” life. More than anything, Wellman’s arguments rest on his assertion that the Internet—or as he calls it, computer mediated communication (CMC)—is fundamentally a social network.

Other useful, though less technology-driven research in the analysis of what online group membership means for today’s Americans is the work of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. In his book Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community, Putnam recounts the decline over the past forty years of community and civic health indicators in areas such as charitable giving, voter turnout, and subsequent group reciprocity. He argues these elements are indicators of a society’s health, its social capital. If, as the title of Putnam’s book implies, there will ever be a reviving American community, online groups very likely represent something entirely different, yet significant. Members of such groups may prove to be novel representations of Wellman’s “glocalized” individual with global reach and strong local ties enabled by CMCs.

Why do I find this topic interesting?

I find the Internet’s potential for enabling social and economic change to be one of its most intriguing and promising attributes. This past election, most Americans probably heard the term “blog” for the first time. While few of those can define a “blog”, the platform has mainstreamed. The idea of a personal publishing medium is nearly commonplace, boring. Few are suprised by such a service, but still fewer recognize the revolutionary potential in such arrangements. It won’t be long before the same rate of innovation in software, hardware, and Internet penetration that enabled the ascendance of the “blogosphere,” engenders a further individualization of highly personalized, many-to-many communications.

Technologies like RSS and blogging software democratize access to digital content and publishing, but they can also confine one’s online worldview. Using these tools, people can subscribe to a litany of online content to create their own personalized niche. I am not convinced that technology is deterministic, but I refuse to discount its potential. New models of online newspaper operating procedures point to a model that will enable specialization through RSS and blogs. By turning global news into “glocal” news, this may prevent myopic over-specialization among Internet users.

From a hardware standpoint, convergence is king. A "simputer"-like device of functions presently resigned to a handful of devices, I believe, is the future of individualized communication. Already I assume that a person has a mobile phone and that they know what SMS stands for, and may even know how to Google via SMS or tell me something interesting they recently read on a blog. We are beginning to view the person as the target or portal of communications. This specializes contact; you no longer call a household, but call the individual. We are available to our network, our online community, be it blogosphere or teenie bopper message board, 24/7/365. The new glocalized person will be the “networked individual” through whom his/her own supportive convoy travels via mobile, personalized connections to online communities.
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