Barry WellmanFRSC (30 September 1942 – 9 July 2024) was an American-Canadiansociologist and was the co-director of theToronto-based international NetLab Network. His areas of research werecommunitysociology, theInternet,human–computer interaction andsocial structure, as manifested insocial networks incommunities andorganizations. His overarching interest was in the paradigm shift from group-centered relations tonetworked individualism. He has written or co-authored more than 300 articles, chapters, reports and books.[1] Wellman was a professor at the Department of Sociology,University of Toronto, for 46 years, from 1967 to 2013, including a five-year stint as the S. D. Clark Professor.
Among the concepts Wellman has published are: "network of networks" and "the network city" (both with Paul Craven),[2] "the community question",[3] "computer networks as social networks",[4] "connected lives" and[5] the "immanent Internet" (both with Bernie Hogan),[6] "media-multiplexity" (withCaroline Haythornthwaite),[7] "networked individualism" and "networked society",[8] "personal community" and "personal network"[9] and three withAnabel Quan-Haase: "hyperconnectivity", "local virtuality" and "virtual locality".[10]
Wellman received career achievement awards from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, theInternational Network for Social Network Analysis, theInternational Communication Association, the GRAND Network of Centres of Excellence, and two sections of theAmerican Sociological Association: Community and Urban Sociology; Communication and Information Technologies.[14] He was elected as aFellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) in 2007.[15][16] In 2012, Wellman was identified as having the highesth-index (of citations) of all Canadian sociologists.[17] Wellman was a faculty member at the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto for 46 years, from 1967 to 2013. Since July 2013, he co-directed the NetLab Network. Wellman was honoured with the Lim Chong Yah[18] Visiting Professorship of Communications and New Media at theNational University of Singapore in January–February 2015.[19]
Wellman died after a long illness on 9 July 2024, at the age of 81.[20]
Barry Wellman was born and raised in theGrand Concourse andFordham Road area ofthe Bronx,New York City. He attended P.S. 33 and Creston J.H.S. 79, and was a teenage member of theFordham Flames.[21] He gained his high school degree from theBronx High School of Science in 1959.[21] He received his A.B. (Bachelor's) degreemagna cum laude fromLafayette College in 1963, majoring in social history and winning prizes in both history and religious studies. At Lafayette, he was a member of the McKelvy Honors House and captained the undefeated 1962College Bowl team, whose final victory was overBerkeley.[22]
Until 1990, he focused oncommunity sociology andsocial network analysis. During his first three years inToronto, he also held a joint appointment with theClarke Institute of Psychiatry where he working withD. B. Coates, M.D., co-directing the "Yorklea Study" in the Toronto borough of East York. This first East York study, with data collected in 1968, did a field study of a large population, linking interpersonal relations with psychiatric symptoms. This early study of "social support" documented the prevalence of non-localfriendship andkinship ties, demonstrating that community is no longer confined toneighborhood and studying non-local communities associal networks. Wellman's "The Community Question" paper, reporting on this study, has been selected as one of the seven most important articles in English-Canadian sociology.[24]
A secondEast York study, conducted in 1978 and 1979 at theUniversity of Toronto'sCentre for Urban and Community Studies, used in-depth interviews with 33 East Yorkers (originally surveyed in the first study) to learn more information about their social networks. It provided evidence about which kinds of ties and networks supply which types ofsocial support. It showed, for example, that sisters provide siblings with much emotional support, while parents provide financial aid.[25] The support comes more from the characteristics of the ties than from the networks in which they are embedded.[26] This research also demonstrated that wives maintain social networks for their husbands as well as for themselves.[27]
Although Wellman's work has shifted primarily to studies of the Internet (see section below), he has continued collaborative analyses of the first and second East York studies, showing that reciprocity (like social support) is much more of a tie phenomenon than a social network phenomenon[28] and that the frequency and supportiveness of interpersonal contact before the Internet was non-linearly associated with residential (and workplace)distance.[29]
Wellman has editedNetworks in the Global Village (1999), a book of original articles about personal networks around the world. In 2007, he edited a special issue, "The Network is Personal" of the journalSocial Networks (vol. 29, no. 3, July), containing analyses from Canada, France, Germany andIran.
Concomitant with his empirical work, Wellman contributed to the theory of social network analysis. The most comprehensive statement is in his introductory article toSocial Structures, co-edited with the lateS. D. Berkowitz. This work reviews the history of social network thought, and suggests a number of basic principles of social network analysis.[30]
More recent and more focused theoretical work has discussed the "glocalization" of contemporary communities (simultaneously "global" and "local")[31] and the rise of "networked individualism" – the transformation from group-based networks to individualized networks.[32][33]American Sociological Association career achievement award winnerHarrison White notes: "Barry Wellman stands out as having devoted an entire career to exploring and documenting natural social worlds in network terms."[34]
Wellman's methodological contributions have been for the analysis of ego-centered or "personal" networks – defined from the standpoint of an individual (usually a person). As batches of personal networks are often studied, this calls for somewhat different techniques than the more commonsocial network practice of analyzing a single large network.
A 2007 paper, co-authored by Wellman (with Bernie Hogan and Juan-Antonio Carrasco), has discussed alternatives in gathering personal network data.[35] A paper with Kenneth Frank showed how to tackle the problem of simultaneously analyzing personal network data on the two distinct levels of ties and networks.[36] "Neighboring in Netville" has been cited as the only published study of personal networks from a known roster of potential network members.[37]
Wellman often worked in collaboration with computer scientists, communication scientists and information scientists.In 1990, he became involved in studying how ordinary people use the Internet and other communication technologies to communicate and exchange information at work, at home and in the community. Thus his work has expanded his interest in non-local communities and social networks to encompass the Internet,mobile phones and other information and communication technologies.
Wellman's initial project ("Cavecat" which morphed into "Telepresence") was in collaboration withRonald Baecker,Caroline Haythornthwaite, Marilyn Mantei, Gale Moore, and Janet Salaff. This effort in the early 1990s was done before the widespread popularity of the Internet, to use networked PCs forvideoconferencing and computer supported collaborative work (CSCW).[38]Caroline Haythornthwaite (for her dissertation and other works) and Wellman analyzed why computer scientists connect with each other – online and offline. They discovered that friendships as well as collaborative work were prime movers of connectivity at work.[39]
Wellman and Anabel Quan-Haase also studied whether such computer-supported work teams were supporting networked organizations, in which bureaucratic structure and physical proximity did not matter. Their research in one high-tech American organization – heavily dependent oninstant messaging ande-mail – showed that the supposed ICT-driven transformation of work tonetworked organizations was only partially fulfilled in practice. The organizational constraints of departmental organization (including power) and physical proximity continued to play important roles. There were strong norms in the organization for when different communication media were used, with face-to-face contact intertwined with online contact.[40]
As a community sociologist, Wellman began arguing that too much analysis of life online was happening in isolation from other aspects of everyday life. He published several papers (alone and with associates) arguing the need to contextualize Internet research, and proposing that online relations – like off-line – would be best studied as ramified social networks rather than as bounded groups.[41] This argument culminated in a 2002 book,The Internet in Everyday Life (co-edited withCaroline Haythornthwaite), providing exemplification from studies in a number of social milieus.
Wellman did empirical work in this area: he was part of a team (led by James Witte) that surveyed visitors to theNational Geographic Society's website in 1998 and used these data to counter thedystopian argument that Internet involvement was associated withsocial isolation.[42]
The large U.S. national random-sample survey analyzed in the Pew Internet report, "The Strength of Internet Ties" (with Jeffrey Boase, John B. Horrigan and Lee Rainie) also showed a positive association between communication online and communication by telephone and face-to-face. The study showed that email is well-suited for maintaining regular contact with large networks, and especially with relationships that are only somewhat strong. The study also found that Internet users get more help than non-users from friends and relatives.[43]
Research into the "glocalization" concept also fed into this intellectual stream.Keith Hampton and Wellman studied theToronto suburb of "Netville", a pseudonym. It showed the interplay between online and offline activity, and how the Internet – aided by a list-serve – is not just a means of long-distance communication but enhances neighboring and civic involvement.[44]
He collaborated with Helen Hua Wang and Jeffrey Cole of theWorld Internet Project's Center for the Digital Future to investigate the first national U.S. survey of social relationships and Internet use. Their work shows that the number of friends are growing, and that heavy Internet users have more friends than others.[45] Wellman also collaborated with Ben Veenhof (Statistics Canada), Carsten Quell (Department of Canadian Heritage) and Bernie Hogan to relate time spent at home on the Internet to social relations and civic involvement. A different focus is his collaboration on Wenhong Chen's study of transnational immigrant entrepreneurs who link China and North America.[46]
Wellman's work continued to focus on the interplay between information and communication technologies, especially theInternet,social relations andsocial structure. He directed theConnected Lives study of the interplay between communication, community and domestic relationships in Toronto and inChapleau in rural northern Ontario. Early findings of the interplay between online and offline life are summarized in "Connected Lives: The Project".[47] More focused research (with Jennifer Kayahara) has shown how the onetimetwo-step flow of communication has become more recursively multi-step as the result of the Internet's facilitation of information seeking and communication.[48] Research (with Tracy Kennedy) has argued that many households, like communities, have changed from local groups to become spatially dispersed networks connected by frequent ICT and mobile phone communication.[49] Other NetLab researchers, besides those noted in the text and the notes have included Julie Amoroso, Christian Beermann, Dean Behrens, Vincent Chua, Jessica Collins, Dimitrina Dimitrova, Zack Hayat, Chang Lin, Julia Madej, Maria Majerski, Mo Guang Ying, Diana Mok, Bárbara Barbosa Neves, and Lilia Smale.
Wellman was involved in the "Networked Individuals" project, using the fourth East York study to investigate their social networks and digital media use. His collaborators include Brent Berry, Molly-Gloria Harper, Maria Kiceveski, Guang Ying Mo, Anabel Quan-Haase, Helen Hua Wang, and Alice Renwen Zhang. The initial papers focused on older adults, aged 65+. showing how they used digital media to stay connected with relatives and friends both near and far.[50] Most recently, he withAnabel Quan-Haase and Molly-Gloria Harper have distinguished a typology ofnetworked individualism as either Networked, Bounded, or Limited.[51]
Founded and led theUniversity of Toronto's "Structural Analysis Programme" in the Department ofSociology, 1979–1982, which focused on studyingsocial structure and relationships from asocial network perspective. The Department of Sociology subsequently established the "Barry Wellman Award" for excellence in undergraduate research.[53]
Associate Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies,University of Toronto (1980–1984), where his research was based, 1970–2007.[54]
Wellman was aFellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has received Career Achievement Awards from two sections of theAmerican Sociological Association: Community & Urban Sociology; Communication and Information Technology. In 2008, he was the first person given the "Communication Research as an Open Field" Award, 2008, from theInternational Communication Association for a researcher who has "made important contributions to the field of communications from outside the discipline of communications." In 2014, he received a "Lifetime Achievement" award from theOxford Internet Institute "in recognition of his extraordinary record of scholarship in social network theory and Internet research which has contributed so much to our understanding of life online."[59]
^Barry Wellman, "Computer Networks as Social Networks."Science 293 (14 September 2001): 2031-34.
^Barry Wellman and Bernie Hogan, with Kristen Berg, Jeffrey Boase, Juan-Antonio Carrasco, Rochelle Côté, Jennifer Kayahara, Tracy L.M. Kennedy and Phouc Tran. "Connected Lives: The Project" Pp. 157-211 inNetworked Neighbourhoods: The Online Community in Context, edited by Patrick Purcell. Guildford, UK: Springer, 2006.
^Barry Wellman and Bernie Hogan (2004). "The Immanent Internet." Pp. 54-80 inNetting Citizens: Exploring Citizenship in a Digital Age, edited by Johnston McKay. Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press.
^Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman, "Work, Friendship and Media Use for Information Exchange in a Networked Organization."Journal of the American Society for Information Science 49, 12 (Oct. 1998): 1101-1114
^Barry Wellman, "Physical Place and Cyber Place: The Rise of Networked Individualism."International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25,2 (June 2001): 227-52
^Barry Wellman, "The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers."American Journal of Sociology 84 (March 1979): 1201-31.
^Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman, "Networks of Distance and Media: A Case Study of a High Tech Firm." Trust and Communities conference, Bielefeld, Germany, July 2003; Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. 2004. "Local Virtuality in a High-Tech Networked Organization." Anaylse & Kritik 26 (special issue 1): 241-57 SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1; Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman, "How Computer-Mediated Hyperconnectivity and Local Virtuality Foster Social Networks of Information and Coordination in a Community of Practice." International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, Redondo Beach, California, February 2005.; Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. "Hyperconnected Net Work: Computer-Mediated Community in a High-Tech Organization." Pp. 281-333 in The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy, edited by Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006
^Merrijoy Kelner and Beverly Wellman, eds.,Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Challenge and Change. London: Harwood/Taylor and Francis, 2000;"CAM lab - Beverly Wellman Biography". Archived fromthe original on 9 December 2007. Retrieved30 December 2007.
^Claude Fischer,To Dwell among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1982.Robert J. Sampson, "Local Friendship Ties and Community Attachment in Mass Society: A Multilevel Systemic Model."American Sociological Review, 1988.Barrett A. Lee. RS Oropesa. Barbara J. Metch. Avery M. Guest. "Testing the Decline-of-Community Thesis: Neighborhood Organizations in Seattle, 1929 and 1979."American Journal of Sociology, 89, 5, 1161-1188. March 1984. Barry Wellman, "The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers."American Journal of Sociology 84 (March 1979): 1201-31.
^Nan Lin,Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Barry Wellman and Scot Wortley. "Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support." 1990.American Journal of Sociology 96, 3 (Nov.): 558-88. Barry Wellman and Scot Wortley, "Brothers' Keepers: Situating Kinship Relations in Broader Networks of Social Support."Sociological Perspectives 32, 3 (1989): 273-306. Barry Wellman, Peter Carrington and Alan Hall "Networks as Personal Communities." Pp. 130-84 inSocial Structures: A Network Approach, edited by Barry Wellman and S.D. Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Vicky Cattell. (2001). "Poor people, poor places, and poor health: the mediating role of social networks and social capital."Social Science and Medicine, 52 (10): 1501-1516.
^Barry Wellman and Kenneth Frank. "Network Capital in a Multi-Level World: Getting Support in Personal Communities." Pp. 233-73 inSocial Capital: Theory and Research, edited by Nan Lin, Karen Cook and Ronald Burt. Chicago: Aldine DeGruyter, 2001.Talja Blokland,Urban Bonds. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. Linton Freeman,A History of Social Network Analysis. Vancouver: Empiric Press, 2004.
^Barry Wellman, "Men in Networks: Private Community, Domestic Friendships." Pp. 74-114 inMen's Friendships, edited by Peter Nardi. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. (1992). Barry Wellman, "Domestic Work, Paid Work and Net Work." Pp. 159-91 inUnderstanding Personal Relationships, edited bySteve Duck and Daniel Perlman. London: Sage, 1985.
^Gabriele Plickert, Rochelle Côté and Barry Wellman. 2007. " It's Not Who You Know, It's How You Know Them: Who Exchanges What With Whom?"Social Networks 29, 3:405-29.
^Diana Mok and Barry Wellman. 2007. "How Much Did Distance Matter Before the Internet?"Social Networks 29: in press.
^Barry Wellman, "Structural Analysis: From Method and Metaphor to Theory and Substance." Pp. 19-61 inSocial Structures: A Network Approach, edited by Barry Wellman and S.D. Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
^Barry Wellman, "Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism." Pp. 11-25 inDigital Cities II: Computational and Sociological Approaches, edited by Makoto Tanabe, Peter van den Besselaar, and Toru Ishida. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2002.
^Barry Wellman, "Physical Place and Cyber Place: The Rise of Networked Individualism."International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25,2 (June 2001): 227-52.
^Donald Steiny and Harri Oinas-Kukkonen (2007). "Networks awareness: social network search, innovation and productivity in organisations."International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations 4(4): 413-430.
^Identity and Control, 2nd ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. p. 27
^Bernie Hogan, Juan-Antonio Carrasco and Barry Wellman. 2007. "Visualizing Personal Networks: Working with Participant-Aided Sociograms."Field Methods 19 (2), May: 116-144.
^Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman. 2003. "Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb."City and Community 2, 3 (Fall): 277-311; Barbara S. Lawrence. 2006. "Organizational reference groups: A missing perspective on social context.Organization Science, 17(1),80-100.
^Marilyn Mantei, Ronald Baecker, William Buxton, Thomas Milligan, Abigail Sellen and Barry Wellman. "Experiences in the Use of a Media Space." 1992. Pp 372-78 inGroupware: Software for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, edited by David Marca and Geoffrey Bock. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1992, pp. 372-78.Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman, "Work, Friendship and Media Use for Information Exchange in a Networked Organization."Journal of the American Society for Information Science 49, 12 (Oct. 1998): 1101-1114.
^Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman, "Work, Friendship and Media Use for Information Exchange in a Networked Organization."Journal of the American Society for Information Science 49, 12 (Oct. 1998): 1101-1114.Caroline Haythornthwaite, Barry Wellman and Laura Garton, "Work and Community Via Computer-Mediated Communication." Pp. 199-226 inPsychology and the Internet: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal and Transpersonal Implications, edited by Jayne Gackenbach. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998.
^Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. "Hyperconnected Net Work: Computer-Mediated Community in a High-Tech Organization." Pp. 281-333 inThe Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy, edited by Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006; Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman, "From the Computerization Movement to Computerization: A Case Study of a Community of Practice." InComputerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes to Ubiquitous Computing, edited by Ken Kraemer and Margaret Elliott. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2007.
^Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia. "Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities." Pp. 167-94 inCommunities in Cyberspace, edited by Marc Smith and Peter edited by Barry Wellman. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. Barry Wellman, "An Electronic Group is Virtually a Social Network." Pp. 179-205 inCulture of the Internet, edited by Sara Kiesler. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997.Barry Wellman, "The Rise of Networked Individualism." Pp. 17-42 inCommunity Informatics, edited by Leigh Keeble and Brian Loader. London: Routledge, 2001. Barry Wellman and Bernie Hogan (2004). "The Immanent Internet." Pp. 54-80 inNetting Citizens, edited by Johnston McKay. Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press. Barry Wellman. 2004. "The Three Ages of Internet Studies: Ten, Five and Zero Years Ago."New Media and Society 6 (1): 108-114; Howard Rheingold. (20).The Virtual Community, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
^Wenhong Chen, Jeffrey Boase and Barry Wellman. 2002. "The Global Villagers: Comparing the Users and Uses of the Internet Around the World." Pp. 74-113 inThe Internet in Everyday Life, edited by Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite. Oxford: Blackwell. Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman with James Witte and Keith Hampton. 2002. "Capitalizing on the Internet: Network Capital, Participatory Capital, and Sense of Community." Pp. 291-324 inThe Internet in Everyday Life, edited by Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite. Oxford: Blackwell.
^Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman. 2003. "Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb."City and Community 2, 3 (Fall): 277-311.doi:10.1046/j.1535-6841.2003.00057.x Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman. 2002. "The Not So Global Village of Netville." Pp. 345-71 inThe Internet in Everyday Life, edited by Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite. Oxford: Blackwell.
^Hua Wang and Barry Wellman. 2010. "Social Connectivity in America: Changes in Adult Friendship Network Size from 2002 to 2007."American Behavioral Scientist 53 (8): 1148-1169.doi:10.1177/0002764209356247
^Wenhong Chen and Barry Wellman, "Doing Business at Home and Away: Policy Implications of Chinese-Canadian Entrepreneurship." Canada in Asia Series, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Vancouver. April 2007. Barry Wellman, Wenhong Chen and Dong Weizhen. "Networking Guanxi." Pp. 221-41 inSocial Connections in China: Institutions, Culture and the Changing Nature of Guanxi, edited by Thomas Gold, Douglas Guthrie and David Wank. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Wenhong Chen and Barry Wellman. 2009. "Net and Jet: The Internet Use, Travel and Social Networks of Chinese Canadian Entrepreneurs."Information, Communication and Society, 12, 4 (June): 525-47.doi:10.1080/13691180902858080
^Barry Wellman and Bernie Hogan, with Kristen Berg, Jeffrey Boase, Juan-Antonio Carrasco, Rochelle Côté, Jennifer Kayahara, Tracy L.M. Kennedy and Phouc Tran. "Connected Lives: The Project" Pp. 157-211 in Networked Neighbourhoods: The Online Community in Context, edited by Patrick Purcell. Guildford, UK: Springer, 2006.
^Jennifer Kayahara and Barry Wellman, 2007. "Searching for Culture – High and Low."Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (4): April:doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00352.x
^Tracy Kennedy and Barry Wellman. 2007. "The Networked Household."Information, Communication and Society 10: forthcoming.doi:10.1080/13691180701658012
^Anabel Quan-Haase, Guang Ying Mo, and Barry Wellman. 2017. "Connected Seniors: How Older Adults in East York Exchange Social Support Online and Offline."Information, Communication and Society, 20, 7: 967-983.doi:10.1080/1369118X.2017.1305428. Hua Wang, Renwen Zhang, and Barry Wellman. 2018. "How Are Older Adults Networked? Insights from East Yorkers' Network Structure, Relational Autonomy, and Digital Media Use."Information, Communication and Society,21 5 (May): 681-696.doi:10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428659
^Ronald Anderson and Barry Wellman, eds., "Symposium on the History of CITASA, 1988 to 2005: From Microcomputers to Communication and Information Technologies."Social Science Computer Review 24, 2 (Summer, 2006).
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