Presentation from CSSE 2011 in Fredericton

1. Arif Anwar
CSSE 2011
May 31, 2011
Fredericton, NB, Canada

4.  Strong Ties  Weak Ties
- Intra-ethnic - Inter-ethnic
- Familial - Non-familial
- Intra-community - Inter-community
- Internal: - External:
Newcomer- Newcomer-non-
Newcomer Newcomer
*‘Strong’ or ‘Weak’ refers to the nature of the ties, not the quality.
Ties can be strong, weak or absent.

5. “Strong” Ties
 One individual precipitates
“Weak” Ties
Country of
migration

6. As ‘weak’ hydrogen bonds hold huge water
molecules together weak ties have important
implications for social and economic mobility

7.  Most job offers come through
acquaintances, not friends (Granovetter,
1973)
 Positive correlation between number of
weak ties and aggregate wage and
employment rates (Montgomery, 1992)

8.  Thestrong social networks that await
Newcomers in Canada can be detrimental
for diverse job opportunities.

9.  Newcomers may be unaware of other
resources as well

10. Newcomers: information poor
Non-newcomers: information rich

11.  Tool for:
- Social networking
- Microblogging
 ‘SMS of the Internet’
 Quick bursts of
information

12.  Free
 Low-tech/simple (relatively)
 Ability to group message
 All you need is a cell phone
 Really, all you need is a cell phone, you DO NOT need
an ‘Internet phone’, no data plan required, period.

13.  Growing faster than any other consumer electronics
 Cheap
 Widely available
 Worldwide numbers: 6 billion+

15.  A first-line for information dissemination
and immediate response
 Twitter replicates real-word social
networks (you may want to follow...)

16.  Informal survey of information rich non-newcomers
such as community organizers and
 Identify viable, key knowledge network in which
intervention could be situated
◦ Focus group to determine information to be
disseminated
 Intervention
 Evaluation
◦ New survey and focus groups
◦ Analyze twitter stream for content of exchanges
 Extrapolate findings to a wider range of learning
contexts and communities

17.  Youth ‘navigators’ for Newcomer communities
 Equipped with Twitter, Facebook and Blogs
 Served as information-rich ‘nodes’ for other
newcomers
 Project date Summer 2010 – March 2011
 Findings TBP 2011