1. Networked: The new social
operating system
Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet Project
8.23.12 – Learning 2.0
Email: Lrainie@pewinternet.org
Twitter: @Lrainie
PewInternet.org

2. Networked individualism
• Shift from tight groups to looser, more
fragmented networks
• The individual is the main actor (not
household)
• Relationships are more specialized and more
fleeting – partial membership in multiple
communities
• In organizations, less hierarchy
• More freedom; more work

3. Digital Revolution 1
Internet (85%) and Broadband at home (66%)
71%
66%

4. Broadband at home – 66%

5. Networked creators among internet users
• 69% are social networking site users
• 59% share photos and videos
• 37% contribute rankings and ratings
• 33% create content tags
• 30% share personal creations
• 26% post comments on sites and blogs
• 15% have personal website
• 15% are content remixers
• 16% use Twitter
• 14% are bloggers
• … of smartphone owners, 18% share their locations;
74% get location info and do location sharing

6. 56% of adults own laptops –
up from 30% in 2006
52% of adults own DVRs –
up from 3% in 2002
44% of adults own MP3 players –
up from 11% in 2005
42% of adults own game consoles
19% of adults own e-book readers - Kindle
19% of adults own tablet computer - iPad

7. Broadband facilitates networked
information
• Pervasively consumed • Continually edited
• Pervasively generated • Linked, dense, multi-
• Portable threaded
• Personal • Multi-platformed /
• multi-screened
Participatory
• Real-time and
• Persistent, replicable,
timeless
scalable, searchable
(danah boyd)

8. Revolution 2: Mobile – 89% of adults
331.6
Total U.S.
population:
315.5
million
2011

9. Mobile is the Needle: 89% of US Adults Have a Cell Phone
% in each age group who have a cell phone
Teen data July 2011 Adult data Feb 2012

10. Changes in smartphone ownership

11. Smartphones – 46%

12. Apps – 50% of adults

13. Teens: Texting takes off and talking slips

14. Mobile facilitates placeless / placeful,
real-time interactions / community
• New points of access to information and
networks
• Attention zones morph
• Just-in-time searches, real-time sharing and
awareness
• Augmented reality
• Pervasive, perpetual awareness of social
networks

15. Digital Revolution 3
Social networking – 52% of all adults
% of internet users

16. Source: Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, October 20-November 28, 2010 Social Networking survey.

17. New media are the new neighborhood
• Helps shift trust and influence to networks
• Sentries, Evaluators, Audience
• Helps reconfigure networks and their uses
• Bigger, Broader, Segmented, Layered
• Elevates DIY learning
• Facilitates rise of amateur experts and
influence of new participators
• Broadens access to “consequential strangers”
(Melinda Blau / Karen Fingerman)

18. A short list of critical uncertainties
• Architecture / code
• Information / communication
policies
• Social norms

19. What I don’t know that I wish I did know
• 2.0 version of 2-step flow of communication /
influence for the networked age
• Something / anything smart about echo chambers
• Quantification of “engagement”
• New notion of identity that integrates all this
– “saturated self” only seems to get partway there (Kenneth
Gergen) – ditto “quantified self”
• Impact and meaning of just-in-time, just-like-me
communities – plus a REAL theory of “virality” and its
mechanics
• The Grand Question: Are these technologies of
freedom?

20. Thank you!