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

  Strong Ties - Intra-ethnic - Familial - Intra-community - Internal: Newcomer-Newcomer

  Weak Ties - Inter-ethnic - Non-familial - Inter-community - External: Newcomer-non-Newcomer

*‘Strong’ or ‘Weak’ refers to the nature of the ties, not the quality. Ties can be strong, weak or absent.

 One individual precipitates

“Strong” Ties

“Weak” Ties Country of migration

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

 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)

 The strong social networks that await Newcomers in Canada can be detrimental for diverse job opportunities.

 Newcomers may be unaware of other resources as well

Newcomers: information poor

Non-newcomers: information rich

  Tool for: - Social networking - Microblogging

  ‘SMS of the Internet’

  Quick bursts of information

  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.

  Growing faster than any other consumer electronics

  Cheap

  Widely available

  Worldwide numbers: 6 billion+

 A first-line for information dissemination and immediate response

 Twitter replicates real-word social networks (you may want to follow...)

  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

  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