Cargando…

Schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space

The Internet provides students with a unique opportunity to connect and maintain social ties with peers from other schools, irrespective of how far they are from each other. However, little is known about the real structure of such online relationships. In this paper, we investigate the structure of...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Smirnov, Ivan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6538368/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31136591
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217142
_version_ 1783422171800928256
author Smirnov, Ivan
author_facet Smirnov, Ivan
author_sort Smirnov, Ivan
collection PubMed
description The Internet provides students with a unique opportunity to connect and maintain social ties with peers from other schools, irrespective of how far they are from each other. However, little is known about the real structure of such online relationships. In this paper, we investigate the structure of interschool friendship on a popular social networking site. We use data from 36, 951 students from 590 schools of a large European city. We find that the probability of a friendship tie between students from neighboring schools is high and that it decreases with the distance between schools following the power law. We also find that students are more likely to be connected if the educational outcomes of their schools are similar. We show that this fact is not a consequence of residential segregation. While high- and low-performing schools are evenly distributed across the city, this is not the case for the digital space, where schools turn out to be segregated by educational outcomes. There is no significant correlation between the educational outcomes of a school and its geographical neighbors; however, there is a strong correlation between the educational outcomes of a school and its digital neighbors. These results challenge the common assumption that the Internet is a borderless space, and may have important implications for the understanding of educational inequality in the digital age.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6538368
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-65383682019-06-05 Schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space Smirnov, Ivan PLoS One Research Article The Internet provides students with a unique opportunity to connect and maintain social ties with peers from other schools, irrespective of how far they are from each other. However, little is known about the real structure of such online relationships. In this paper, we investigate the structure of interschool friendship on a popular social networking site. We use data from 36, 951 students from 590 schools of a large European city. We find that the probability of a friendship tie between students from neighboring schools is high and that it decreases with the distance between schools following the power law. We also find that students are more likely to be connected if the educational outcomes of their schools are similar. We show that this fact is not a consequence of residential segregation. While high- and low-performing schools are evenly distributed across the city, this is not the case for the digital space, where schools turn out to be segregated by educational outcomes. There is no significant correlation between the educational outcomes of a school and its geographical neighbors; however, there is a strong correlation between the educational outcomes of a school and its digital neighbors. These results challenge the common assumption that the Internet is a borderless space, and may have important implications for the understanding of educational inequality in the digital age. Public Library of Science 2019-05-28 /pmc/articles/PMC6538368/ /pubmed/31136591 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217142 Text en © 2019 Ivan Smirnov http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Smirnov, Ivan
Schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space
title Schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space
title_full Schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space
title_fullStr Schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space
title_full_unstemmed Schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space
title_short Schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space
title_sort schools are segregated by educational outcomes in the digital space
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6538368/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31136591
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217142
work_keys_str_mv AT smirnovivan schoolsaresegregatedbyeducationaloutcomesinthedigitalspace