This article develops and tests a communication infrastructure model of belonging among dwellers of urban residential environments. The concept of a communication infrastructure—a storytelling system set in its communication action context—is discussed. Storytelling neighborhood, the communication process through which neighborhood discussion transforms people from occupants of a house to members of a neighborhood, is proposed as an essential component of people's paths to belonging, an attachment to a residential area that is evidenced in everyday exchange behaviors. A multimethod research design is employed to study seven residential areas in Los Angeles through the use of multilingual data collection to discover the relevant factors that determine belonging in new and old immigrant communities. A communication infrastructure model that posits storytelling as an intervening process between structural location and belonging is proposed and tested. Overall, the most important factor in creating belonging was found to be an active and integrated storytelling system that involves residents, community organizations, and local media. The diagnostic potentials of the communication infrastructure approach and the policy implications of the findings are discussed.

This paper presents the results of two studies that examine the impact of both social psychological and economic concerns on organizational members’ decisions to support or oppose union formation. The studies test the predictions that procedural justice judgments and social identification—two social psychological factors that shape the nature of how people relate to their organizations—have a significant influence on people’s support for union certification and on the votes they cast in a union certification election. Importantly, it was predicted that these effects would emerge even after accounting for the influence of people’s economic concerns, which have been the primary focus of previous efforts to understand whether people support union formation. The results confirm these predictions and demonstrate that respondents’ positions on the unionization issue are shaped by procedural justice (Studies 1 and 2) and social identity (Study 2) even after accounting for economic factors. Furthermore, Study 2 shows that the impact of procedural justice judgments on union certification was partially mediated by social identity. More generally, the results highlight the importance of integrating both social psychological and economic concerns in models designed to explain organizational phenomena such as the formation of unions.

To extend the discussion and application of place attachment to tourism-relevant contexts, this article proposes two neglected dimensions:place memoryandplace expectation. Combining these dimensions, a six-dimension construct of place attachment is tested using confirmatory factor analysis and found to be a good fit for data collected from two places: Sydney, Australia and Shanghai, China. The new dimensionality includes an individual's past experience and future expectations of his/her attachment to a place, and thus has a potential to interpret one's attachment to a place based on a shorter term stay. The implications of the study for researchers and destination managers are discussed.

Community technology centers (CTCs) are potentially a critical component in the communication environment of urban communities. They have been investigated extensively as instruments of technology-based public policy and social service capacity-building, yet they have not been subject to research that posits these centers as integral components of larger communication systems essential to civic participation and empowerment. This article describes how communication theory, communication infrastructure theory and community technology centers contribute to solving the inequalities addressed in previous studies of the `digital divide'. The article presents the communication infrastructure theory perspective as a way to reconcile alternative prescriptions for the way in which community technology interventions can lead to positive outcomes for local community-building and social mobility enhancement. This project re-situates the CTC as a communication-centric phenomenon, focusing on the linkages between the community-building capacity of CTCs and their role as an integral component of a community's communication infrastructure.

This article asks whether the concept of community is of continuing relevance in a postindustrial society that is rapidly advancing to a networked form of social organization. The author argues that community is necessary for democratic life to function, and asks what new forms of integration might emerge to create the boundaries necessary for community reproduction. Turning to Habermas's theory of communicative action, the author shows the relevance of the two-level concept of society, system, and lifeworld for addressing this question, and proposes the concept of the communicatively integrated community as a framework for understanding the central role of communication in producing community. Finally, the article offers a mid-range analytic theory of community communication ecology as a frame for connecting this larger theory to the specific analysis of communication and community.

This article presents the Internet Connectedness Index (ICI), a measure for monitoring long-term inequalities in the quality of Internet connections among users, especially in terms of whether Internet connections will enhance the chances of people's upward mobility. This index is preferable to more established digital divide measures (e.g., gadgetry ownership or time online) for research on how the Internet is being incorporated into a world of structural inequalities. The ICI utilizes conventional time, history, and context measures, but goes beyond them to capture the scope and centrality of Internet incorporation into the everyday lives of diverse social groups. The validity and robustness of ICI vis-á-vis conventional ownership and time online measures are demonstrated in this article. In addition, the authors discuss theoretical, methodological, and policy implications based on the results. The analytical data are drawn from the Communication Technology and Community Program's Metamorphosis Project, an inquiry into the communication infrastructures of seven ethnically marked residential areas in Los Angeles.

This study employed Sampson’s multilevel system model to investigate how individual-and neighborhood-level residential characteristics are related to individuals’ civic participation. Furthermore, this study examined whether the effects of communication variables on civic participation vary depending on these residence-related factors. The findings show the significant impacts of residential variables, individual length of residence and neighborhood residential stability, and they support prior research that has evidenced the significance of communication behaviors—interpersonal network, public affairs newspaper and television use, and time spent watching television. Notably, this study revealed significant interactive relationships between residential variables and media use in generating civically oriented citizens: The use of local public affairs news on TV is more likely to lead to community participation among those living in a neighborhood with lower residential mobility, and time spent watching TV tends to be negatively related to civic engagement among those whose residence in a community is shorter.

Asian youths are embracing communication technologies at a burgeoning rate, yet interesting differences in Internet access and use exist among this younger generation. Our empirical investigation provides a rich and comparative look into what Asian youths do online, with an emphasis on an understudied area: their civic uses of new media. Data collected among youths aged between 12 and 17 in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo in 2007 show that this ‘digital generation’ has grown up with computers and the Internet, with 96% of them being internet users, and having 6 years of computer experience on average. Our results suggest that the Internet may facilitate citizenship among Asian youths although entertainment-related activities such as downloading music or playing games remain the most popular activities online. Sixty-five percent of them read online news, almost half of them have ever cast a vote on the Internet, and every one in five has signed an online petition. Differences in Internet usage and civic behaviors among youths in five cities are presented, suggesting the contextual nature of Internet use influenced by civic culture.The paper concludes with a discussion of differences in Internet use among Asian youths between 2001 and 2007, together with research implications for better understanding this population.

Imagining urban space as being comfortable or fearful is studied as an effect of people's connections to their residential area communication infrastructure. Geographic Information System (GIS) modeling and spatial-statistical methods are used to process 215 mental maps obtained from respondents to a multilingual survey of seven ethnically marked residential communities of Los Angeles. Spatial-statistical analyses reveal that fear perceptions of Los Angeles urban space are not associated with commonly expected causes of fear, such as high crime victimization likelihood. The main source of discomfort seems to be presence of non-White and non-Asian populations. Respondents more strongly connected to television and interpersonal communication channels are relatively more fearful of these populations than those less strongly connected. Theoretical, methodological, and community-building policy implications are discussed.

We propose a theoretical framework on the structural sources and spatially embedded nature of three mechanisms that produce collective efficacy for children. Using survey data collected in 1995 from 8,782 Chicago residents, we examine variations in intergenerational closure, reciprocal local exchange, and shared expectations for informal social control across 342 neighborhoods. Adjusting for respondents’ attributes, we assess the effects of neighborhood characteristics measured in the 1990 census and the role of spatial interdependence. The results show that residential stability and concentrated affluence, more so than poverty and racial/ethnic composition, predict intergenerational closure and reciprocal exchange. Concentrated disadvantage, by contrast, is associated with sharply lower expectations for shared child control. The importance of spatial dynamics in generating collective efficacy for children is highlighted—proximity to areas high in closure, exchange, and control bestows an advantage above and beyond the structural characteristics of a given neighborhood. Moreover, spatial advantages are much more likely to accrue to white neighborhoods than to black neighborhoods.

This article examines the role of the Internet as a source of political information and a sphere for public expression. Informational media use, whether traditional news sources or online public affairs content, is expected to foster interpersonal political discussion and online civic messaging, contributing to increased civic participation. Using two-wave national panel survey data, three types of synchronous structural equation models are tested: cross sectional (relating individual differences), fixed effects (relating intraindividual change), and auto regressive (relating aggregate change). All models reveal that online media complement traditional media to foster political discussion and civic messaging. These two forms of political expression, in turn, influence civic participation. Other variable orderings are tested to compare the theorized model to alternative causal specifications. Results reveal that the model produces the best fit, empirically and theoretically, with the influence of the Internet, rivaling the mobilizing power of traditional modes of information and expression.