![]() However, they did not originate from the same social networking environment and so our expectations did not come true. ![]() ![]() Based on earlier research, we expected that gaming-oriented participators would be the most cohesive group. basic participators, gaming-oriented participators and creative participators) were somewhat clustered together, although interpretation of this result is hard because there are many basic participators but only some gaming-oriented participators and even less creative participators in the sample. The MDS map showed that female students were clustered to one side and male students to other side of the figure, indicating that students tended to hangout within their respective gender group. Three isolated participants were dropped from the analysis because they did not respond to the networking questionnaire and thus they did not have any reciprocal connections. the more participants communicated with one another, the closer they were in the map). In the MDS map, the intensity of communication is indicated as Euclidean distances (i.e. The stress value, the measure of the quality of the MDS map, was excellent (0.07) (Kruskal, 1964). Further, the Grade 7 hangout network was explored by Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) techniques to obtain the overall social connection picture (see Figure 2) at that grade level. There was, however, no interaction effect between SDP profiles and gender. Gaming-oriented participators had significant differences (see Table 3) across almost all networking measures with peers from the other two SDP profiles, indicating that gaming-oriented participators had different patterns of social networks than basic and creative participators. Further, female creative participators ( M =0.94, SD =1.12) had more ties in the liking network than male creative participators ( M =-0.12, SD =0.91, p <0.05). Obviously, due to the increasing use of digital technologies, the reportedly most advanced and active media users (i.e., creative participators) had larger social networks than the other two groups. This result may reflect gaming-oriented participators’ tendency to hang around with a few like-minded peers. Male and female gaming-oriented participators had radically lower numbers of networking partners than the basic and creative participators. Further, media multiplexity was higher in the case of both male and female creative participators than in the cases of basic or gaming-oriented participators, indicating that creative participators had more redundant ties in their networks. ![]() Gaming-oriented participators had the smallest number of reciprocal networking partners across the hangout and liking networking dimensions, indicating that they were less socially active than the other two groups. A significant gender effect was found in liking ties ( F =11.89 (5, 247), p <0.001), meaning that gender is one of the main effects in networking practices of liking among the present sample of three SDP profiles, particularly in male ( M =-0.43, SD =0.60) and female basic participators ( M =0.28, SD =1.08, p <0.01). The analysis indicated that the standardized reciprocal degree values of the hangout network and liking network were higher in the case of creative participators than those of basic participators or gaming-oriented participators (see Table 3). Reich, Subrahmanyam, & Espinoza, 2012 Thelwell, 2008), the gender variable was also included in the analysis. Since the adolescents’ networks were different in respect of gender (e.g. Social networking measures were used to compare networking patterns across basic participators, gaming-oriented participators and creative participators. The differences were, however, less drastic than in the context of self-reported advanced competences. Gender effect ( F (5,247)=4.33, p <0.05, see Table 3) was found in terms of social recognition of participation (see Table 3). In accordance with expectations, the socio-digital competence of creative participators was recognized by a larger number of peers ( M= 4.42, mean number of indegree value in expertise network SD=2.94 ) than that of gaming-oriented participators ( M =3.38, SD =2.70) and basic participators ( M =3.04, SD =2.62). indegree of socio-digital expertise network). The participants were asked to identify those students who were especially skillful in using socio-digital technologies (i.e. Social network analysis provided a kind of social validation for controlling such bias.
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