Barry Wellman

Who is Barry Wellman?

Barry Wellman, FRSC is a Canadian-American sociologist and is currently the director of NetLab at the Faculty of Information of the University of Toronto. His areas of research are community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structure, as manifested in social networks in communities and organizations. His overarching interest is in the paradigm shift from group-centered relations to networked individualism. He has written or co-authored more than 300 articles, chapters, reports and books.

Among the concepts Wellman has published are: "network of networks" and "the network city", "the community question", "computer networks as social networks", "connected lives" and the "immanent Internet", "media-multiplexity", "networked individualism" and "networked society", "personal community" and "personal network" and three with Anabel Quan-Haase: "hyperconnectivity", "local virtuality" and "virtual locality".

Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman are co-authors of the 2012 prize-winning Networked: The New Social Operating System. Wellman is also the editor of three books, and the author of more than 200 articles, often written with students. His Erdős number is 3.