ABSTRACT
Because the relationship between ICT use and the structural characteristics of personal networks emphasizes the importance of understanding how communication technologies are combined to form a complex whole, we found it inappropriate to treat the four uses of the five communication devices as twenty separate variables. The use of a single device does not occur in a vacuum, but is embedded in a communication technoscape (Boase, 2008; Licoppe and Smoreda, 2005), in which the individual nowadays can choose one device from among a set of others (five altogether in our case). For this reason, we did not treat the uses of devices as single variables but rather took the patterns of uses of all five devices as independent variables. To do this, we relied on a previous study conducted on the same data (Petrič et al., 2010), which had already detected such patterns by means of cluster analysis. The comparison of ICT use patterns between different groups will allow us to analyze the coupling of communication practices and personal network structures, determining and contextualizing the role of mobile phones in personal communities and the cohesive effects that come out of person-centered mobile communication. In what follows, we shall first draw out the ICT use patterns of the identified groups, and then examine how these patterns shape the structural characteristics of their personal networks and offline socializing.
