 Dear students, now we are going to discuss the contribution of Barry Wellman. Barry Wellman is an eminent scholar of social media research and internet research in contemporary days. He is actually a candidate American sociologist and he is currently co-director of NetLab of Toronto. He remained a professor of communication and new media at National University of Singapore till 2015 and he also remained SD Clark professor at Department of Sociology University of Toronto from 2006 to 2011 and he also remained professor at Department of Sociology University of Toronto from 1967 to 2013. His basic research interest to see the social implications of the internet and human computer interaction. He has published many books and few of them are Network, the New Social Operating System, a Network in the Global Village, Life in Contemporary Communities and the Internet in Everyday Life. When he talked about computer networks, he published an article in annual review of sociology in 1996 and he terms computer networks as computer supported social networks. So he believes that computer networks are actually social networks and he believes that computer supported social networks sustain strong intermediate and weak ties that provide information and social support in both specialized and broadly based relationships. So he believes that the social networks enabled through computer system or through internet these are the relationships that we carry and we form these relationships on the basis of the interest, on the basis of our motivations and these relationships are not only in online life but we also convert them into our physical life and they convert them into our strong ties or transform them. So he says that CSSNs post-virtual communities that are usually partial and narrowly focused and CSSNs accomplish a wide variety of cooperative work connecting workers within and between organizations who are often physically disappeared. So this was believed by Prof. Wellman that these computer supported social networks provide access to you to those people who physically cannot interact with you, where time and space is a barrier, you do not have that much time or you cannot travel to them, then your access to them is enabled when these e-mail and messengers come forward. So he believes that these systems and computer supported social networks have created an easy way in our life to connect other people outside the organization and outside the corporations and outside of our community. And CSSNs also linked tele-workers from their homes and remote work centers to maintain organizational offices. Like we have seen in COVID-19, we have seen the phenomenon of work from home. So the phenomenon of work from home is quite old in the developed world and it started when the internet was available for common use and when people started working through e-mail and through messaging sites from home. According to Prof. Barry Wellman, computer supported social networks have developed their own norms and structure. So he believes that the computer supported social networks have their own normative structure. They have their own culture which can be a little different from our physical life's normative structure and its culture because you are interacting online and with space and without time bounding. The nature of the medium both constraints and facilitates social control. So where these internet enabled platforms which Barry Wellman, computer supported social networks say that they have facilitated social control and there is a barrier to restrict social control. We will see this in the next lecture in detail. And their second point is that CSSNs have strong societal implication in today's society that the computer supported social networks generate social capital and this increases participation and increases community engagement and we will talk in detail in the next lecture.