Barry Wellman FRSC (30 September 1942 – 9 July 2024) was an American-Canadian sociologist and was the co-director of the Toronto-based international NetLab Network.

[10] Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman were co-authors of the 2012 prize-winning Networked: The New Social Operating System (MIT Press).

[20] Barry Wellman was born and raised in the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road area of the Bronx, New York City.

At Lafayette, he was a member of the McKelvy Honors House and captained the undefeated 1962 College Bowl team, whose final victory was over Berkeley.

[22] His graduate work was at Harvard University, where he trained with Chad Gordon, Charles Tilly and Harrison White, and also studied with Roger Brown, Cora DuBois, George Homans, Alex Inkeles, Florence Kluckhohn, Talcott Parsons and Phillip J.

[27] Although Wellman's work has shifted primarily to studies of the Internet (see section below), he has continued collaborative analyses of the first and second East York studies, showing that reciprocity (like social support) is much more of a tie phenomenon than a social network phenomenon[28] and that the frequency and supportiveness of interpersonal contact before the Internet was non-linearly associated with residential (and workplace) distance.

A 2007 paper, co-authored by Wellman (with Bernie Hogan and Juan-Antonio Carrasco), has discussed alternatives in gathering personal network data.

Thus his work has expanded his interest in non-local communities and social networks to encompass the Internet, mobile phones and other information and communication technologies.

Wellman's initial project ("Cavecat" which morphed into "Telepresence") was in collaboration with Ronald Baecker, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Marilyn Mantei, Gale Moore, and Janet Salaff.

This effort in the early 1990s was done before the widespread popularity of the Internet, to use networked PCs for videoconferencing and computer supported collaborative work (CSCW).

[39] Wellman and Anabel Quan-Haase also studied whether such computer-supported work teams were supporting networked organizations, in which bureaucratic structure and physical proximity did not matter.

He published several papers (alone and with associates) arguing the need to contextualize Internet research, and proposing that online relations – like off-line – would be best studied as ramified social networks rather than as bounded groups.

[41] This argument culminated in a 2002 book, The Internet in Everyday Life (co-edited with Caroline Haythornthwaite), providing exemplification from studies in a number of social milieus.

Wellman did empirical work in this area: he was part of a team (led by James Witte) that surveyed visitors to the National Geographic Society's website in 1998 and used these data to counter the dystopian argument that Internet involvement was associated with social isolation.

It showed the interplay between online and offline activity, and how the Internet – aided by a list-serve – is not just a means of long-distance communication but enhances neighboring and civic involvement.

He directed the Connected Lives study of the interplay between communication, community and domestic relationships in Toronto and in Chapleau in rural northern Ontario.

[48] Research (with Tracy Kennedy) has argued that many households, like communities, have changed from local groups to become spatially dispersed networks connected by frequent ICT and mobile phone communication.

[49] Other NetLab researchers, besides those noted in the text and the notes have included Julie Amoroso, Christian Beermann, Dean Behrens, Vincent Chua, Jessica Collins, Dimitrina Dimitrova, Zack Hayat, Chang Lin, Julia Madej, Maria Majerski, Mo Guang Ying, Diana Mok, Bárbara Barbosa Neves, and Lilia Smale.

His collaborators include Brent Berry, Molly-Gloria Harper, Maria Kiceveski, Guang Ying Mo, Anabel Quan-Haase, Helen Hua Wang, and Alice Renwen Zhang.