Most community groups lack formal records, biasing roster-based measures.

Evidence

One scholar, for example, estimates that 80 percent of all community groups represent social “dark matter”—that is, without formal structure, without an address, without archives, without notice in newspapers, and thus invisible to conventional chroniclers. If we confine our attention to membership rosters, we may miss massive change or massive stability. Worse yet, if community life is, for whatever reason, becoming richer, but less formally organized, tracking membership figures alone would lead us to precisely the wrong conclusion. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1492

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘social dark matter’ as the informal, unrecorded bulk of community activity.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: measures that track only formal organizations miss—and can invert—the real state of social life.
• XREF: connects to: Numeric underrepresentation alone poorly captures what makes a minority group. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1419

Broader Connections

• Numeric underrepresentation alone poorly captures what makes a minority group. #expands (0.78) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1419