Thesis Title: Subtitle

Social Capital and Social Networking Sites

The relationship between the internet and social capital, has been a matter of scholarly interest for some time now (Wellman, Haase, Witte and Hampton 2001; Hampton and Wellman 2003; Quan-Haase and Wellman 2004) and often tap into ongoing debates about the potentially isolating effects of technology and the apparent decline of community life.
These discussions have now extended to encompass SNS as well previous forms of online communities. Therefore the relationship between SNS and social capital represents a significant site of investigation and is the main avenue for discussing the effect of SNS on social relationships.
Generally, the literature concludes that internet use and social capital are positively associated. An example of this is Pierce and Lovrich’s (2003) research that examines the impact of internet technology on social trust and personal trust, which are indicators of social capital. The authors examine 40 US cities, which were assessed at their level of being ‘wired’ and their overall level of trust (Pierce and Lovrich 2003). The authors controlled for individual city demographics and the personal characteristics of the individuals. The conclusions from these surveys differed based on which level of trust was measured, but despite this discrepancy, the authors concluded that internet usage, both at the aggregate and individual level was associated with higher levels of generalised trust (Pierce and Lovrich 2003). Research also indicates that internet use is effective in generating social capital among new migrants by enabling them to develop new ties, leading to employment and accommodation, while maintaining existing ones (Hiller and Franz 2004).
Research examining the creation of social capital online has now extended to examine the interaction between social capital and Facebook in particular. The finding from this research reports a similar positive association. The research demonstrates that Facebook can reconfigure the relationship between physical proximity and relationship development by enabling users to maintain larger sets of weak ties. Facebook does this by making ephemeral connections persistent as it lowers the cost of maintaining or re-engaging weak ties (Ellison et al. 2011). Additionally, Facebook helps individuals to utilise their social networks for tasks such as information seeking (Ellison et al. 2011; Wohn, Lampe, Vitak, and Ellison 2011). While the popular focus on SNS has examined their negative social
implications, academic research tends to provide little support for fears about the social and psychological consequences of SNS use (Hargittai and Hsieh 2011) and emphasises its positive role in the creation of social capital (Ellison, Lampe, Steinfield and Vitak 2011), as well as its ability to facilitate political engagement amongst youth (Kaye 2011).
Additional research by Livingstone (2008) suggests that involvement in social networking sites may actually increase perceptions of trust and create opportunities for the development of identity, lifestyle and social bonds.

Similarly, Valenzuela, Park and Kee (2009) examine the connection between social capital, Facebook use, life satisfaction, trust, and civic and political participation. Primarily, that study sought to measure whether Facebook opens up new avenues of civic and political participation for college students (Valenzuela et al.2009). Using data from a survey of college students aged 18–29, a multidimensional construct that included measures of social capital, trust, life satisfaction and civic and political participation was applied to a sample of 2,603 participants. The authors conclude that Facebook appears to attract students who are more civically engaged, though acknowledge there may be some self-selection bias in their sample (Valenzuela et al. 2009). After accounting for this, it was found that intensity of Facebook use was positively associated with life satisfaction and trust, although stronger with life satisfaction than social trust (Valenzuela et al. 2009).

Demographic predictors had the strongest relationship with civic and political engagement (Valenzuela et al. 2009). Intensity of Facebook use was positively associated with civic participation, but not political participation (Valenzuela et al. 2009). The research findings concluded that there were strong positive associations between Facebook use and the intensity of Facebook group use and the student’s life satisfactions, social trust and civic and political participation (Valenzuela et al. 2009). Similarly a related article by Park, Kee and Valenzuela (2009) reported similar findings and positively associated engagement with Facebook groups to civic and political engagement offline.

From these findings the authors contend that the results of their investigation contradict the ‘time displacement hypothesis’ suggested by Putnam (2000) concerning the effects of television on social capital, which has since been expanded to encompass the internet (Valenzuela et al. 2009). The authors argue that this hypothesis has been largely incorrectly applied to the internet as it assumes certain patterns of use across all users, ignoring the variety of different ways individuals use the internet. The authors maintain that this hypothesis cannot apply equally to online activities. Activities such as information

gathering and community building are vastly different to entertainment and diversion, such as online movies and games that explain why online activities are found to both increase and decrease social capital (Valenzuela et al. 2009). The authors’ claim that this rationale can be easily extended to SNS and their impact on social capital is entirely contingent on the uses and gratifications sought by users (Valenzuela et al. 2009).

Steinfield, Ellison and Lampe (2008) also consider the relationship between the internet and social capital by examining the relationship between the intensity of Facebook use on participants’ psychological wellbeing and their development of social capital. The results of their longitudinal study indicate that the intensity of Facebook use strongly predicts bridging social capital (Steinfield, Ellison and Lampe 2008). Bridging social capital helps create connections between socially heterogeneous groups. They conclude that Facebook use is beneficial in providing participants with lower self-esteem access to generalised bridging social capital within the university environment (Steinfield, Ellison and Lampe 2008). Ellison, Lampe and Steinfeld (2009) also argue that their data suggest that broad internet use does not positively influence social capital. Rather, it is something particular about certain types of online activities like Facebook use that positively influence social capital. They argue that this is because Facebook is by and large an extension of already existing communication strategies such as gossip and the yearly holidays newsletter that have helped people maintain an ambient awareness of diffuse social connections (Ellison, Lampe and Steinfield 2009). Facebook, through the Newsfeed, serves a similar function as it allows its users to keep abreast of changes and activities across an ephemeral and dispersed network. The worked discussed above has uniformly sampled college aged students. A notable exception to this is the work conducted by Ellison et al. (2014) who sampled adult, non-academic staff at a university in the US. In this study, Ellison et al. (2014) examined the process of relationships maintenance on Facebook and its role in social capital processes. Specifically they were interested in bridging social capital (the creation of a social network among a heterogeneous group). In order to measure this they developed a Facebook maintenance scale, which measured various maintenance behaviours on Facebook such as posting birthday greeting on a friend’s wall and responding to posts seeking advice and or sharing good news (Ellison et al. 2014).

Significantly Ellison et al. (2014) did not just measure the number of connections present on users’ Facebook accounts, but rather examined the number of ‘actual’ friends that participants reported having.
While Ellison et al. (2011) present a uniformly positive assessment of the role of Facebook in social capital formation, other research acknowledges the often contradictory relationship between internet use and social capital (Valenzuela et al. 2009). The effects of SNS and internet use are highly contingent on the uses and gratifications sought by users, which explain why online activities are found to both increase and decrease social capital (Valenzuela et al. 2009). Therefore, examining the level and types of usage is important as it will likely have an impact on how SNS usage is incorporated into, and impacts on, people’s lives (Hargittai and Hsieh 2011).