Understanding Formulation of Social Capital in Online Social Network Sites (SNS)

TL;DR

This paper investigates how social capital forms and sustains in online social network sites, focusing on bonding, bridging, and maintained social capital to understand community participation.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of maintained social capital and examines its role alongside bonding and bridging social capital in online communities.

Findings

Bonding and bridging social capital are crucial for community engagement.

Maintained social capital influences long-term participation.

The study proposes hypotheses on social capital dynamics in SNS.

Abstract

Online communities are the gatherings of like-minded people, brought together in cyberspace by shared interests. The shared interest has hidden social capital aspects and can be of bridging or bonding type. Creating such communities is not a big challenge but sustaining member's participation is. This study examines the formation and maintenance of social capital in social network sites. In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, we explore a dimension of social capital that assesses one's ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community, which we call maintained social capital. Such dimension is enacted here in terms of Hypothesis.