Social Capital Explored

Social capital, "the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition" (Ellison et al, 2007) is the focus of this week’s experiences. Basically, I understood Ellison to say that social capital is the resources that we give to an online community and what we get out of it in return.

This week I wanted to select two social networks that represented both types of social capital, "bridging" and "bonding" described in the Williams (2006) article. Although bridging and bonding are not exclusive, I wanted to explore sites that seemed, at first glance, to be predominantly one type or the other. To make sure that I chose two sites with different social capital, I applied the Internet Social Capital Scales, or ISCS to several (actually many) sites before I was able to choose two that interested me and seemed to fit either one of the two types of social capital.

From my previous experiences with social networking sites, I’ve noticed that I tend to enjoy the “bonding” type of sites, where I interact with individuals I already know or friends of friends. According to Williams (2006), the individuals with bonding social capital have little diversity in their backgrounds but have stronger personal connections. The continued reciprocity found in bonding social capital provides strong emotional and substantive support and enables mobilization. My full immersion into the Facebook culture is an example of a “bonding” network with social capital being the emotional support that the friends provide for one another. Therefore, I expected to form an emotional attachment to the bonding social network community I joined and to be less interested in the bridging site. The new site I joined that appeared to foster bonding social capital was LinkedIn. Here is my profile on the LinkedIn site:

OK, the “working on understanding and improving educational technology…” statement was a suck up, but what the hey!!!!

According to Putnam, as described in Williams (2006), "bridging" social capital is inclusive. It occurs when individuals from different backgrounds make connections between social networks. These individuals often have only tentative relationships, but what they lack in depth they make up for in breadth. As a result, bridging may broaden social horizons or world views, or open up opportunities for information or new resources. On the down side, it provides little in the way of emotional support. The site that I joined that seemed to me to be a bridging social network site is a community formed around issues that interest me and a call to social activism, Care 2. Here is my profile page on the Care2 site:
Check out the age – do I really look 21??????

Putnam (in Williams, 2006) suggested that the social capital derived from bridging, which are typically weak-tie networks is "better for linkage to external assets and for information diffusion". This was certainly true in my experience in the Care 2 site. This site is high on information exchange and it links individuals by multiple opportunities to join causes. It provides some positive feedback reinforcement in the form of green stars or butterflies for contributions on the site that someone found valuable. Joining causes or contributing money can add either of these markers of appreciation.

Contrary to my expectation, I did not enjoy participating on the LinkedIn site at all. As you can see from the profile, I got stuck because I don’t have any network connections, which seem to be a prerequisite for meaningful exchanges on this site. On the Care2 site, I was able to participate in several discussions and I enjoyed reading people’s blogs on topics that interested me and also I enjoyed adding a comment when I had something to say.

One difficulty that I had on the Care2 site was locating any of my previous comments to get a screenshot of them. Although I could manufacture a comment to provide a screenshot, I really wanted to select an interesting discussion we had on junk mail. I wasn’t able to find this blog or our discussion comments again, after quite an extensive search. One helpful addition to this site would be a summary of the discussions that I participated in, kind of like the discussion history that I have with different individuals on Facebook.

Massa (2007) discusses the idea of trust to indicate different types of social relationships between two user, such as friendship, appreciation and interest. He says that these trust relationships are used by social network systems in order to infer some measure of importance about the different users and their visibility on the system. I certainly noticed this on the Care2 site. When I logged on to this site just a few minutes ago, I read an article written by Deepak Chopra. By my familiarity with his name, prior experience of reading books by him and my previous agreements with his point of view, I immediately trusted the information in his blog.

And, interestingly, isn’t it cool that Deepak wants me to add him as my friend on Care2? That was written sarcastically, by the way. It was surprising to me that I actually cued into this, as it doesn’t fit my definition of friend. I didn’t click add by the way…

While trust on a social network system is important individually, the idea of trusting information during an emergency situation is critical. This concept was explored by Erylimaz, Cochran & Kasemvilas (2009). Important to all situations, is their idea that trust is subjective because every individual makes his or her own decision to trust. In the subject of their paper, emergency response systems, trust is essential because professionals and volunteers rely on the information to make life-saving decisions.

While trust is not so critical on the social networking sites that I visit, I realize that I have a much higher trust of individuals that I already know offline – as in the Deepak Chopra example above. I did not accept any invitations to become friends with anyone who suggested it on either Care2 or LinkedIn because I had no previous off-line experience with these people. In the cases of the few people who sent friend requests on Care2, how do I know they are who they say they are?

On both of the sites that I explored this week, there is a system in place in which users evaluate the trustworthiness of the participants on the social network system. On Care2, users respond to the blog or provide the green stars or butterflies discussed above. On LinkedIn, the individual is expected to bring other individuals into the network and to ask known individuals for references. On both sites, there is a profile page where personal data is entered (to the extent that the individual wants to disclose information) which also shows a summary of the user’s activity on the system.

In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, I considered my experiences on LinkedIn and Care2 using Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe’s (2007) concept of maintained social capital, which assesses the ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community. With less than one weeks’ experience on either of these two sites, I only have a vague idea about my ability to stay connected with members of these communities. From my experiences this week, I don’t plan to continue to access LinkedIn beyond the requirements for this project. This site may be more appealing to businesspeople with products to sell but it did not provide an interesting experience for me. I may continue to access Care2 as the issues discussed are important to me, however, I will probably lurk more that I contribute.

Gleave, Welser, Lento and Smith’s (2009) discussion of social roles was very interesting to me. On sites such as AnswerBag, the social roles of Question People and Answer People are very clear based on the design of the site. I was able to identify some individual’s role on Care2 as Answer People as well. Before I read this article, I wasn’t aware of the role of administrators and arbitrators on sites like Wikipedia, although it makes sense that there would be people with long term commitments to this site who would invest their time and energy into maintaining the integrity of the information. I was interested in Gleave et al.’s identification of Substantive Experts Technical Editors. I wondered, do these people get paid for this or is this a hobby for them?

On Care2 and LinkedIn, I could identify individuals who took on the role of Discussion Catalyst (a role that I tried without success to step into on AnswerBag) and Discussion People. My role on Care2 could be best described as a Discussion Person as I participated in reciprocal exchanges of thoughts and information with other users but I didn’t yet begin any discussion by posting a blog. I may do this at some point and see how it goes. Honestly, my participation on LinkedIn was more of a lurker since I really didn’t enjoy this site too much.

An interesting idea proposed by Gleave et al. was the balance of roles within a site to maintain a healthy and vibrant site. At the simplest level, the Answer Person needs a Question Person and vice versa. Just as in our off-line life, we need a balance of all types of role groups, this seems true of online communities as well.

Possibilities for Final Project:
1) In my position with the Department of Education, I supervise our district’s autism team. As I’ve been exploring social networking systems, I’ve been wondering how social networking sites affecting teens with Aspergers’ Syndrome. This is one area that I’m thinking about researching for my final project. The question would be, “Do social networking sites help or hurt socialization for teenagers with high functioning autism, such as Aspergers’ Syndrome?” To answer this question, I could first Google key words in this question, then read research available on it. A quick Google completed just a few minutes ago yielded about 758,000 possible sites that could assist in gathering current literature on this topic. There must be quite a few scholarly articles to provide the literature review for this topic. Another method might be to initiate a social network site, such as Ning, for students in our district and conduct follow up interviews with students who were willing to participate after they joined this on line community for a month or so.
2) As a new user to social networking sites, and as a woman of “a certain age” as they say in the South, I’m interested in exploring motivation for joining social network systems in individuals over 50. Those of us in this age range were not born with “digital brains” and I think many of us do not access social networking sites. Possibly we may have some common characteristics which motivate us to join social network systems. The unit that most interested me in this class so far was last session’s information on motivation. A Google search of key words on this topic, provided about 8,000 possibilities, so this may also be a viable topic. One article that I just read titled Foggeys Flock to Facebook (URL http://www.mad.co.uk/Main/Home/Articlex/e62e1524cf9d43acb900cac973c3e3e8/Social-networking-and-the-50-plus.html seemed to have some potential. I could also simply ask people who are my age on sites like Facebook why they joined. The research question, if I use this topic would be “What motivates individuals over 50 years old to participate in social network systems?”

References:
Ellison, N.B., C. Steinfield and C. Lampe (2007). The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html

Eryilmaz, Evren, Mitch Cochran and Sumonta Kasemvilas (2009). Establishing Trust Management in an Open Source Collaborative Information Repository: An Emergency Response Information System Case Study. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.


Gleave, Eric, Howard T. Welser, Thomas M. Lento and Marc A. Smith (2009). A Conceptual and Operational Definition of ‘Social Role’ in Online Community. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Massa, Paolo (2006). A Survey of Trust Use and Modeling in Current Real Systems. Trust in E-services: Technologies, Practices and Challenges. Idea Group.
http://www.gnuband.org/files/papers/survey_of_trust_use_and_modeling_in_current_real_systems_paolo_massa.pdf


Williams, D. (2006). On and Off the 'Net: Scales for Social Capital in an Online Era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue2/williams.html

Session 3, Week 1: Motivating Content Contributions

As I began my activities on Answerbag, I related this assignment to the article by Ling et al. (2005), Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities. While the title is self explanatory, I saw that many motivation strategies in Dr. Gazan’s assignment were paralleled in this article. For example, both Dr. Gazan and Ling et al. had mechanisms in place to ensure that the participants believed that one's contributions are unique and that they benefit the group. Both had a rating system in place so the participant can see if their contribution helped others and both included persuasive messages or other manipulations (in Dr. Gazan’s case, a graded assignment) that would encourage participation. Ling et al. noted that participants who believe that their contributions are redundant with those of other group members find little reason to contribute, because their contributions have little likelihood of influencing the group. Conversely, if they think they are unique, they should be more motivated to contribute, because their contributions are more likely to influence the group. The Answerbag site had a control to eliminate duplicate questions, which should increase participation. By assigning the students in this class to act as participants we all believe we are similar in some ways with the rest of the group. Ling et al. stated that people will contribute more to online communities when they believe that they are similar rather than dissimilar to others in the group

Ling described Karau and Williams' (1993) collective-effort model, which claims that people work hard when they think their efforts will help them achieve outcomes they value. In the case of this assignment, the outcome that first motivated me was completing the assignment. In the beginning, I tried to mimic questions that were highly rated on the site and worked really hard to reach the specified level of performance created by Dr. Gazan. As I got more interested in this site my motivation changed. Soon, I realized that I was personally enriched by answers to the questions I posed and I began to put more value in the outcome of learning from other participants than by trying to “play the game”. Unfortunately for my grade in this class, this decreased the likelihood that I would reach the goal.
Besides doing it for an assignment, why do people join virtual communities? Ridings and Gefen (2004) stated that major reasons include both entertainment and searching for friendship as motivational forces. In their research study, they asked the question, “Why did you join?”, then categorized answers based upon the reasons suggested in the literature. Their study indicated that most sought either friendship or exchange of information, and a markedly lower percent sought social support or recreation. They also found that the reasons participants disclosed they joined a site were significantly dependent on the grouping of the communities into types. In all the community types, information exchange was the most popular reason for joining. Thereafter, however, the reason varied depending on community type. Social support was the second most popular reason for members in communities with health/wellness and professional/occupational topics, but friendship was the second most popular reason among members in communities dealing with personal interests/hobbies, pets, or recreation. My interest in Answerbag is consistent with the research cited in Ridings and Gefen’s (2004) article. The motivating feature for me was to quickly access information. Answerbag provided member generated content, which I liked, as opposed to other internet information which is typically provided by the site provider. Ridings and Gefen note that virtual communities must have compelling content, and that they might fail if they do not have good standards for this content. On Answerbag, there was a link that assisted participants in crafting a good answer and a disclaimer that was in essence, be discerning in analyzing the information you receive.
On Answerbag, there are multiple information categories, so that users self select areas that were of interest to them. The questions posed and answers provided are relatively short, and in this way, may be interpreted as a form of microblogging, as defined by Java et al. (2007). Microblogging, according to Java et al., typically involves short responses where the participants describe their current status in short posts. Answerbag’s participants may be considered microbloggers as there is a low time requirement and typically a low thought investment for content generation (although some answers provided are quite in-depth including references and website links, it appears that this is not the norm). In addition, Answerbag, provides the opportunity to post several questions and answers in each session. For me, the wide variations of topics available and the relatively quickness of posting questions and getting an answer in reply was reinforcing.
Ridings and Gefen (2004) reported that knowledge and information are, in general, a valuable currency and a social resource in virtual communities. This is certainly true from my experience on Answerbag. It was an ideal place to ask relative strangers about information. The focus was on specific topics generated by a participant with relationships among members established by information exchange about those topics. On Answerbag, the messages expressed views, requested and provided information, expressed feelings, and suggested solutions, consistent with information provided by Ridings and Gefen. This is consistent with two factors motivating participation described in the Java et al. (2007) research. On the Answerbag site sharing information is a major attraction of this site and it is also a good site for a participant interested in becoming an information source for others or information seekers.


In Java’s (2007) article, motivation for blogging was discussed and establishing or maintaining social relationships was the most frequent motivator. In AnswerBag, forming or maintaining social relationships would not be a major motivating factor, although it appears that some individuals who regularly participate in this site may form relationships with each other – when I was lurking, I stumbled upon a conversation where one participant offered the use of their condominium to another participant. Apparently they were socially connected in real life and through this site. Java summarized studies by Lento et al. who determined that a user’s retention and interest in blogging could be predicted by the comments received and continued relationship with other active members of the community. In my experience in AnswerBag, I received some very helpful answers from participants, ranging from the mundane “how can I clean coffee stains off of my enamel sink” (the answer worked really well by the way) to more thoughtful and philosophical discussions.
Schrock’s (2009) article looked at personality descriptors as predictors of the types of people who would engage in social networking sites. In examining my motivation to engage in AnswerBag and other social networking sites, I analyzed my own personality using Schrock’s parameters. First, he described extroverts, defined as sociable, lively, active, assertive, care–free, dominant, venturesome and sensation–seeking. Costa and McRae (1988) described extroverts as having, “needs for social contact, attention, and fun.” Extroverts are concerned with their appearance to the outside world and how others interpret them. Therefore, Schrock concludes, extroverts may be more likely to be interested in activities that involve interacting and being around others, such as social network sites, writing on a blog, and sharing digital pictures. The second parameter was self–disclosure, an act Schrock states is required by most interpersonal relationships, generally defined as “the act of revealing personal information to others.” I would rate myself high on both of these personality traits. In view of these two personality traits, Schrock’s research correctly predicted that I would enthusiastically engage in social networking sites. Two other areas discussed by Schrock include computer anxiety, defined as the negative, affective response of some individuals to computer technology ( from Barbeite and Weiss, 2004) and self–efficacy, a cognitive ability defined as the belief in one’s capability to organize and execute a particular course of action (from Bandura, 1997). Schrock stated that as it concerns the Internet, computer self–efficacy is defined as the “belief in one’s actions on the computer”. In other words, individuals who have a high degree of computer self–efficacy find computers to be useful to achieve their goals. Computer self–efficacy also has a negative correlation with computer anxiety. Barbeite and Weiss (2004) developed scales of self–efficacy and anxiety specifically for computer use, and found that computer self–efficacy measures were the best predictor of Internet use. For myself, I perceive myself to be high in self-efficacy yet rather inexperienced in using computers and as a participant in social networking sites. Since I perceive myself as efficacious, I jumped into this graduate level class with some trepidation, certainly, but with the expectation that if I worked hard enough, I could learn a lot and keep up with the content. As I gain experience exploring different social networking sites I am becoming more comfortable and my anxiety decreases daily.
Regarding my week’s experience with Answerbag, here is the URL from my profile: http://www.answerbag.com/profile/
For me, I had somewhat of a difficult time with the pseudonym. I didn’t really like being anonymous and didn’t want to take on another personality or persona, so I decided to sign on as OC1Paddler. The OC1 stands for an Outrigger Canoe that is paddled by one person. I have a really nice Hurricane OC1 racing canoe and enjoy paddling for recreation and racing. I’m out in the water at least 6 days a week now. It’s great fun! Among my friends here on Maui, most of us are outrigger canoe paddlers. When we’re not paddling, my friends and I are talking about paddling (or studying for a class in my case), so my first strategy was to attract other paddlers – this is Hawaii after all – and to engage in high point conversations about paddling. This didn’t work at all.
My next strategy was to engage other people about the other interests I have. I’m beginning to do some longer distance recreational bike riding (long for me anyway) so I wanted to talk with people about bicycle touring. Somehow this last week I got the notion in my head that my husband and I could do a month long bicycle tour and asked for suggestions for routes. I got almost no points for this but I did get some fabulous information about trips, so this was totally worth it. There is one, route verte, in Quebec Canada that we just may try out this summer.
Along the way I posed some questions that I thought might get some high ratings, but soon didn’t bother and instead focused on information sharing that was truly interesting to me. The topics varied; basically I asked whatever popped into my head. I was trying to decide what to make for dinner, so I asked, “What is your favorite vegetarian meal?” and got some good ideas. I got some great information on organic gardening, an activity that I’m just beginning. Currently, as I write this, I’m communicating with a woman (?) in New York who is giving me some ideas on why the bugs eat my tomatoes before the fruit gets ripe.
Some of the information was just too overwhelming for me to take in. I’m in a book club, so I decided to participate in information sharing about literature. I read suggestions on people’s favorite books and other book related questions and answers, but chose not to participate in these discussions – there was so much there already!
Interestingly, as I’ve tried to complete this assignment, I’ve checked on Answerbag several times. Each time I’ve gotten side-tracked by information coming or going so it’s taken me a ridiculous amount of time to complete this paper! In conclusion, then, in my experience, Answerbag was a very valuable site, one which I will continue to access even without going there as part of a class assignment.


RESOURCES:
Ridings, Catherine and David Gefen (2004). Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue1/ridings_gefen.html

Ling, K., G. Beenen, P. Ludford, X. Wang, K. Chang, X. Li, D. Cosley, D. Frankowski, L. Terveen, A.M. Rashid, P. Resnick and R. Kraut (2005). Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 10. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/ling.html

Tedjamulia, Steven J.J., David R. Olsen, Douglas L. Dean, Conan C. Albrecht (2005). Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a More Comprehensive Theory. Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Schrock, Andrew (2009). Examining Social Media Usage: Technology Clusters and Social Network Site Membership. First Monday 14(1). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2242/2066

Java, Akshay, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin and Belle Tseng (2007). Why We Twitter: Understanding the Microblogging Effect in User Intentions and Communities. Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop, 12 August 2007, San Jose, California.
http://workshops.socialnetworkanalysis.info/websnakdd2007/papers/submission_21.pdf