Social Capital in a Hybrid Online and Offline Social Networking Community

Abstract

Contemporary social networking sites (SNSs) are becoming common places where individuals and their respective networks congregate to exchange information. These places online are often thought as community and as Chua, Madej,and Wellman (2011) suggest "communities can consist of a person's network of relationships, wherever such communities are located" (p. 101). However, traditional social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace typically comprise networks that users are already familiar with, often brought into online spaces from their offline worlds (Baym, 2011). In order to gain social capital, an important element toward civic participation, users must engage in actions of exchanges with members of their network (Bourdieu, 1986). Different types of social capital afford different types of support, yet traditional social networks typically only afford bridging capital, a social tie that is most commonly found to only provide new information rather than trust and emotional support. Due to the fragmented nature of our contemporary media landscape, as outlined through networked individualism (Wellman, 1998), individuals navigate multiple networks instead of remaining in one locale. This study seeks to analyze these types of networks found within a hybrid online and offline community, Fark.com, in order to understand how media multiplexity (Haythorthwaithe, 2005) allows for different forms of social capital to accrue.