Does Facebook Build Social Capital?

SCI Dorchester Site Director Marisa Luse forwards a fascinating study on college students' use of Facebook. Written by three scholars at Michigan State University, the study surveyed about 280 MSU undergraduates and concludes that Facebook is used primarily for maintaining connections made offline--"maintaining social capital." They also conclude that Facebook is better suited for building "bridging" social capital over "bonding" social capital.

Our findings suggest that certain kinds of Facebook use (articulated by our Facebook intensity items) can help students accumulate and maintain bridging social capital. This form of social capital—which is closely linked to the notion of "weak ties"—seems well-suited to social software applications, as suggested by Donath and boyd (2004), because it enables users to maintain such ties cheaply and easily. Although more research is needed to understand the nature of this trend, we suspect that Facebook serves to lower the barriers to participation so that students who might otherwise shy away from initiating communication with or responding to others are encouraged to do so through Facebook's affordances.

Click here to read the full article. What are the implications for SCI's community websites?