Accumulating Social Capital in an Online Urban Network: The Effects of User Behaviors

Abstract

Social capital is often accumulated not only in ego-networks, but in larger communities. However, these communities, although seemingly visible through social media, are still under-researched. In this work, we examine аn online friendship network spanning over an entire middle-size city amounting to 194,601 users of VK social network site. We find that the share of user’s in-city friends contributes to his/her brokerage and information influence abilities. More importantly, the number of user’s online groups - that is, user’s access to diverse or disconnected communities - is positively related with his/her bridging capital, and negatively with the bonding capital. Finally, our research questions the validity of some of the existing social capital measures. Highlights • All-city network represents a mixture ofsmall-world and scale-free graph models • Longer SNS use gives a cumulative advantage for making additional friendship ties • Participation in more SNS groups increases a user's online bridging social capital • The number of likes on a user’s wall is positively associated with online bridging • The share of local friends among all user’s VK friends increases online bridging