Abstract

People may use different kinds of mobile communication services depending on if they are communicating with, for instance, friends, acquaintances or strangers. Thus, in this paper bonding and bridging social capital is studied in the context of two mobile communication services, short message services SMSs and voice calls. In Granovetter's terms, bridging social capital refers to communication with weak or absent ties, while bonding social capital refers to communication with strong ties. We find that both SMSs and voice calls are used for bonding and bridging social capital, but SMSs are used more for bonding purposes than voice calls. Furthermore, media multiplexity is more associated with bonding than bridging social capital. We also present a method for studying social capital in the context of other, newer mobile communication services, and present results of a pilot study. The implications of the results are discussed from a number of perspectives including communication research, social network analysis SNA and mobile operators.

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