Building relationships on social networking sites from a social work approach

ABSTRACT

Our current age of connectedness has facilitated a boom in interactive dynamics within social networking sites. It is, therefore, possible for the field of Social Work to draw on these advantages in order to connect with the unconnected by strengthening online mutual support networks among users.

The aim of this article is to examine whether ‘connectedness’ in social networking sites improves online social capital and resilience of social service users.

Through our analysis of social networks carried out on an experimental model, we observed the patterns of connectedness on Facebook of 50 social service end-users from Málaga, Spain. The detection of online communities through the modularity algorithm has allowed us to ascertain whether individuals’ offline realities mirror their online realities. At the same time, we examined the influence certain interactions (likes, comments, etc.) have on leadership through online ethnography. Finally, online social capital, understood as the combination of connectedness and online interaction, has been correlated with users’ resilience. The results reveal that both connectedness and interaction feed themselves and have correlations with resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Relationships
• connectedness
• interaction
• communities
• social mirror
• social work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joaquín Castillo De Mesa

Joaquín Castillo de Mesa he has been an associate professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Málaga (Spain) since 2010 and a member of Research Group of Quality of Life and Community and Organisational Intervention. He has been a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley, and at Anglia Ruskin University. His publications include analysis of social innovations, detection of communities, mining data from Big Social Data and combining analysis social networks and different algorithms for applying the results to social intervention.

Luis Gómez Jacinto

Luis Gómez Jacinto he earned his B.S. in Psychology at the University of Salamanca and his Ph.D. at the University of Málaga (Spain), where he has been a Full Professor of Social Psychology since 1999. He has directed numerous dissertations and is the author and co-author of several scientific publications related to Social Psychology. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Social Studies and Work at the University of Málaga. His research is centred on the application of the theory of evolution to the analysis of psychosocial processes as well as social and community intervention.

Antonio López Peláez

Antonio López Peláez he is University Full Professor of Social Work and Social Services at the Department of Social Work of UNED. PhD in Philosophy and Sociology. Among his research interests: analysis of social problems of interculturality, methods of social intervention, intersections of new technologies and social work. He has been visiting scholar at the School of Social Welfare (University of California, Berkeley, USA), Universidad Americana (Managua, Nicaragua), and at the School of Social Work (Western Michigan University, USA). He is director of Comunitania. International Journal of Social Work and Social Sciences and member of the editorial board of prestigious journals in his field of research. He has published numerous books in prestigious academic publishers (Oxford University Press, Springer, Aranzadi, Tecnos, Espasa, Alianza, etc.)

Maria De Las Olas Palma García

Maria de Las Olas Palma García she is a full professor of Social Work in the Department of Social Work at the University of Málaga (Spain) and a member of the Research Group of Quality of Life and Community and Organisational Intervention. Her publications and investigative work are principally centred on Social Services, Resilience, Social Work, Professional Resilience in social intervention, and emergent social needs.