Realizing the Social Internet? Online Social Networking Meets Offline Civic Engagement

ABSTRACT

Does Internet use have the potential to build social capital? Emerging evidence suggests that politically knowledgeable, interpersonally trusting, and civically engaged individuals share particular patterns of Internet use. In previous national survey studies, Internet use has been divided into a handful of excessively broad categories, and researchers have been unable to address newer, category-spanning Internet uses as well as the potential impact of individual Web sites. By examining the use of online social networks in a nationally representative sample of young people, this study explores the varied relationships between indicators of social capital and Internet use on a site-specific level (i.e., MySpace vs. Facebook). Indeed, differences between social networking sites are as large as those between more global categories of use (e.g., informational vs. social networking) and are robust to attempts to account for differences between the users of the sites. In explaining these relationships and exploring the differences between social networking sites, we suggest that Web site use induces a site-specific culture that can either encourage or hinder social capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Facebook
• MySpace
• political knowledge
• social capital
• youth

The authors thank Kathleen Hall Jamieson, W. Russell Neuman, Keith Hampton, Morgan Ames, Jon Krosnick, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, insights, and suggestions.

Notes

1. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found a similar 55% shortly thereafter in a slightly younger sample (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, & Smith, 2007).

2. A large literature in sociology examines the role of social capital and its subsidiaries (e.g., network size, group membership, interpersonal trust, social norms, volunteer associations) and their relationship to ingroup and societal cohesion. (For an in-depth analysis of the distinctions in this regard see Siisiäinen, 2000; Putnam, 2000; Bourdieu, 1986.) We derive our notion and measures of social capital from Putnam's (1995, 2000, 2003) work and from the literature that follows (i.e., Brehm & Rahn, 1997; Scheufele & Shah, 2000).

3. Since the survey was conducted on a nationally representative sample of young people, this high rate of SNS use allows for a meaningful analysis.

4. The notion of “Web site culture” as a quantitative concept may seem inappropriate to some readers. We suggest, however, that interpersonal interactions via social networking Web sites have the potential to create a unique culture. While this is not a study of culture per se, we hypothesize that unique Web site interactions lead to the outcomes we observe.

5. While this is similar to diffusion of innovations theory (Rogers, 2003), we propose that the categories of progressively informed individuals no longer apply, as information leaders generally spread information broadly and the individuals who are informed through the network are informed nearly instantaneously. For this reason, the diffusion of innovations model may be a less appropriate analogy.

6. AAPOR formula 3 is a standard metric for calculating survey response rates. It uses responses and failures to predict how many unreached individuals should be in the sample. More information is available at http://www.aapor.org/responseratesanoverview.

7. Many of the blogging Web sites could be considered social networking sites for those writing entries, as the definition of SNS sites that we used was sites that had a user profile and facilitated the exchange of information among connected individuals. Common blogging sites in this age group include Xanga and LiveJournal, which function as a hybrid between the two types of sites. Additionally, the vast majority of those answering the question were SNS users, with only 2% of our sample reporting blogging site use but no use of Facebook or MySpace. The results obtained for all analyses in this study were also repeated excluding those identifying only blogging sites on the follow-up question “which, if any, of the following social network sites do you use?” All relationships were consistent with the findings reported for the full measure. For use variables, intermediate categories were “once or twice a week” (2) and “less often” (1).

8. Educational status was assigned based on respondents' indications that they were currently attending school and the level of school that they reported attending, if they were still in school.

9. While genetic matching is fundamentally exploratory (see Ho, Imai, King, & Stuart, 2008), this does not bias results, as we are not predicting the outcomes in the study. Indeed, the better balance achieved, the less likely that a spurious relationship will appear (see Diamond & Sekhon, 2005; Ho, Imai, King, & Stuart, 2008).