Lessons from : Social Network Sites and College Students

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Lessons from Social Network Sites
and College Students Social Capital

• Sebastián Valenzuela
• Namsu Park
• Kerk F. Kee
• 9th International Symposium on Online Journalism
• Austin, Texas
• April 2008

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Who we are?
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Why care?

• Moral panic! Unsafe disclosure of information,
  cyberbullying, addiction, risky behavior,
  dangerous communities...
• Is there social capital and civic/political
  engagement in Facebook?
• If so, what can journalists learn from SNS?
• Random web survey of college students across
  Texas (n 2,603)

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What are we talking about?

• Intensity of Facebook use
• of contacts
• Time and frequency
• Emotional attachment
• Social Capital in 3-D
• Intrapersonal dimension life satisfaction
• Interpersonal dimension social trust
• Behavioral dimension civic and political
  participation

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The kids are alright
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What we found

• Hierarchical multiple regressions, controlling
  for gender, age, year in school, race/ethcnicity,
  parental education, residency.
• Comparing intense FB users to light FB users
• Life satisfaction 15
• Social trust 5
• Civic participation 16 (10 FB Groups)
• Political participation 2 (27 FB Groups)

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Meaning?

• FB users are more connected, happy and engaged
  than what they get credited for in the MSM.
• Luddites, Putnamites, and pessimists, behold!
  Positive, significant associations between FB and
  social capital variables were small (10 variance
  at most).
• Online networks are not a panacea for democracy
  (but not their gravediggers, either).
• Causal-effect relationship? Spurious association?
  Self-selection bias? Will see... Perhaps virtuous
  circle?

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Lessons for Js

• SNS useful structures for connecting people,
  sharing info. and for collective action... BUT
  not that much for exchanging POVs.
• Challenges for news sites adopting SNS structure
• Understanding whos using SNS?
• Can own SNS emulate the benefits of global SNS?
• Developing useful applications within SNS
• As SNS and other Web 2.0 technologies diffuse,
  their relationship to social capital may be
  different from the picture reflected in our data.

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Contact information

• Link to project site
• http//uts.cc.utexas.edu/kpv/index.html
• E-mail
• kpv_at_uts.cc.utexas.edu