Online Social Capital in Political Contexts:Does the ”Online” Make Any Difference

SNA Summer School 20131

Javier Sajuria

Department of Political Science ScienceUniversity College London

August 2013

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Paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2224874Slides: http://slidesha.re/17x6DeV

Research Question

How does online social capital differ from offline social capital?

What is Social Capital?

”Social networks that operate under norms of trust andreciprocity, and able to mobilise resources and information. ”

Based on this definition, my doctoralresearch attempts to cover three dimensionsof social capital:

• Networks operating under norms of trust and reciprocity• Resources• Outcomes

”Social Capital Dichotomies”

• Individual vs. Collective• Network structure (brokerage and closure)• Offline and online→ Internet as a research framework

Social Capital NetworkTheory(Burt 2005)

• Closure: Tight groups→ norms→ trustOperationalisation: average clustering coefficient

• Brokerage: bridges across structural holes→ mobiliseresources across the networkOperationalisation: average network constraint index

Data and Methods

• Occupy Research Project Datasetswww.occupyresearch.net

• #OWS• #OccupyWallStreet• #OccupyOakland• #OccupyBoston• #OccupyLondon

• September/October 2011 to February 2012• Twitter Streaming API (for a discussion on the representativeness

of the streaming API, check Morstatter et al. 2013)

• Social network analysis using gephi, R (igraph, rgexf)

Descriptive Statistics

Closure and Brokerage

Network GraphsVisualizations using OpenOrd algorithm

Concluding thoughts

• Interplay between brokerage and closure seems consistentwith theory

• Closure is low→ if there is social capital here, where istrust created?

• Offline interactions→We can’t see where it is created• Bonding and Bridging Social Capital• Conceptual problem→ there is no social capital here, just

interactions with no trust• Utopian rhetoric

• Network performance→ if social capital is related withsuccessful networks, then how can we assess it?

• Another events/contexts/methods.

Thanks!

@jsajuriahttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/people/research-students/

javier-sajuria