In 2000 Robert Putnam published "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community" in which he argued that many traditional civic, social, and faternal organizations--typified by bowling leagues--had changed over the year, declining in membership, while bowling had increased dramatically. Why is it, he wondered, that people were, at the same time, more active and less social. Putnam described two kinds of social capital: bonding capital in which people socialize with those who are the same age, same race, same religion, and so on; and, bridging capital capital, as in when we make friends with people who are not necessarily like us, but who may have a common interest with us such as football or Michael Jackson.
I wonder if we can think of Facebook as creating bonding capital and LinkedIn as creating bridging capital? We have different purposes for these sites and we hope others do as well. How many of you have said that employers should not look at your Facebook?
In this vein, Google Docs and Wiki are bridging technologies as they seek to create a common ground around a document or subject. Interestingly, in these two tech tools we hardly use the profile section and I am generally surprised when someone asks me to be their "friend" from the wetpaint site.
I'm curious if you think bonding vs bridging capital is a useful distinction.
BTW,"capital" in this sense is the value you build up by connecting to and sharing with others. The more capital you have in the "bank," the more likely folks are to respond positively to you. It is both the quantity of your network and the quality of it--whom do you know?
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I like the parallel to LinkedIn, however Facebook seems too massive to fall under just bonding capital. For instance, you could have a list of friends that you've met through your mutual respect for a local band, or friends you've made because of a chess event in the region (I'm not confusing FB and Myspace, am I?). This seems more like bridging capital, whereas the friends you know in real life represent bonding capital. FB seems to blur the lines too much. Not sure how I feel about the distinction overall though. Plain old "networking" seemed to work fine but don't take my word for it.
ReplyDeleteI think that no matter what kind of "capital", either bonding or bridging, everything has to be a "political game". Of course, facebook leans towards a bonding capital, because I think you want people that you know enough to be your friends since employers can use against you. But I think it is also a bridging capital. You can know friends of friends and who knows... one day they might help you to find a job for example.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, as you mention above, Wiki and Google Docs are more bridging capital than bonding. We think of those two tools to help us create, share documents with our coleagues, coworkers, school friends, but not necessarily as a social network tool.
It might be that Google Docs and Wiki are not known as a possible bonding capital yet. Or it might be the next big thing.