Social Capital on Facebook - Essay Example

?Social Capital on Facebook “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” - Oscar Wilde Land of the Free is what America is known for. Democracy implicates freedom to the people of its nations. Civil society is considered as a contributing factor to the attainment of democracy. In return, societies and their cultures had shaped up by the concept of democracy. The book, Democracy in America, was written by Alexis de Tocqueville and had played significant role in the modern society of America. Tocqueville, a social scientist, had educated American audience to discern systematic studies of the relationship of democracy and civil society. The freedom enclosed in the concept of democracy extends up to the privilege of expression of the individuals. Freedom of expression is now being played up and exploited being the selling point of the social networking sites. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, two of the most famous social network, allowed their users to express and document every thoughts and activities of one’s own account. This privilege suddenly made Facebook a non-virtual consort place and pool of information, and sometimes of misinterpretation. With this fact in mind, it’s a marvel with what advantages and downsides that awaits in the society that social networking had brought in. Social Capital. Robert Putnam, author of the book Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993) was able to expound the connection of social network to social capital. During an interview with Putnam, he had stated that “the quality of public life and the performance of social institutions are indeed powerfully influenced by norms and networks of civic engagement.” According to Putnam, social capital is being pertained to the features of societal group such as the networks, standards, and social trust that assist synchronization and support for reciprocated advantage. Facebook. Facebook is undeniably one of the most famous social networking sites that was invented and now had a number of 6,000 million active users. Facebook is a multi-usage platform that can be used for educational or dating purposes. In here, one can share publicly his/her photos, find friends, exchange messages, and can be used as a portfolio. This was primarily designed to be used in Harvard University, to know each other better. (Carlson 2011) In 2007, a study of The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites had cited Putnam’s distinction between bridging and bonding social capital. An excerpt of the study to purposely explain is below: The former is linked to what network researchers refer to as "weak ties," which are loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support (Granovetter, 1982). Alternatively, bonding social capital is found between individuals in tightly-knit, emotionally close relationships, such as family and close friends. After briefly describing the extant literature on these two forms of social capital and the Internet, we introduce an additional dimension of social capital that speaks to the ability to maintain valuable connections as one progresses through life changes. This concept, "maintained social capital," permits us to explore whether online network tools enable individuals to keep in touch with a social network after physically disconnecting from it. True to its film counterpart, The Social Network (2010), Facebook’s surprising fame seems to imply a persistent and startling necessity for even the closest “connection” in the broad network many times less socialized, linked and shared than the one in which our parents and grandparents grew up. However, universality is not much of an index, especially when the product at hand is absolutely free. (Atkinson 2011) Influence. Putnam had explained “that social connections and civic engagement pervasively influence our public life, as well as our private prospects.” Although he had addressed this way back pre-Facebook era, this is true and evident to the famous social networking site. As people today are being exposed to the internet more than any sources in the earlier period, the emergence of social media or social networking had transformed people’s daily life, including as well an organization, particularly with Facebook. One of the prominent influences of Facebook in society is its usage as organization’s pervasive tool for the organization’s operation, as well as developing new tools through the very site. (Nizar 2010) The power of social networking sites are being recognized and acknowledge by major corporations and business establishments. These are brought by the instances that some companies had experienced with social networking sites and felt the effect of it in their operation. The accounts below are few of the instances that made impact on respective companies (Nizar 2010): ?A major U.S. airline uses Twitter to conduct grassroots marketing activities. Customers can provide real-time feedback to the company. And, the airline can search message postings (“tweets”) to determine customer satisfaction at any given point in time. The airline has incorporated Twitter into its overall corporate communications plan. ? At two major, multinational corporations within the Fortune 100, social networking sites are firmly entrenched in the companies’ day-to-day business cultures. Employees are trained on usage of the sites; they sign code of conduct policy documents and security-related or information use agreements. Patterns of information and knowledge sharing within organization were also improved brought by influence of social network. Web tools such as Google Doc Sharing and Yammer are project-based websites that use the principle of social networking sites. In psychological and societal aspect of the influence of social network, one is the “instant-mode” to everything that people were acquainted with upon severe exposure in social network particularly in Facebook. It is known to many users that one can almost get everything through Facebook and can be done anything in an instant like uploading/downloading photos, advance news feed, and even dating. Such features potentially developed impatience and impulsiveness to person if manifested in reality. Culture. Consequence of the effect of power of Facebook has affected even the cultural structure of certain country. Putnam had cited the decline of the participation of Americans in organized social groupings such as in political parties, committees and other civic organizations. Putnam’s main apprehension is that younger generations are using social networks to build large clans or tribes. Such trend is being regarded as the new form of community (Laugesen 2010). Often times, news of reunion of families and long lost friends were prominent through the features of Facebook. (ABC News 2010) On the other hand, Facebook is also cited as a source of relationship problems particularly in marital arrangement. There are numerous stories reported that divorce and disloyalty are cause by Facebook. Although this part is not being confirmed by Facebook advocates. Another threatening cultural alteration though Facebook is the emergence of security-risk-culture in society today. The safety of the users was being compromised by several times of adjustment being done in its privacy setting feature. Information and items that were previously settled in privacy setting were revealed overtime upon adjustments. Also, accounts of the users had no protection to potential hackers as there were several reports of hacking incidents made known. (Stone 2008) Apparent also is the booming of Generation Me in social networking sites. Generation Me may be meant to come around in the future with or without the existence of social networking site. However, the existence of Facebook in this period made Generation Me’s notable symptom of being self-indulgent and narcissistic tendencies to come in its peak. To define Generation Me, it is those of generation today who were born on years 1980 up to 2000, formerly called Generation Y. The switching of the term is due to its more fitting characteristics of Generation Me individuals that manifest greatly through today’s technology, including social network (Hanratty 2010). In a published article in The Temple Post, it explained the study of case of Generation Me over technology: Dr. Joseph Friedman, a clinical psychologist and former assistant professor at Temple, said sites like Facebook and Twitter are not solely to blame for this trend. “I think they are simply the instrument. They’ve exasperated the situation. They create a false intimacy that people settle for,” Friedman said. He said there are many factors that contribute to this trend, including the enormous amount of technology and information now available. “Because of the mere technological advances that make everything so immediately available, young people are not able to wait. They are being trained to be impatient. They have this pseudo-connection to the world. You can talk to anybody anytime, but there is no real intimacy to it,” he said. In an ongoing USA Today poll, readers were asked what they considered the biggest trend in behavior for 2009. Narcissism came in first with 33 percent of votes, followed by social networking with 28 percent and recession stress with 20 percent. In a separate survey by Youth Pulse, an organization that specifically studies behavior of tweens and teens, two-thirds of 1,068 college students said their generation is more narcissistic than previous ones. Additionally, students were asked about their online social-networking habits. Ninety-two percent said they used Facebook or MySpace on a regular basis. Conclusion. As important as democracy is, just as Putnam puts it, social capital is being valued dearly by most people as they know that it is the key to perceiving what makes online society work. It is not saying that social capital is purely positive, as social capitals that were Klux Klux Klan and Nazi infiltrations were anti-democracy. However, the concept of social capital, which is investing a self reputation within the society and contacts and that people have to help each one thus overcoming any condition and/or attain true self-actualization are the virtues that can be taken upon the existence of social capital through social network. The impact of online social networks on social capital can be achieved in numerous ways. An example would be the mutual interest groups that could help the users to bring together for collective action. At the same time, regular exchanges between users can foster trust and norms of reciprocity that are key antecedents of community life. Likewise, news feeds allow users to keep in touch with what is going on “out there.”Truly, Facebook brings the best of both worlds in the society and culture of modern world, its advantages and disadvantages. Works Cited "Dad finds daughter on Facebook after 20 years." ABC Local News. 23 Oct 2010 Atkinsons, Michael. "Friend Your Day Away: The Anti-Social Network." In These Times. 2 Feb 2011 Carlson, Nicholas. "Goldman to clients: Facebook has 600 million.MSNBC. 5 Jan, 2011 Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook "friends:" Social capital and college students' use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 1. 2007 http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html Hanratty, Andrea. "‘Y’ becomes ‘Me’ for youth generation." The Temple Post. 10 Jan 2010 Laugesen, Ruth. "The art of friendship in a Facebook world." Listener.com. 23 Jan 2010 Nizar. "Social Networking influence to Organization Culture." Agile Project Management ( Scrum ) – Leadership – Team – Management – Organization. 9 Jul 2010 Stone, Brad. "Facebook to Settle Thorny Lawsuit Over Its Origins". The New York Times (blog). 7 Apr 2008 Read More