Social Media Usage: Barriers and Predictors in Promotion of Social Capital

HEMDEEP KAUR
Panjab University, India

Abstract
The concept of social capital is quite complex and every scholar defined it differently. Taking into consideration the idea of social capital discussed by Robert Putnam, James Coleman, Michael Woolcock, etc. the current study has determined the variables affecting the social capital. These variables are demographics (social network, education level and income) and psychographics (trust and empathy). Social capital in the current study is considered the combination of ‘connectedness’ and ‘civic engagement’. ‘Connectedness’ include all the factors related to social media such as adoption of social media for civic engagement, early adoption of social media and frequency of using social media tools. ‘Civic engagement’ was measured in form of intensity, nature and frequency. To have more clarity of the research, association of demographics and psychographics with adoption of social media was determined. The study examined the association between early adoption of social media and frequency of civic engagement to know whether connectedness and civic engagement are linked to each other.

Keywords: Social capital, social media, civic engagement and volunteerism

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Hemdeep Kaur recently completed PhD from School of Communication Studies from Punjab University, Chandigarh, India. Her areas of research are media effects, online media and development communication.