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Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students' Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation

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TLDR
Positive relationships between intensity of Facebook use and students' life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation are found, suggesting that online social networks are not the most effective solution for youth disengagement from civic duty and democracy.
Abstract
This study examines if Facebook, one of the most popular social network sites among college students in the U.S., is related to attitudes and behaviors that enhance individuals' social capital. Using data from a random web survey of college students across Texas (n = 2,603), we find positive relationships between intensity of Facebook use and students' life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation. While these findings should ease the concerns of those who fear that Facebook has mostly negative effects on young adults, the positive and significant associations between Facebook variables and social capital were small, suggesting that online social networks are not the most effective solution for youth disengagement from civic duty and democracy.

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Journal ArticleDOI

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

D. Rucinski
- 01 Feb 1994 - 
TL;DR: The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992) as discussed by the authors is a model of mass opinion formation that offers readers an introduction to the prevailing theory of opinion formation.
Journal ArticleDOI

Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users' personality and social media use

TL;DR: While extraverted men and women were both likely to be more frequent users of social media tools, only the men with greater degrees of emotional instability were more regular users, and being open to new experiences emerged as an important personality predictor ofsocial media use for the more mature segment of the sample.
Journal ArticleDOI

Determinants of consumer engagement in electronic word-of-mouth in social networking sites

TL;DR: In this paper, a conceptual model that identifies tie strength, homophily, trust, normative and informational interpersonal influence as an important antecedent to eWOM behavior in SNSs was developed and tested.
Journal ArticleDOI

Social Media Use for News and Individuals' Social Capital, Civic Engagement and Political Participation

TL;DR: Results show that after controlling for demographic variables, traditional media use offline and online, political constructs (knowledge and efficacy), and frequency and size of political discussion networks, seeking information via social network sites is a positive and significant predictor of people's social capital and civic and political participatory behaviors, online and offline.
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Journal ArticleDOI

Connections Between Internet Use and Political Efficacy, Knowledge, and Participation

TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the relationship between Internet access and online exposure to information about the presidential campaign and political efficacy, knowledge, and participation using data from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey.
Book ChapterDOI

Happiness is the frequency, not the intensity, of positive versus negative affect.

TL;DR: This paper found that subjective well-being is more strongly associated with the amount of time people feel positive versus negative feelings rather than with the intensity of their positive feelings, and they also found that positive feelings often have costs, including a tendency to more intense negative feelings in negative situations.
Book

A New Engagement?: Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen

Cliff Zukin, +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss coming of age in a post Boomer world and the generational pathways to participation of young people in public life, and where do young people stand politically.
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Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students’ Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation?

The paper found positive relationships between intensity of Facebook use and college students' life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation. However, the associations between Facebook use and social capital were small.