Building social capital with mobile communication services

Abstract

People may use different kinds of mobile communication servicesdepending on if they are communicating with, for instance, friends,acquaintances or strangers. Thus, in this paper bonding and bridging socialcapital is studied in the context of two mobile communication services, shortmessage services (SMSs) and voice calls. In Granovetter’s terms, bridgingsocial capital refers to communication with weak or absent ties, while bondingsocial capital refers to communication with strong ties. We find that both SMSsand voice calls are used for bonding and bridging social capital, but SMSs areused more for bonding purposes than voice calls. Furthermore, mediamultiplexity is more associated with bonding than bridging social capital.We also present a method for studying social capital in the context of other,newer mobile communication services, and present results of a pilot study.The implications of the results are discussed from a number of perspectivesincluding communication research, social network analysis (SNA) and mobileoperators.