Investigating Culture as a Precedent Factor for Dual Social Network Site Use and Social Capital Development
Journal
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Journal Volume
12193 LNCS
ISBN
9783030499129
Date Issued
2020-01-01
Author(s)
Abstract
This study investigated how culture influences East Asian users’ relation-ship development and group identification on a home-country social net-work site (SNS) and Facebook and how social capital development across sites is shaped by these factors. An online survey (N = 335) among Chinese and Korean international students in the U.S. was conducted, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The current study complements existing literature in several aspects. First, while previous studies posit that cultural values have majorly accounted for home-country-site use, our study shows cultural values also influence international people’s Facebook use. Then we show the pattern of social capital development is similar across Facebook and Renren/Cyworld for both bonding and bridging social capital. Light-weight SNS-enabled social interactions such as commenting or liking others’ posts are sufficient, in contrast to meaningful relationship engagement and group formation for both types of social capital. Last, our results suggest bonding social capital is more valued by users.
Subjects
Cross-cultural communication | Measurement invariance model | Social capital | Social network sites | Structural equation modeling
Type
conference paper