Social Capital — Is it Worth Sharing?

The way that humans communicate has been a fascinating and ever-evolving topic since the inception of the cognitive revolution about 30,000 years ago. Our ability to communicate and share information is so relevant and so effective in the way we lead our daily lives that it has allowed us to collectively achieve the top throne in the food chain. Human beings need to share, they need to know, they need to relate and be informed. All these sharing functions are integral to the progress of their lives and to their being able to stabilize their practical functions and their emotional volatility.

Social media is defined by Krotz (2009, p.23) as ‘a modification of communication that involves technology, a social institution, infrastructure and a space of encounter and experience.’ There is a particular importance in his saying that it is a modification of communication because humans have found endless ways to communicate and share effectively. We went from etching on stones and using vocal sounds to relating to novels and works of literature, to creating visual scenarios and finally to providing one another with tools that help us share information both personal and general around the clock.

In this scenario, ‘users are simultaneously producers and consumers.’ Hartley (2002, p.143). Yet, this social capital that is accumulated is albeit tiresome, necessary. Sharing has essential social functions such building communities, maintaining trust, celebrating collectively, relating to others, evading loneliness, understanding other cultures and eventually creating a wholesome sense of unity amongst a race that is heavily divided by politics, religions, cultures and economic barrier. I believe that unity is the final and maximum utility of all forms of sharing. And this is why across time, societies have maintained a culture of sharing, starting with warning one another of danger in the foragers’ time to spreading news and clothes trend on Instagram pages. The social capital benefits include information, adaptation, relation and a personalization of one anothers’ characters as personal users. To corporations and businesses, this social capital is the bulk of human data that could be used for further analysis and allow for better-targeted sales campaigns. For academics, this social capital is an interesting sample that helps scholars understand our behaviours and methods. These benefits are called social capital because all together they accumulate to a bulk of information and habits that are produced by social beings for social purposes.

The fact that most social capital is generated across social media platforms affects it in the sense that it makes it plenty, unreliable and fast-moving. Everyone can post over a thousand posts and stories, tweets and captions, etc. on the daily. This leads to a lack of reliability in the social capital. Additionally, this reliability is decreased by knowing that these posts are virtual with no assurance of their reality. Furthermore, social capital is affected by the lack of resonance that social media offers. Things posted are irrelevant in a matter of days or a week. There is no timelessness to the posts shared, which decreases the value of this social capital.

In official terms, ‘social capital is a form of economic, cultural and symbolic capital that we acquire through our social networks. It is a critical resource for bargaining, compromise and achieving one’s aims in a pluralistic society.’ Giddens (2013, p.855). This is what makes the beneficiaries of social capital wide and varied. For example, friends could benefit from the amount of social capital posted by their friends because they can catch up and communicate, maintaining their bonds, cultures benefit from social capital because they are represented worldwide and also bring together members of the same society together.

Businesses and corporations benefit from that because data on consumer trends and behaviours is collected in a way that helps them streamline marketing campaigns and sales methods. Companies use shared information to understand what consumers are interested in, their purchasing power extent, their ability to share and thus market more, etc. All this information is then utilized to maximize sales and revenues in the aim of improving companies’ profit margins. Additionally, governments utilize this information to understand its subjects and invade their privacy.

In the final segment of this blogpost, I will tackle the issue of privacy invasion that has angered several people and organizations. Many people complain that their privacy is being breached, their information being used and their ability to control what others can see and what they can’t is waning. The simple solution comes in the format of having control over what you share. Most of these people who complain are also the people who share every personal moment, spread news of their accomplishments and set the locations of their lunches and trips. The best way to insure our rights and control on the social capital we expend is to monitor, control and closely protect what it is we share on our social media platforms. It’s as simple as that.

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References

Giddens, 2013, p. 855. https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/web%20docs/GarsonSK06syllabus.htm

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Hartley, John (2002) ‘Medium/Media’ in Communication, Culture, Media Studies. Key Concepts, Routledge, London and New York, p. 143

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Krotz (2009) ‘Mediatization: A concept to which to Grasp Media and Societal Change’, in K. Lundby (ed.), Mediatization, New York: Peter Land, pp 19 -38; 23