Virtual Capital: An Abstract Reality

While some debate over the effects, the internet has certainly fostered a sense of community all over the world.  With a click, people on multiple continents can be instantly connected.  The ease of access and, indeed, the constant connectivity, has led to an information sharing craze.  In that revolution, people are engaging in a community that has its own social capital.  With instant information sharing comes the competition to consume it.

Take, for example, Twitter. The rise of ‘microblogging’ has led to a new kind of global chat room.  People quickly, simply and instantly share information with one another.  This certainly allows people to feel connected and to foster the same sense of community that arises from communicating with others in a town square, except it’s the world’s town square and you can access it from anywhere.  I think this concept has led to an addiction for people.  This addiction has led to the creation of the new social capital.

If people are constantly connected while consuming and sharing information, it is not enough to simply be a spectator. Users would rather participate in the information sharing as if to assert their connected-ness.  People want to get more connected and more instantly aware, so there is this idea of being at the helm of the information sharing.  People want to be first and prominent.  If I obtain information that I think others need or want to know, I will share it.  I will try to stay ahead of others in the information hunt, or stay connected so that as soon as information is available (instantly) I can access it and then share it so others know that I am connected.

I don’t think that the idea of being at the forefront of breaking news is anything new, but the idea of constant connectivity has made it more pertinent.  Or perhaps that concept has simply been shifted into a new, faster global community (the internet).

So while participatory journalism has created another sense of community, a kind of global news making team, it has also created this social capital: the digital scoop.  People are trying to get the scoop and to stay ahead of the information revolution on the world wide web. As Putnam put it, “social capital turns out to have forceful, even quantifiable effects on many aspects of our lives.”  So while the digital scoop is a social capital that more and more people are starting to amass, what else are they forsaking?

Hampton and Wellman debated the effects of ‘Netville’ (what they dubbed this new worldwide community), on existing communities.  A quote from their study notes that “computer mediated communication will do, by way of electronic pathways, what cement roads were unable to do.”  The idea of connecting people through information sharing enhances communities by allowing for greater connectivity; while the communities we live in have limitations, the internet is always connected so that we can be too.