We explore how participation in social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter affects the most economically relevant aspect of social capital, trust. We use measures of trust in strangers (or social trust), trust in neighbours and trust in the police. We address endogeneity in the...

Social networking sites (SNSs) are quickly becoming the main venues for social interaction of Internet users. As the competition between these online services is growing ever stronger, the success of SNSs derives from persuasive core application designs that influence users in taking specific...

Interconnectivity and social relationships of customers on social platforms offered by Web 2.0 technologies drive value for business. Customers are using social technologies to share their information and gain access to others' information and advice, which helps them to know better the products...

Despite increased consumer concern about the privacy threat posed by new technologies and the Internet as a whole, there is relatively little evidence that people’s privacy concerns actually translate into privacy-enhancing behaviors while online. One can say that it is not yet well understood...

Social networking sites (SNSs) provide users with an efficient interface for distributing information, such as photos or wall posts, to many others simultaneously. We demonstrated experimentally that this type of indiscriminate one-to-many (i.e., monologue) communication may induce self-focused...

The explosion in social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Friendster is widely regarded as an exciting opportunity, especially for youth.Yet the public response tends to be one of puzzled dismay regarding a generation that, supposedly, has many friends but little sense of...

Social networking is arguably the fastest growing online activity among youth people. This article presents new pan-European findings from the EU Kids Online project on how children and young people navigate the peer-to-peer networking possibilities afforded by social networking sites, based on...

Free communication is promoted by the use of new information and communication technologies. In fact, these were important to the citizens’ mobilizations which filled Spanish streets and squares for several months in 2011 and 2012. Meanwhile, traditional mass media hardly noticed the citizen...

Although research findings have been equivocal as to whether the use of social networking sites (SNSs) increases experiences of online risk among children, the affordances of SNS lend support to this possibility, attracting much policy and public concern. The present article examines whether the...

Theoretical approaches as well as empirical results in the area of social capital accumulation on social networking sites suggest that weak ties/bridging<i> versus</i> strong ties/bonding social capital should be distinguished and that while bonding social capital is connected to emotional support,...