Logo
Munich Personal RePEc Archive

E-participation: social capital and the Internet

Sabatini, Fabio and Sarracino, Francesco (2014): E-participation: social capital and the Internet.

[thumbnail of MPRA_paper_55722.pdf]
Preview
PDF
MPRA_paper_55722.pdf

Download (6MB) | Preview

Abstract

We add to the literature by conducting the first empirical assessment of how online networking affects two economically relevant aspects of social capital, i.e. trust and sociability, in a large and representative sample. We address endogeneity in online networking by exploiting technological characteristics of the pre-existing voice telecommunication infrastructures that exogenously determined the availability of broadband for high-speed Internet. We find that participation in SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter has a positive effect on face-to-face interactions. However, social trust decreases with online interactions. We argue that the rising practice of hate speech may play a crucial role in the destruction of trust.

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact us: mpra@ub.uni-muenchen.de

This repository has been built using EPrints software.

MPRA is a RePEc service hosted by Logo of the University Library LMU Munich.