The purposes of the current study were (1) to examine the relationship between social networking service (SNS) dependency and local community engagement among Seoul residents, (2) to test the hypothesis that integrated connectedness to a community storytelling network (ICSN) is positively related to local community engagement, and (3) to investigate the moderating role of ICSN between SNS dependency and local community engagement. The current study is theoretically guided by communication infrastructure theory (CIT). We used online survey data collected during summer 2013 from a sample of 890 SNS users between the ages of 19 and 59 who lived in 25 districts in Seoul. We focused on four variables as local community engagement outcomes: neighborhood belonging, two collective efficacy variables (informal social control and social cohesion), and community activity participation. We found that SNS dependency and ICSN were positively associated with all local community engagement variables. We also identified the moderating role of ICSN between SNS dependency and the two collective efficacy variables. In addition, we found that closed SNSs (e.g., KakaoTalk) are more likely to facilitate community engagement than open SNSs (e.g., Facebook or Twitter).

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The purpose of this study is to test hypotheses regarding the effects of commuting on commuters’ access to community-based communication resources and their level of community engagement. This study is guided by communication infrastructure theory. Online survey interviews were conducted with 1,028 Seoul residents between May 30 and June 17, 2014. We found that (1) commuters showed a higher level of community engagement than noncommuters; (2) among commuters, there was a negative relationship between commuting time and a sense of neighborhood belonging; (3) commuting time showed a positive relationship with access to community-based communication resources (i.e., integrated connectedness to community storytelling network [ICSN]) and community participation; (4) among four place-based identity groups (integrators, home-dominant group, workplace-dominant group, and disconnectors), integrators, who connected to both home and workplace, showed the highest level of ICSN and community engagement; and (5) ICSN mediated between commuting variables and community engagement variables.

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