Patching the Melting Pot: Sociability in Facebook Groups for Engagement, Trust, and Perceptions of Difference

Abstract

The more racial or ethnic diversity a person lives around in America, the less likely they are to take part in civic life, or to profess feelings of trust for the average person. Differences have instead become reasons to pull back, prompting a mass erosion of social capital, by undermining social contact. The present study moves the conversation online, to the Facebook group setting in particular, as a means of highlighting shared interests while downplaying other differences at first. Results of a national web survey ( N = 1,005) indicate the use of Facebook groups for meeting new people relates to civic participation, along with added weak-tie discussions, which spill over to participation again indirectly. Sociability use of Facebook groups is also a source of bridging social capital, or having more active weak ties upon which to draw, and this contributes to trusting in people. Localized diversity becomes a reason to trust as well, but only for sociable Facebook group users. Less sociable users still mistrust at the sight of difference, but online social efforts appear to swing the direction of influence, for converting neighborhood-level racial and ethnic diversity into trust.

Facebooking for Good: Online Contact to Address Offline Conflict

“…Dunbar (2016) found the average Facebook network had 150 friends, but users relied on just 5 of them for social support, and considered 25 to be sympathetic. This reinforces the notion that most connections on Facebook are weak ties (Beck, 2019;Bouchillon, 2018;Granovetter, 1973).…”

“…In past research, sociable Facebook users had significantly more active weak ties and higher levels of generalized trust than their less social counterparts did (Bouchillon & Gotlieb, 2017). Motivated efforts of interacting on the site expanded access to social capital (Bouchillon, 2018). But sociability is far from the most common application of Facebook, where users instead prefer to kill time (Alhabash & Mengyan, 2017;Quan-Haase & Young, 2010).…”

“…Sociable users converted interactions with coworkers and acquaintances into new feelings of trust and civic engagements (Bouchillon & Gotlieb, 2017). Sociable Facebook group users also saw diversity as a reason to trust locally, while less sociable users still mistrusted at the sight (Bouchillon, 2018). But networked sociability swung the direction of the influence entirely, changing the way users thought about racial and ethnic diversity in their neighborhoods.…”

“…Intensity of Facebook use. Five items measured Facebook use in general, for isolating the influence of Facebook sociability (Bouchillon, 2018;Ellison, Steinfeld, & Lampe, 2007). The first two asked, (a) "In the past week, on average, about how much time per day did you spend actively using Facebook" (Mdn ¼ 31-60 minutes, M ¼ 3.34, SD ¼ 1.64) and (b) "About how many total friends do you have on Facebook" (Mdn ¼ 101-150 friends, M ¼ 4.88, SD ¼ 2.6).…”

“…Facebook use in particular is related to trusting . Using the site to meet new people contributes to trust as well (Bouchillon, 2018;Bouchillon & Gotlieb, 2017;Glanville et al, 2013). The present study thus investigates the potential for social efforts on the world's most popular social network to mitigate the negative effect of diversity on trust in the U.S. (Dinesen & Sønderskov, 2018;Richter, 2018).…”