Social capital in Second Life

Abstract

PurposeSecond Life is a user‐created online virtual world, which is a place where people with shared interests can meet and be together and share information. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether Second Life communities foster and nurture social capital, whether social capital within Second Life is related to social capital outside the virtual world, whether some characteristics affect the likelihood of users having social capital, and whether some existing measure of social capital can be modified and used to study social capital in Second Life.Design/methodology/approachThe study was based on a statistical analysis of data gathered in a web survey of a convenience sample (n= 67) of Second Life residents. The social capital measure used was based on Bullen and Onyx.FindingsSecond Life is an environment that fosters the emergence of social capital. Residents who consider themselves producers have higher levels of social capital than those who consider themselves non‐producers. Having social capital within Second Life is unrelated to having social capital outside the virtual world. The consistency of the instrument proved to be excellent for measuring social capital within Second Life and good outside the virtual world.Research limitations/implicationsThe small sample size and the composition of the research population limit the ability to generalise the findings.Practical implicationsSecond Life is a potent environment for community building and collective action. However, communities and collective action within Second Life cannot be based on social activity outside the virtual world.Originality/valueThe present study is the first systematic investigation of social capital in Second Life.

Interrelations Between Virtual-World and Real-World Activities: Comparison of Genders, Age Groups, and Pathological and Nonpathological Internet Users

“…As a result, virtual world (VW) has penetrated into the real world (RW), and the clear boundary between RW and VW has begun to fade. This might result in transfer of behaviors gained in RW to VW 1,2 or vice versa. 3 In other words, the behaviors in RW and VW might be the parts of a continuum.…”

Information sharing and the dimensions of social capital in Second Life

“…In spite of its richness, the present material does not provide definite answers to the question of the specific reasons for the accentuated role of emotional communication in SL. However, it complements earlier studies based on qualitative data gathering methods by presenting an overview of a larger population within which quantitative differences in the patterns of social capital have been observed in an earlier study [3]. Future studies with larger representative populations and qualitative research with a focus on specific populations and, for instance, contextual and longitudinal aspects of information sharing interactions are needed to provide additional evidence.…”

“…Even if there is no correlation between the levels of social capital in SL and RL [3], its emergence in the two environments is influenced by the presence of the other. Residents have conflicting expectations of how to behave and what to expect of the others and their behaviour.…”

“…The questions are partially based on earlier surveys on social capital by Bullen and Onyx [63] and Nood and Attema [64], and SL use by NMC and EDUCAUSE [65] and Holmberg and Huvila [66,67]. A quantitative analysis of the remaining material has been published earlier in [3].…”

vManagement: Initial Exploration of Management Practice

“…Reciprocal interactions of copresence are the foundation for development of social norms and social capital, the collection of others with whom a user interacts and the resources the user can tap into through those people (Huvila, Holberg, Ek, & Widen-Wulff, 2010). Development of social norms involves another paradoxical phenomenon in that those norms are also shaped by the world itself.…”