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Social capital and social support on the web: the case of an internet mother site
Author(s) -
Drentea Patricia,
MorenCross Jennifer L.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00464.x
Subject(s) - social capital , cyberspace , the internet , sociology , descriptive statistics , set (abstract data type) , public relations , social support , virtual community , social psychology , psychology , business , political science , world wide web , social science , computer science , statistics , mathematics , programming language
Do virtual communities in cyberspace foster social capital and social support? Using participant observation and discourse analysis, we examine a mothering board on a parent's website and investigate whether social capital was present, and if so, how it was developed and used. We find three main types of communication emerge from our analysis: emotional support, instrumental support – both formal and informal, and community building/protection, all of which contribute to the creation and maintenance of social capital. Additionally, using sampling with replacement, we created a final data set of 180 mothers and report descriptive statistics to identify characteristics of those on the board.