COLLABORATIVE ACTION IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: DIGITAL CAPITAL, PUBLIC DISCOURSE AND POWER NETWORKS

The article explores potential consequences of utilizing digital networks viewed as a consolidating resource for generating trust and shared values necessary to establish credible commitments though e-driven cooperative pursuits. By taking advantage of research on web-facilitated collaborative algorithms I survey their importance for stimulating user civic engagement as well as highlight the resultant digital capital creation within the informational platforms in which they are embedded. Acknowledging the relevance of communication power in contemporary network societies (Castells) it becomes especially poignant to further analyze the fragmentation of authority brought about by ICT exposure rarely evident within the more conventional concentrated hubs of socio-political discourse. Specifically, I conjecture that compared to more traditional forms of public goods creation digital capital as a pioneering form of web-based interaction breads equally novel challenges for collective gains through the use of a virtually wholly decentralized architecture. With the development of ever more elaborate ways of communicating and connecting digital media allows us to make transparent and democratize the emergence of trend-generating communities that facilitate cooperation, discourage group bias while engendering trustworthiness across all levels of the social strata. Current research, thus, pursues the goal of scrutinizing if and how modern digital networks can be considered as effective, durable tools for accumulating social capital able to accrue critical mass necessary to give momentum to and spur its users towards solving collective action problems. While certain prominent theorists (Habermas, Bourdieu) can be interpreted to suggest that modern technology has had a detrimental effect on communal cohesion leading to slanted, overly manipulative depletion of networks through which it can take root and flow, the author has a more charitable outlook on the utility of digitally produced social capital. In particular, I contend that novel communication channels based on high speed broadband connection coupled with portable, on the go mobile communication have the capacity to create a broad societal nexus of trust by maintaining and multiplying bona fide social bonds. Keywords: cooperation, collective action, virtual networks, ICT, social capital, digital capital, communication power, public sphere, fields of influence