Bonding Snapchat vs. Bridging Instagram? A Laboratory Study of the Association between Social Networking Sites and Social Capital

초록

This study builds upon existing research examining the relationship between social networking sites (SNS) use and social capital by investigating what drives the underlying reciprocal interaction. While prior investigations of the SNS-social capital relationship employed self-report methods, this study employs a laboratory-based experiment. As strong exemplars of SNS, Snapchat and Instagram, specifically, were chosen for investigative focus. A total of 161 undergraduate students from a major southeastern university in the U.S. participated in this research in exchange for extra credits. Participants were provided questions about their usage patterns, such as time spent on SNS usage in general and intensity of the assigned SNS use (Snapchat or Instagram). Then, participants were asked to log into their Snapchat or Instagram accounts and spend twenty minutes using it as they normally would, such as posting snaps and liking and browsing pictures of others. Based on the average time spent per day on Instagram and Snapchat by U.S. users, the twenty-minute experimental condition was designed. After twenty minutes, their social capital was measured Results demonstrated that participants who used Snapchat were more highly associated with bonding social capital (strongly tied relationship) than those who used Instagram. However, using Instagram did not lead participants to be more concerned with bridging social capital (weakly tied relationship) than those using Snapchat. In addition, when an individual’s social capital was examined as it existed both prior to and after using SNSs, only bonding social capital in the Snapchat condition was significantly changed. After using Snapchat, individuals’ bonding social capital became stronger than it was pre-SNS engagement. However, when individuals used Instagram, no significant difference in bridging social capital was detected. Through the laboratory experiment, the current research can provide more valid and accurate data for understanding the relations between SNS use and users’ social capital. Since it is challenging for individuals to remember or precisely describe their SNS use, several researchers have expressed the need to adopt more ideal methods to directly measure data, such as a laboratory-based study. By avoiding the validation issues that exist with self-report measures, the current research contributes to the improvement in methodological approaches to SNS research. In addition, the study found that bonding social capital can be influenced by a certain type of SNS platform (e.g., Snapchat), whereas bridging social capital was not. Hence, individuals can obtain their bridging social capital without limitation with regard to SNS type, but to obtain bonding social capital, a SNS platform that allows one to interact and develop strong social ties can be more effective than other SNS platforms. At the same time, given that social capital allows a person to make use of resources from other members in one’s networks, it can be expected that using Snapchat, which can remind users of their bonding social capital, may be more effective for brands to construct strong ties with their consumers. Therefore, the results of this research can be beneficial for brand managers creating SNS marketing plans.

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