The phenomenon of social support – aid and assistance exchanged through social relationships and interpersonal transactions – has been studied for decades with a focus on discovering the mechanism that lies between support exchange and personal wellbeing. In the age of the Internet, researchers also have shifted their focus to online support exchange. However, little attention has been paid to ...

This article examines the form and function of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in terms of social engagement. Combining conclusions from media effects research informed by the communication effects literature with those from ethnographic research informed by a sociocultural perspective on cognition and learning, we present a shared theoretical framework for understanding (a) the exten...

Social shopping communities provide online platform for customers to communicate their opinions and exchange product information. In this study, we explored the factors driving customer information sharing behavior in social shopping communities. We proposed and empirically tested an integrative theoretical model of customer information sharing based on social capital theory. We adopted an empi...

What is the social capital of a European teacher? We cannot give an answer for every teacher in Europe; but we have developed some measures for teachers participating in the eTwinning portal run by European Schoolnet as a case study. Driven by the idea that teachers collaborate across the borders with the support of an electronic platform, we were able to find correlations between social networ...

Private use of online social networks is exceedingly popular. In business environments web services of such kind are not likewise exploited. Yet corporate online social networks do encourage socialization among co-workers and add value to a business. With regard to research and development such social capital gain may have immense positive effects on the innovative strength of a firm. Extended ...

social capital is a multi-faceted phenomenon in social sciences that massively affects many social fields. it can be a helpful factor in promoting health. among the groups with high burnout, nurses have always shown higher levels of burnout. studies have revealed that social capital can be an important factor affecting burnout. this study aimed to determine the extent of the effect of social ca...

I provide a typology of social capital, breaking it down into seven more fundamental forms of capital: information capital, brokerage capital, coordination and leadership capital, bridging capital, favor capital, reputation capital, and community capital. I discuss how most of these forms of social capital can be identified using different network-based measures. JEL Classification Codes: D85, ...

Academic social networking sites (SNS), such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate, seek to bring the benefits of online social networking to academics’ professional lives. Online academic social networking offers the potential to revolutionise academic publishing, foster novel collaborations, and empower academics to develop their professional identities online. However, the role that such sites pl...

How does the use of social networking sites (SNSs) affect social capital offline and online? The increasing popularity of SNSs such as Facebook (FB) implies a significant change in the way we interact with others. In an extensive longitudinal study (N = 311), carried out in Norway between 2008 2010, we examined the relationship between FB use and social capital, with a focus on interpersonal in...

We examine the relation between venture capital (VC) investments and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity around the world. We find evidence of a strong positive association between VC investments and lagged M&A activity, consistent with the hypothesis that an active M&A market provides viable exit opportunities for VC companies and therefore incentivizes them to engage in more deals. We als...