social capital1.pdf

7/23/2019 social capital1.pdf

1/6

CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIORVolume 12, Number 1, 2009

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.DOI: 10.1089/cpb.2008.0163

Rapid Communication

Can Blogging Enhance Subjective Well-BeingThrough Self-Disclosure?

Hsiu-Chia Ko, Ph.D.1 and Feng-Yang Kuo, Ph.D.2

Abstract

Based on the self-disclosure theory and the social capital theory, this study investigates if bloggers self-dis-closure enhances their social capital and if these capitals in turn enhance perception of subjective well-being

(SWB). The results reveal that the self-disclosure of bloggers significantly and directly affects a bloggers per-ception of social integration, bonding social capital, and bridge social capital, which in turn promote bloggersSWB. It appears that as bloggers share their inner thoughts of their moods/feelings with others through writ-ing, they may gain greater social support and improve their social integration. Therefore, self-disclosure through

blogging may serve as the core of building intimate relationships. Furthermore, social capital, built throughblogging, may improve a bloggers satisfaction with his or her social contact, interpersonal communication, andoverall quality of life.

75

Introduction

THE INTERNET HAS BECOME an integral part of daily life intodays sociotechnical environment. In the view ofAmichai-Hamburger and Furnham, the Internet brings nu-

merous positive benefits to our lives, such as enhancing thequality of life and well-being of marginal groups, constitut-ing social recognition of individuals, and improving rela-tionships of intergroups.1 Liu and Kuo also discovered thatpeople may enjoy positive effects of the Internet by fulfill-ing interpersonal needs without suffering from harmful In-ternet abuse.2 Thus, proper use of the Internet can help im-prove users quality of life and enhance their perception ofwell-being.

The question concerning the effect of Internet use on well-being has become increasingly critical with the rise of Web2.0 application such as blogs. Among all types of blogs, per-sonal journals have the most user groups in Taiwan, 3 mostof them consisting of students. A personal journal reflects

the inner world of a blogger through self-disclosure, a pro-cess by which an individual shares his or her feelings,thoughts, experiences, or information with others.4 Self-dis-closure is also a process whereby an individual gains ac-quaintance or even develops intimate relationships with oth-ers.5 Therefore, self-disclosure may help bloggers to bothmaintain existing human relations and extend their humannetwork,6 both of which are considered important to peo-ples social capital.7 In addition, many studies have shown

that individuals social capital contributes positively to theirperception of well-being.810 For bloggers, it is likely that themore they disclose themselves in their blogs, the higher thesocial capital they can build and, eventually, the more well-

being they can acquire.

Based on the self-disclosure and the social capital theories,this study investigates how self-disclosure influences usersperceptions of social capital and subjective well-being.Specifically, we study how self-disclosure influences its usersin maintaining and building their social capital and how theacquired social capital influences the bloggers perception ofsubjective well-being.

Literature Review and Hypothesis Development

Self-disclosure and social capital

Self-disclosure is communicating with others using onesown information, including personal thoughts, feelings, andexperiences, for the purpose of sharing.4 According to Whee-

less and Grotz, self-disclosure consists of multiple dimen-sions, including (a) intention, (b) amount, (c) positive/neg-ative matter, (d) depth, and (e) honesty and accuracy.11

Self-disclosure is important to social integration, whichrefers to the evaluation of ones relationship quality to soci-ety and community.12 Cohen has pointed out that social in-tegration relies mainly on the diversity of relationships inwhich one participates.13 When people share their deepthoughts, such as feelings of trauma, pressure, and depres-

1Department of Information Management, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taiwan, Republic of China.2Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan, Republic of China.


2/6

TABLE

1.M

EAN,STANDARD

DEVIATION,CORRELAT

ION

COEFFICIENT,AVE,AND

CROFTHE

CONSTRUCT

AGAINST

SQUARE

ROOT

OF

AVE

Cronbachs

Self-

Social

Social

Social

Subjective

Operationaldefinition

Mean

SD

A

VE

CR

disclosure

bonding

integration

bridging

well-being

Self-disclosure21

Asecond-orderlatentvariableconsistingoftwofir

st-order

5.17

0.88

0.87

0

.76

0.87

0.8

7

constructs:honestyandaccuracy,amountandde

pth:

Honestyandaccuracy:usedtomeasurethehone

styand

accuracyof

abloggerindescribingpersonalfeelings,

emotions,b

ehaviors,orexperiences.

Amountanddepth:volumeofinformation,degreeand

completenessofintimacydisclosedinablog.

Socialbonding22

Abloggerper

ceivessocialsupportsuchascare,love,and

4.89

1.04

0.80

0

.64

0.92

0.45**

0.8

0

empathyfrom

theaudiencesandreceivesadvice,

suggestions,orfeedbackforthepurposeofproblem

solving.

Social

Abloggerper

ceivesthatheorshepossessessomet

hing

4.98

1.05

0.93

0

.68

0.94

0.38**

0.55**

0.82

integration12

similartotherelativesandfriendsinthecircleoflife,

whichconfirmsasenseofbelongingtoacertain

community

orsociety.

Socialbridging22

Abloggerper

ceivestheextensionofhumanrelatio

nsand

4.99

0.90

0.85

0

.57

0.89

0.28**

0.44**

0.41**

0.

76

theacquisitionofinformationfrom

thesourceso

ther

thanhisor

hercircle.

Subjective

Theevaluationmadebyabloggeronhisorhersocial

4.86

0.99

0.94

0

.78

0.95

0.38**

0.49**

0.51**

0.36**

0.

88

well-being23

contact,hum

anrelations,andself-satisfactionafter

blogging

**Thesignificantlevelofcorrelation

coefficientreaches0.01.AVE,averagevarianceextracted;CR,compositereliability.Bo

ld-linevaluesonthediagonalindicatethes

quarerootsofAVE.


3/6

sion, with others belonging to the same community, theymay acquire social support and improve their integrationwith society.14 Niederhoffer and Pennebaker also report thatself-disclosure by writing can produce the positive benefitsof social integration.15 The following hypothesis is thereforeformulated:

H1: The deeper self-disclosure a blogger makes, the higher

the level of social integration he or she perceives.

In addition, Putnam views social capital as consisting oftwo nonindependent categories: bonding and bridging.7 Theformer exists in groups of individuals who share tightly knit,intimate, and reciprocal relationships. These familylike,closely bonded members receive frequent interactions, andtheir relationships are voluntary, supportive, and lasting. Al-ternatively, the bridge social capital exists in people comingfrom different networks through which members can sharediversified messages and acquire resources from the outside.Because the audience interacting with bloggers includes bothexisting friends and stranger lurkers,6,16 the opportunity toenhance the bloggers bonding and bridging capital is en-

hanced. For example, Bortee has found that teenage girlsbuild and maintain their friendships by sharing theirthoughts, frustration, disappointment, and occasional de-spair with friends via blogging.16 To these blog users, blogwriting offers a way not just to maintain the offline friend-ship but also to broaden their virtual friends. Thus, the fol-lowing two hypotheses are formulated:

H2: The deeper self-disclosure a blogger makes, the greaterthe social bonding he or she perceives.

H3: The deeper self-disclosure a blogger makes, the

stronger the social bridging he or she perceives.

Social capital and subjective well-beingSubjective well-being is defined as peoples consciousness

and feelings about their lives, including pleasure perception,positive emotions, and higher satisfaction.17 Many studieshave shown that social capital may influence an individuals

health and subjective well-being. For example, Leung andLee have demonstrated a positive correlation between socialsupport and quality of living.9 This is consistent with thefinding of Contarello and Sarrica, who show a positive cor-relation between social integration and social well-being.18

The study by Sirgy also indicates that the Internet can helpusers by both strengthening connections with close friendsand increasing information accessibility related to their in-

terests and the communities to which they belong, thus con-tributing to the improvement of a users subjective well-be-ing.10 Thus, social integration, bonding, and bridging areconnected with subjective well-being. Therefore, this studyproposes these hypotheses:

H4: The higher level of social integration a blogger per-

ceives, the greater the subjective well-being he or she per-

ceives.

H5: The greater social bonding a blogger perceives, thegreater the subjective well-being he or she perceives.

H6: The stronger social bridging a blogger perceives, thegreater the subjective well-being he or she perceives.

Research Methodology

Materials and methods

This study targets the student groups that comprise themajority of journal blog users in Taiwan.3 We employed aquestionnaire to collect data, which were then analyzed us-ing structural equation modeling (SEM). All items selectedfor the constructs (see Table 1) were adapted from prior re-search to ensure content validity, the last of which consistedof 43 self-reported items. A pretest and a pilot test were alsoconducted to validate the instrument and further test the fea-sibility of this research.

Results

Demographics analysis

Data for this study were collected in a convenience sam-ple of 751 students with blogging experiences. Fifty-nine

BLOGGING, SELF-DISCLOSURE, SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING 77

(H3) 0.32***

(H2) 0.45***

(H1) 0.41***

Social Capital

Subjective Well-being

(R2 = 0.34)Self-disclosure

Social Integration

(R2= 0.17)

Social Bonding

(R2= 0.21)

Social Bridging

(R2= 0.10)

(H6) 0.11***

(H5) 0.25***

(H4) 0.34***

FIG. 1. Structural model test results. Note: ***p 0.001.


4/6

questionnaires were discarded due to missing data. In the fi-nal sample of 692 respondents, 70.91% were female, 94%were between 16 and 22 years old, 68.89% were undergrad-uate students, and 86.25% were in the personal journal cat-egory. Because our study focuses on journal blogging expe-riences, only 596 participants were used for the followingstructure model testing analysis.

Analysis of factors and validity

In this study, exploratory factor analysis was used to ex-amine the construct validity using SPSS 13.0. The extractionmethod was principal components analysis (PCA), and vari-max rotation was used to extract the components. As a re-sult, the depth and breadth of self-disclosure were mergedinto one factor, labeled extent of self-disclosure. Table 1shows that the measurements meet the reliability,19 con-verge,20 and discriminant validity20 requirements.

Structural model results

We employed the SmartPLS 2.0 to perform partial leastsquares (PLS) for model testing. As in SEM, the PLS ap-

proach allows researchers to assess measurement model pa-rameters and structural path coefficients simultaneously. Asadvised by Chin, we used a PLS bootstrapping techniquewith 500.20 Figure 1 shows the results, indicating self-dis-closure is a significant predictor of social bonding ( 0.45,

p 0.001, R2 0.21), social integration ( 0.41, p 0.001,R2 0.17), and social bridging ( 0.32, p 0.001, R20.10). This supports H1, H2, and H3. Also, the bloggers per-ception of subjective well-being is significantly predicted bytheir perception of social integration ( 0.34,p 0.001), so-cial bonding ( 0.25, p 0.001), and social bridging (0.11, p 0.01). H4, H5, and H6, are therefore supported.Overall, the research model explains 34% (R2 0.34) of thevariance in subjective well-being perceived by bloggers.

Discussion

Based on the self-disclosure theory and social capital the-ory, this study discusses how journal bloggers self-disclo-sure behavior influences their social capital and how socialcapital influences their subjective well-being in the so-ciotechnical environment. The results reveal that the self-dis-closure behavior of bloggers significantly and directly affectsa their perception of social integration, bonding social capi-tal, and bridge social capital, which in turn promote blog-gers subjective well-being.

Further analyzing the blogging experience, we find thatamong all categories of articles that have been published by

bloggers, moods/feelings expression appears most fre-quently. In addition, 93% of the participants mention thatthey express their feelings of pressure in their blogs, indi-cating they may share their inhibition, pressure, and de-pression with others in their writing. These results are con-sistent with those of Pennebakers finding that when peopleshare their inner thoughts of their moods/feelings with oth-ers through writing, they may gain greater social supportand improve their social integration.14 Moreover, self-dis-closure through blogging may serve as the core of buildingintimate relationships.5 In other words, the more the blog-gers disclose, the closer and more tightly knit they will be.

In addition, the result shows that for journal bloggers, mostaudiences come from their classmates and friends in real life(classmates 88.76%, friends 77.68%), indicating that journal

bloggers self-disclosure may help them improve existing re-lations in real life. In other words, blogging does not diminishsubstantial relations in real life but, on the contrary, helps toenhance bloggers existing relations through social bonding.

In addition, audiences interacting with bloggers include

lurking strangers (32.55%) and online friends (38.76%), sug-gesting that self-disclosure behavior can help people turn la-tent relations into weak ties and expand their social net-works. As shown in our study results, self-disclosure is apredictor of bridging social capital. Blogs may therefore be-come a viable way of seeking emotional support from oth-ers, strengthening sense of belonging, and improving inti-macy and connection with others.

Finally, our results validate that by sharing their experi-ences, thoughts, and moods through self-disclosure, theheightened social capital (social integration, social bonding,and social bridge) in turn predicts subjective well-being. Thepoint is that social capital, built through blogging, may im-prove a bloggers satisfaction with his or her social contact,

interpersonal communication, and overall quality of life.Thus, as the journal blog becomes merged into the usersdaily life, it can bring forth many positive benefits throughextension of substantial relations, building relations withothers, and emotional expression.

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.

References

1. Amichai-Hamburger Y, Furnham A. The positive Net. Com-puters in Human Behavior 2007; 23:103345.

2. Liu H, Mihalcea R. (2007) Of men, women, and computers:

data-driven gender modeling for improved user interfaces.Paper presented at the International Conference on Weblogsand Social Media.

3. MIC. (2005). Survey of Online Behaviors in Taiwan. 2005.4. Derlega VJ, Metts S, Sandra P, et al. (1993) Self-disclosure.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.5. Altman I, Taylor DA. (1973) Social penetration: the develop-

ment of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, Rinehart& Winston.

6. Baker J, Moore SM. Distress, coping, and blogging: com-paring new MySpace users by their intention to blog. Cy-

berPsychology & Behavior 2008; 11:815.7. Putnam R. (2000) Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of

American community. New York: Simon & Schuster.8. Helliwell JF. Social capital, the economy and well-being. Re-

view of Economic Performance & Social Progress 2001;4360.

9. Leung L, Lee PSN. Multiple determinants of life quality: theroles of Internet activities, use of new media, social support,and leisure activities. Telematics & Informatics 2005;22:16180.

10. Sirgy MJ, Lee D, Bae J. Developing a measure of Internetwell-being: nomological (predictive) validation. Social Indi-cators Research 2006; 78:20549.

11. Wheeless LR, Grotz J. Conceptualization and measurementof reported self-disclosure. Human Communication Re-search 1976; 2:33846.

KO AND KUO78


5/6

12. Keyes CLM. Social well-being. Social Psychology Quarterly1998; 61:12140.

13. Cohen S, Gottlieb BH, Underwood LG. (2000) Social rela-tionships and health. In Cohen S, Underwood LG, GottliebBH, eds. Social support measurement and intervention. NewYork: Oxford University Press, pp. 325.

14. Pennebaker JW. Writing about emotional experiences as atherapeutic process. American Psychological Society 1997;8:1626.

15. Niederhoffer KG, Pennebaker JW. (2002) Sharing onesstory. In Snyder CR, Lopez SJ, eds. Handbook of positive psy-chology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 57383.

16. Bortee DS. Presentation of self on the Web: an ethnographicstudy of teenage girls. Education. Communication & Infor-mation 2005; 5:2539.

17. Diener E, Lucas RE, Oishi S. (2002) Subjective well-being. InSnyder CR, Lopez SJ, eds. Handbook of positive psychology.New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 6373.

18. Contarello A, Sarrica M. ICTs, Social thinking and subjec-tive wellbeing: the Internet and its representations in every-day life. Computers in Human Behavior 2007; 23:101632.

19. Fornell C, Larcker DF. Evaluating structural equations withunobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of

Marketing Research 1981; 18:3950.

20. Chin WW. (1998) The partial least squares approach to struc-tural equation modeling. In Marcoulides GA, ed. Modernmethods for business research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp.295336.

21. Leung L. Loneliness, self-disclosure, and ICQ. CyberPsy-chology & Behavior 2002; 5:24151.

22. Williams D. On and off the Net: scales for social capital inan online era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communica-tion 2006; 11.

23. Gregg PM, Salisbury PS. Confirming and expanding the use-fulness of the Extended Satisfaction with Life Scale (ESWLS).Social Indicators Research 2001; 54:116.

Address reprint requests to:Dr. Hsiu-Chia Ko

Department of Information ManagementChaoyang University of Technology

168 Gifeng E. Rd., Wufeng, Taichung County, TaiwanRepublic of China

E-mail: [email protected]

BLOGGING, SELF-DISCLOSURE, SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING 79


6/6

social capital1.pdf

Documents

Transcript of social capital1.pdf