Wexploration

Months ago my boss asked the simple question, whether social capital can be measured or not? I’m pretty sure my initial thought was ‘no’ and then ‘maybe, it depends on what you mean by measuring?’

My thought was that you would never be able to measure social capital exactly the same way as you would measure for instance physical capital; by numbers or by size of amount. Let’s talk about trust. If social capital consists of the amount of trust (and reciprocity etc.) we have to ask how trust is measured? By numbers? If that’s so I would have to ask what is behind those numbers? The number of times somebody has expressed or acted an act of trust? But then I’ve to ask again, how do the researcher know what constitutes trust for the actors?

My suggestion would be to ‘measure’ how trust is experienced by the actors? Which means that if we are to measure social capital we have to put up an alternative to the way mesurement is done at the moment. And that’s probably not done very easily as it would be the same as questioning western epistomology, the basis on which modern science, western culture create knowledge; by way of numbers. Numbers make a strong argument. We believe in quantity!

A few weeks ago I came across (or my boss did. Thanks) Dean Spitzer’s presentation. In it he argues for a new way of perceiving measurement (of performance). It’s a great inspiration as my work continues. *

* More Spitzer

As I’m writing a whitepaper on social capital, social software, and methods (more to come later) I would like to point to Dmitri Williams, a scholar of Internet studies, especially game studies.

In his article from 2006 he calls for a rethinking of methods when it comes to the study of social capital in online settings as opposed to studies in off-line situations. He argues that the only question Internet studies (aimed at studying impact on relationships) have adressed so far is the question of how the Internet may affect off-line relationships instead of asking about the nature of relationships online.

He’s got a good point there, and I’m eager to investigate his suggested method, Internet Social Capital Scales, which he thinks will encompass the study of both bridging and bonding social capital online as well as off-line.