Surfing alone? The internet and social capital: Evidence from an unforeseeable technological mistake

Bauernschuster, Stefan; Falck, Oliver; Woessmann, Ludger

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.05.007

Cited by 115 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…First, that internet users tend to maintain a larger network of weak ties, and that these ties are often activated at crucial times, such as when looking for a job or changing occupations (Boase et al, 2006). Second, that internet use also intensifies remote ties with close family members and friends, which in turn facilitate labour migration (Aker et al, 2011;Bauernschuster et al, 2011).…”

Section: Strengthening Social and Human Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connected for Development? Theory and evidence about the impact of Internet technologies on poverty alleviation

Galperín

Viecens

2017

Development Policy Review

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Based on the assumption that increased access to internet services boosts economic growth and improves the well‐being of the poor, governments in both developed and emerging regions are heavily investing in internet connectivity projects. This article reviews the existing evidence as to the impact of internet technologies on various development dimensions, and articulates the empirical evidence into an analytical framework that seeks to identify the micro‐linkages between internet adoption and poverty alleviation. The review suggests that the development pay‐offs of internet technologies are ambiguous due to two interrelated effects. First, because effective appropriation requires a range of skills as well as complementary investment in human capital and organizational changes. This tends to favour well‐educated workers and firms with more innovative capacity and access to finance. Second, because the positive effects of internet dissemination on market co‐ordination and political institutions grow exponentially with adoption levels. As a result, while the evidence indicates that advanced economies are reaping significant benefits from internet investments, the returns for less advanced economies, and in particular for the fight against poverty in these regions, remain uncertain.

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Section: Strengthening Social and Human Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connected for Development? Theory and evidence about the impact of Internet technologies on poverty alleviation

Galperín

Viecens

2017

Development Policy Review

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“…The digital divide is important because research has revealed that access to the internet may affect health and wellbeing through a wide range of different mechanisms. For example, scholars have found that increasing internet adoption may lead to job creation (Hjort and Poulsen 2019), improvements in education (Kho et al 2018), increases in international trade (Clarke and Wallsten 2006), increases in social capital (Bauernschuster et al 2014), political mobilization (Manacorda and Tesei 2016), reduced sleep (Billari et al 2018), and changes in fertility (Billari et al 2019). The World Bank devoted its 2016 World Development Report to the 'digital dividends' that may result from increasing access to the internet in the developing world (World Bank 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using an Online Sample to Estimate the Size of an Offline Population

Feehan

Cobb

2019

Demography

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Online data sources offer tremendous promise to demography and other social sciences, but researchers worry that the group of people who are represented in online data sets can be different from the general population. We show that by sampling and anonymously interviewing people who are online, researchers can learn about both people who are online and people who are offline. Our approach is based on the insight that people everywhere are connected through in-person social networks, such as kin, friendship, and contact networks. We illustrate how this insight can be used to derive an estimator for tracking the digital divide in access to the Internet, an increasingly important dimension of population inequality in the modern world. We conducted a large-scale empirical test of our approach, using an online sample to estimate Internet adoption in five countries (n ≈ 15,000). Our test embedded a randomized experiment whose results can help design future studies. Our approach could be adapted to many other settings, offering one way to overcome some of the major challenges facing demographers in the information age.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13524-019-00840-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…The first literature is that of economists and political scientists who empirically analyzed how Internet use may impact on aspects of social capital such as face-to-face interactions and well-being (e.g. [10]–[13]). Our study contributes to this literature by introducing the problem of online incivility and providing the theoretical analysis of how the evolution of offline and online interactions can impact collective welfare.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on German Socio-Economic Panel data, [13] found that having broadband Internet access at home has positive effects on individuals’ social interactions, manifesting in a higher frequency of visiting theatres, opera and exhibitions, and in a higher frequency of visiting friends. Using data on Italian municipalities, [11] found that the diffusion of broadband led, initially, to a significant decline in electoral turnout in national parliamentary elections.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Civility vs. Incivility in Online Social Interactions: An Evolutionary Approach

et al. 2016

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Evidence is growing that forms of incivility–e.g. aggressive and disrespectful behaviors, harassment, hate speech and outrageous claims–are spreading in the population of social networking sites’ (SNS) users. Online social networks such as Facebook allow users to regularly interact with known and unknown others, who can behave either politely or rudely. This leads individuals not only to learn and adopt successful strategies for using the site, but also to condition their own behavior on that of others. Using a mean field approach, we define anevolutionary game framework to analyse the dynamics of civil and uncivil ways of interaction in online social networks and their consequences for collective welfare. Agents can choose to interact with others–politely or rudely–in SNS, or to opt out from online social networks to protect themselves from incivility. We find that, when the initial share of the population of polite users reaches a critical level, civility becomes generalized if its payoff increases more than that of incivility with the spreading of politeness in online interactions. Otherwise, the spreading of self-protective behaviors to cope with online incivility can lead the economyto non-socially optimal stationary states. JEL Codes: C61, C73, D85, O33, Z13. PsycINFO Codes: 2240, 2750.

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Surfing alone? The internet and social capital: Evidence from an unforeseeable technological mistake

Cited by 115 publications

References 34 publications

Connected for Development? Theory and evidence about the impact of Internet technologies on poverty alleviation

Connected for Development? Theory and evidence about the impact of Internet technologies on poverty alleviation

Using an Online Sample to Estimate the Size of an Offline Population

Civility vs. Incivility in Online Social Interactions: An Evolutionary Approach

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