Online Social Capital as Social

Providing the theoretical grounding for understanding social capital this chapter appeals to the canonical works of Bourdieu, Putnam, Coleman, and Fukuyama, before considering it then migrated to an exclusively digital domain. Prevailing issues of social capital based on economic capital and class division do not disappear in this transition, but appear to become integrated within and upon social media. The drive to quantify social capital through a competitive and interactive model making use of visible metrics such as ‘likes’ mimics capitalist accumulation while at the same time affording social media companies a means by which to further extract surplus value from users who actively seek to accumulate and manage a resource they may believe can be leveraged for other purposes. Ultimately, online social capital privileges the economic relation, masquerading behind the ‘social.’