论文标题
美国Facebook团体的地理
The Geography of Facebook Groups in the United States
论文作者
论文摘要
我们使用探索性因素分析来研究美国社会资本差异的已知社区级别模式的在线持久性。我们的分析重点是Facebook组，特别是那些倾向于连接同一地区的用户的小组。我们调查了县级既定的社会资本局部措施与在同一地区的Facebook群体中的参与模式之间的关系。我们确定了将Facebook集团参与与县区分开的四个主要因素。第一个捕获了小型私人团体，并与友谊联系着。第二个捕获了非常本地和小组。第三个捕获了非本地，大型公共团体，并具有更多的年龄混合。第四个捕获了中等大小的部分本地组。第一和第三因素与社区层面的社会资本措施相关，而第二和第四因素则无关。这些因素共同预测了离线社会资本措施，甚至控制着各县的各种人口属性。我们的分析揭示了在当地Facebook群体中既定的社会资本衡量标准与在线互动模式之间的相关模式。据我们所知，这是对离线区域社会资本与在同一地区在线社区参与模式之间关联的首次系统测试。
We use exploratory factor analysis to investigate the online persistence of known community-level patterns of social capital variance in the U.S. context. Our analysis focuses on Facebook groups, specifically those that tend to connect users in the same local area. We investigate the relationship between established, localized measures of social capital at the county level and patterns of participation in Facebook groups in the same areas. We identify four main factors that distinguish Facebook group engagement by county. The first captures small, private groups, dense with friendship connections. The second captures very local and small groups. The third captures non-local, large, public groups, with more age mixing. The fourth captures partially local groups of medium to large size. The first and third factor correlate with community level social capital measures, while the second and fourth do not. Together and individually, the factors are predictive of offline social capital measures, even controlling for various demographic attributes of the counties. Our analysis reveals striking patterns of correlation between established measures of social capital and patterns of online interaction in local Facebook groups. To our knowledge this is the first systematic test of the association between offline regional social capital and patterns of online community engagement in the same regions.
