Management Information Systems Commons^™

Can Social Capital Be Transferred Cross The Boundary Of The Real And Virtual Worlds? An Empirical Investigation Of Twitter, Qiang Ye, Bin Fang, Wei He, J.J. Po-An Hsieh

Computer Information Systems Faculty Publications

Micro-blogs like Twitter are playing increasingly important roles in social life. Some key users of Twitter have drawn huge attention from other people. Their opinions have had significant influence on the rest of Twitter users. In other words, these people are highly reputable and have more social capital in the Twitter world. But what factors contribute to the social capital in a part of the virtual world like Twitter is still largely unknown. This paper investigates the source of social capital in the Twitter world. We identify two types of sources that influence a user’s social capital in the Twitter …