Social capital and communication

The definition of social capital
There is not a unified definition of social capital. The term was first used by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk in 1895. Böhm-Bawerk is a member of Austrian School of economics. He used the term as the opposite of “private capital”, apparently, which is different from its current meaning.
According to Putnam(Putnam 2001), L.J.Hannifan is the first one who uses the contemporary meaning of the term social capital, hereafter different scholars again and again rediscovered and used this concept. Among whom, Pierre Bourdieu is one of the most important people, he thought social capital as the investment paid by individuals of the ruling classes for his identity in the process of maintaining and reproducing the ruling class(Portes 2003).
James Coleman(Coleman 1988) defined the term as actor’s social structure resources, it is composed by some aspects of the social structure and will bring benefit to the actor. According to his definition, the social relationships including obligation, expectation, social network, norms and punishment, power relationship, organization established intentionally are part of the social capital. Different from other scholars, Coleman laid emphasis on social capital’s common goods property, which means that Coleman paid more attention to the collective or community rather than on the individual, because everyone cares about his own benefit and has a strong motivation to be a free rider which will lead to the collapse of the social capital of one community.
It’s Putnam who makes the concept of social capital take off in the process of its own diffusion of innovation process. He thinks the social capital as the mixture of social networks and social trust, the two elements can promote the individual’s cooperation in the process of achieving the collective goals(Putnam 2001).As a political scholar, Putnam emphasized the influence of social capital on the political participation, you can find that he gave priority to the public goods property of social capital too.
Social network analysis plays an important role in the development of the concept of social capital. The scholars who worked on social network analysis contributed a lot to the development of the concept. Granovetter distinguished the concept of weak tie and strong tie, this paved the way for classification of social capital. His weak tie theory argued that the weak network relationship is more important in the process of finding a new job than strong ties(Granovetter 1973).Burt put forward the concept structural hole(a structural hole is a relationship of non-redundancy between two contacts), the actor who occupies structural hole has more information and control advantage, on this basis, Burt defined social capital as the relationship among players.(Burt 1995).Actually the structural hole theory responds to Granovetter’s weak tie theory, a network composed by strong ties lack the structural holes, the information is not diverse and circularly flows in the closed network, so it will not take diverse information to the actor. Bian Yanjie emphasized the concept of strong tie’s function in China society where the relationship is much more important than the west(Bian 1997).
Lin Nan defined social capital as resources embedded into the network(Nan 2001). Fukuyama emphasized the concept of social trust, based on this he defined social capital as one kind of strength which is produced by the whole or part of the social trust. The social capital exists in both home and country.
The theoretical element of the concept
I generalize the theoretical focus in the table below.

types representative Core idea
Social network Granovetter Weak tie
        Burt Structural hole
        BIAN Yanjie Strong tie
Social resource Lin Nan resource
Social trust Fukuyama trust
Social class Bourdieu Maintain and reproduction of the ruling class
Public goods Coleman Public goods
        Putnam Collective property
Table 1 The classification of Social capital theory

Why the concept of social capital is essential for communication science?
The concept is important for the function of social capital: the exchange between social capital and another form of capital, its influence on other forms of capital, getting instrumental return and emotional return, it can promote public participation and social support, lessening the transaction cost, it can influence the diffusion of innovations, its negative effect.
Most of communication researches lie in the context of individual interaction which will be influenced by social capital.
SNS (social network sites) emergences as a new form of media and draw many communication researchers’ attention.
Quotation:
“Boschma is white and Lambert is African American. That they bowled together made all the difference."(Putnam 2001)

Notes: Boschma donated one of his kidneys to Lambert.

Bian, Y. 1997. Bringing strong ties back in: Indirect ties, network bridges, and job searches in China. American Sociological Review 62 (3):366-385.
Burt, R. S. 1995. Structural holes: The social structure of competition: Harvard Univ Pr.
Coleman, J. S. 1988. Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology:95-120.
Granovetter, M. S. 1973. The strength of weak ties. ajs 78 (6):1360.
Nan, L. 2001. Social capital: A theory of social structure and action. New York: Cambridge UP.
Portes, A. 2003. Social capital: its origins and applications in modern sociology.
Putnam, R. D. 2001. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community: Simon and Schuster.