The Forms,Accumulation And Conversion Of Game Players' Social Capital

The rising and development of the internet has completely changed the traditional way of interpersonal communication.More and more people tend to exchange informantion,establish norms,develop friendship,trust even intimate relationship on the internet,and construct new social relations.According to Bourdieu and Putnam,relationship network,trust,social support and norms belong to the category of social capital,which are important foundations for the construction of social relaions.In the deregionalized and decentralized cyberspace,what the basic forms of social capital are,how people accumulate and convert their social capital through network interaction,and how they construct their social relaitons during the process become the main concerns of the dissertation.Taking MMORPG players for example,the dissertation studies and analyzes the forms,accumulation and conversion of their social capital on the basis of the in-depth interview and the reorganization and analysis of the material,in order to clarify the operational mechanism of social capital in the cyberspace and reveal how the players construct their social relations during the process.There are seven chapters in the dissertation.Chapter one briefly introduces the research background,research question,research significance,the main concepts and the framework of the research.The object of the study,field and method are also discussed in this chapter.Chapter two is about the literature reviews,which establish the significance of studying the forms,accumulation and conversion of social capital from the perspective of network interaction.Chapter three,four and five are the main parts of the dissertation.Chapter three describes and analyzes the forms of players' social capital,which are relational network,trust,norm and social support.Chapter four explores and analyzes the factors that affect the accumulation of social capital from the perspective of the interaction between players and the interaction between palyers and the content.The players' role-playing,interaction behaviors,the way of interaction,the immersion and their creative work in the game have profound impact on the accumulation of their social capital.Chapter five discusses the way of social capital's conversion and the factors that affect the conversion.Players can convert trust into economic capital directly,and gender strategies and the mediator effect of cultural capital also can be used in the conversion.Chapter six explores and analyzes the influence of social capital on players'engagement.Players' social capital,like relational network and trust,can inspire and encourage their engagement as well as restrain and terminate their engagement.In turn,this process will affect their social relations.Chapter seven is the conclusion.On the basis of making a conclusion,the dissertation points out that the appearance and development of the internet not only make people's interaction out of the control of time and space,but also expand their social relaitions in every aspect.The process of players forming,accumulating and converting their social capital is also the process of establishing,enriching and reproducing their social relations.