Study On The Relevance Between Social Game Use And Individual’s Social Capital

On the relationship between the Internet and social capital, there are two differentperspectives: one believes that the Internet will lead to the decrease of social capital,represented by Robert Putnam from Harvard University in the United States. He ispessimistic about the ability of the Internet to increase social capital or even believesthat the Internet is harmful to social capital. The other argues that the Internet will leadto an increase in social capital, represented by Barry Wellman, the Canadian scholar. Hebelieves that Internet technology can help people to strengthen the social ties, TheInternet can increase a person’s social capital, social participation and create a sense ofbelongings to a network community.μ Shih (2009) believes that social media haschanged the technology in power and control mode, and become a dispersed,participative and empowered pattern. Social media not only enhances the users· right tosay but endowed them with practice and self-recognition control. The premise ofseeking online social capital is it can cheer the individuals.In this thesis, we make social game as an independent research object, taking TheSims Social· of Q-zone for example to explore whether social game can affect the socialcapital and try to find out the correlation between social game and social capital. Thefeature of social game is that it can gather people with common interests together andprovide communication platform for their exchanging and sharing. The results showthat The Sims Social· and civic life quality are positively correlated. High involvementin The Sims Social· does not guarantee high social capital; The Sims Social·interaction function, civic life quality, and self-perception on network are positivelycorrelated. Enhance the users· interaction in The Sims Social· will help to increasesocial capital. In addition, the type and the tendency on using The Sims Social· alsohave positive impact on the accumulation of social capital.