Social Capital, Social Networks, and the Social Web: The Case of Virtual Volunteering

Introduction

The Social Web or Web 2.0 refers to an aggregation of social interaction and collaboration technologies, including blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networking sites, photo and video sharing services, and simulated 3-D virtual worlds – a phenomenon, which has brought about a qualitative shift in the functioning of the Internet (O’Reilly, 2005). The Social Web has displayed an immense potential to create online social environments (Mikroyannidis, 2007). From a medium for information retrieval and electronic mail exchange, the World Wide Web has grown into a comprehensive platform for social interaction and collaboration with rich communicative possibilities. The Social Web has developed over the recent years through smaller decentralized initiatives worldwide. As such, the Social Web is becoming a platform for the creation of a World Volunteer Web¹ where virtual volunteers can communicate and interact with volunteer organizations and volunteer managers to explore and pursue common goals and interests. This evolution has resulted in the formation of new web-based organizations in the U.S., such as the VolunteerMatch² which aims to help prospective volunteers find suitable volunteer opportunities in their communities.

Virtual or online volunteering is the process of volunteering performed from an offsite or remote location through the use of the Internet (Cravens, 2000, 2006; Ellis & Cravens, 2000; Fussell & Setlock, 2003). Today, many national and international organizations recruit virtual volunteers to perform various tasks (Capeling-Alakija, 2001). United Nations Volunteer Programme, Amnesty International, SeniorNet, and Elder Wisdom Circle are some of the early adopters of virtual volunteering. Created as a virtual volunteering segment under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)³, a UN global development network, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV)⁴ program has been designed to connect prospective volunteers, primarily from developed countries, with non-profit organizations to assist the low development regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Cravens, 2006). UNV defines online volunteering as “a form of social behaviour, undertaken freely over the Internet, which benefits the community and society at large as well as the volunteer, and which is not driven by financial considerations.”⁵ The United Nations Volunteers program launched a website⁶ to facilitate virtual volunteering by supporting collaboration between development organizations and volunteers over the world. In 2000, in association with Cisco Systems the UNV program started a joint initiative called NetAid⁷ to utilize the power of information technology to combat poverty around the world by raising awareness among young generations (Cravens, 2006).

Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam (2000) expressed concerns that Americans are becoming detached from civic activities and community life, resulting in a loss of so-called social capital. According to Putnam, social capital stands for the value—economic, emotional, spiritual, and social—that people generate by engaging in social relationships (1995a, 1995b). Putnam considered social capital as the glue holding communities together with the power of cooperative actions. At the core of Putnam’s proposition is the notion that social capital is dictated by how networks of individuals in a community create conditions where people are inclined to do things for one another. In his seminal work, Bowling Alone, Putnam (2000) argued that social capital in America was declining and that Americans were becoming less engaged in collective and informal interactions, including volunteerism. After attributing several reasons for the decline in social capital, Putnam singled out television for its detrimental influence.