A Narrow World, Or World Being Smaller?

Social media has already launched a storm around the world. In the praise of social media, Mark Bauerlein came up with his opinion:social media conditions a small world, a narrow space among small groups because of the social networking. But the original purpose of social networking is to make the world smaller, based on the "six degrees of separation theory, set up the connection of a huge social group-one for each human-centered. The former is a strong relationship between interactive contact, the latter containing a weak relationship between an open connection.In this study, docked the up two points of views of social capital theory, docking to bonding social capital to strong contact, bridging social capital to weak contact. Selected Sina micro-blogging as a representative of the social media, studied college students using Sina micro-blogging, to find out how they gained these two kinds of social capitals. This research also tried to finger out the factors which influence different kinds of social capital. A questionnaire survey combined online and offline was employed to collect the data. Totally 457 respondents were used for analysis.Following are the main results:1.The internet social capital from friends is significant higher than the social capital from online friends. The internet social capital from online friends is mainly bridging social capital.2.The internet social capital from friends has significant difference between male and female. Female tent to maintain close relationship with online friends and offline friends.3. The social capital low grades get from online friends is significant higher than high grades’.4. The involvement of Sina micro-blogging has significant positive correlation with the internet social capital gained from friends and online friends.5.The strength of ties between friends and online friends can positively predict the internet social capital gained from friends and online friends. 6.The use of private function can positively predict the bonding social capital from friends.7.The years of Sina micro-blogging using has significant positive correlation with the internet social capital gained from friends, but can’t predict the internet social capital from friends or online friends.