The Effects Of Mobile Telephony On Social Capital For Delivery Workers In Shanghai Based On Social Capital Theory

With the rise of the platform economy,the use of mobile telephony by delivery workers is an important issue in media communication.The mobile social divison endowed them with dual roles as “rural-urban migrants” and “mobile workers”.They are facing with multiple pressures.How to improve vocational happiness and urban integration and enhance their senses of urban happiness are important issues that we should pay attention to.Based on social capital and social networking theory,we established a structural equation model.Self-report survey data from 302 delivery workers in Shanghai,China and rich field data through observations and in-depth interviews with delivery workers and managers indicate that social-oriented mobile telephony use and working-oriented mobile telephony use are both strong positively correlated with bonding social capital.While no correlations are found between both of them and bridging social capital.The study also shows strong association between needs for family affiliation and motivations for rural social relation maintenance and urban social relation initiation.Needs for city affiliation are strong associated with motivation for urban social relation initiation.Results also show both motivations are significantly related to mobile telephony use.While no correlations are found between bridging social capital and urban integration.No strong correlations are found between bonding social capital and urban integration.Communication skills and social capital are also found not related.The needs for affiliations are antecedents which can link up social relations."Media communication" occupies the main part of the social interaction of the foreigners through work and life.Mobile telephony use further blurs the boundary between work and life but also makes the home and hometown far and near.The strong and weak relationship network distinguishes the level of communication,and the strong relationship can provide substantive help.There are obstacles of the influence of social capital on urban integration.Identity has become an obstacle to their integration into the city.The “outlander” themselves brought about by the household registration system have formed different groups.The “consent” produced internally has its own cultural logic.The platform has not yet established a very reasonable and perfect guarantee system and measures to protect the rights and live of their staff in Shanghai.The bottom-level cultural production is more conservative.Under digital discipline,their confrontational logic are mostly limited to self-digestion and internal disintegration and often use daily media interactions to relieve stress and anxiety.We put forward corresponding suggestions to help the salesman better improve the delivery workers' city interaction in Shanghai.