Association Between Douyin Usage And Bonding Social Capital

With the advent of mobile short-form video platform,taking and watching short-form video has gradually become a daily routine of netizens.Douyin,one of China's biggest short-form video platform,published 2019 Douyin Data Report,claiming that there are over 400 million daily active users of Douyin.That means about 30% of Chinese people are using Douyin every day.As a new media,short-form video has the potential to change how people participate in social interaction on the Internet and even in real life.The study adopts social capital theory as the theoretical framework and explores the association between bonding social capital and the usage of mobile short-form video platform.The research method of this study is questionnaire survey and typical sample interviewing,detailing the usage of Douyin into two dimensions,the intensity of Douyin usage and Douyin relationship maintenance behavior,and adopting the Ellison(2014)version based on Williams'(2006)ISCT scale to measure general bonding social capital and Douyin bonding social capital.The researcher distributed the questionnaires by the online questionnaire tool Wenjuanxing,acquired 411 responds,and selected 294 valid answers.The study finds out that respondents have low willingness to build social network on Douyin,which means that they are neither willing to migrate social relationships from real life nor willing to build new relationships on Douyin.However,sharing Douyin short videos and using information from Douyin is the most common way of how Douyin supports users' social interaction.The typical sample interviewing finds that Douyin attracts users to build relationship aiming at cashable social capital.Douyin constructs a platform which have the value of commercial advertisement by providing concerned parties with commercial chances.Douyin stabilizes the inner social structure by determining users' positon,formulating comprehensive rules and procedures and using the above operation strategies to attract users to fill in the determined positions.