IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsoctx/v4y2014i4p753-769d43421.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Best of Both Worlds? Online Ties and the Alternating Use of Social Network Sites in the Context of Migration

Author

Listed:
  • Jens F. Binder

    (School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU, UK)

  • Alistair G. Sutcliffe

    (Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester M15 6PB, UK)

Abstract

While an ever-growing body of research is concerned with user behavior on individual social network sites (SNSs)—mostly Facebook—studies addressing an alternating use of two or more SNS are rare. Here, we investigate the relationship between alternating SNS use and social capital in the context of migration. Alternating SNS use avoids some of the problems associated with large networks located on one site; in particular the management of different social or cultural spheres. Not only does this strategy hold potential for increased social capital, it also provides a particular incentive for migrants faced with the challenge of staying in touch with back home and managing a new social environment. Two survey studies are presented that focus on the relationship between alternating SNS use and online ties in a migrant context involving Indian nationals. Study 1 looked at migration within India, whereas Study 2 compared international with domestic SNS users. In both studies, alternating SNS use added to the prediction of online network size and accounted for differences in network size found for migrant and non-migrant users. Differences were due to the number of peripheral ties, rather than core ties. Findings suggest that alternating SNS use may constitute a compensatory strategy that helps to overcome lower levels of socializing represented through a single SNS.

Suggested Citation

  • Jens F. Binder & Alistair G. Sutcliffe, 2014. "The Best of Both Worlds? Online Ties and the Alternating Use of Social Network Sites in the Context of Migration," Societies, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-17, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:4:y:2014:i:4:p:753-769:d:43421
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/4/4/753/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/4/4/753/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anonymous, 2014. "Introduction to the Issue," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 1-2, May.
    2. Mike Thelwall, 2009. "Homophily in MySpace," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(2), pages 219-231, February.
    3. Rajagopal, 2014. "The Human Factors," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Architecting Enterprise, chapter 9, pages 225-249, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Anonymous, 2014. "Introduction to the Issue," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 109-110, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hanvedes Daovisan & Thanapauge Chamaratana, 2018. "Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Assets That Influence Informal Garment Workers’ Livelihood Security in Laos," Societies, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-11, June.
    2. Sonja Utz & Nicole Muscanell, 2015. "Social Media and Social Capital: Introduction to the Special Issue," Societies, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-5, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Oghuma, Apollos Patricks & Chang, Younghoon & Libaque-Saenz, Christian Fernando & Park, Myeong-Cheol & Rho, Jae Jeung, 2015. "Benefit-confirmation model for post-adoption behavior of mobile instant messaging applications: A comparative analysis of KakaoTalk and Joyn in Korea," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 658-677.
    2. Mbugua, M. & Nzuma, J. & Muange, E. & Njuguna, M. & Jaeckering, L., 2018. "Social Networks and Household Dietary Diversity, Evidence from Smallholder Farmers in Kenya," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277341, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Troilo, Michael & Bouchet, Adrien & Urban, Timothy L. & Sutton, William A., 2016. "Perception, reality, and the adoption of business analytics: Evidence from North American professional sport organizations," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 59(PA), pages 72-83.
    4. Mbugua, Mercy & Nzuma, Jonathan, 2020. "Effect of social networks on household dietary diversity: Evidence from smallholder farmers in Kisii and Nyamira counties, Kenya," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 15(3), September.
    5. CHEN, Helen S.Y., 2020. "Designing Sustainable Humanitarian Supply Chains," OSF Preprints m82ar, Center for Open Science.
    6. Jochen Wulf, 2020. "Development of an AHP hierarchy for managing omnichannel capabilities: a design science research approach," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(1), pages 39-68, April.
    7. Maggie O’Neill & Ruth Penfold-Mounce & David Honeywell & Matt Coward-Gibbs & Harriet Crowder & Ivan Hill, 2021. "Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 26(2), pages 247-268, June.
    8. Getz, Donald & Page, Stephen J., 2016. "Progress and prospects for event tourism research," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 593-631.
    9. Schipper, Burkhard C., 2021. "Discovery and equilibrium in games with unawareness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    10. Kumar, Kaushalendra & Shukla, Ankita & Singh, Abhishek & Ram, Faujdar & Kowal, Paul, 2016. "Association between wealth and health among older adults in rural China and India," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 7(C), pages 43-52.
    11. Urša Golob & Mark A. P. Davies & Joachim Kernstock & Shaun M. Powell, 2020. "Trending topics plus future challenges and opportunities in brand management," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 27(2), pages 123-129, March.
    12. Eunae Yoo & Elliot Rabinovich & Bin Gu, 2020. "The Growth of Follower Networks on Social Media Platforms for Humanitarian Operations," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(12), pages 2696-2715, December.
    13. Ya Sun & Gongyuan Wang & Haiying Feng, 2021. "Linguistic Studies on Social Media: A Bibliometric Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, September.
    14. Winskell, Kate & Sabben, Gaëlle, 2016. "Sexual stigma and symbolic violence experienced, enacted, and counteracted in young Africans’ writing about same-sex attraction," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 143-150.
    15. Shisong Jiang, 2021. "“When Paradigms Are Out of Place”: Embracing Eclecticism in Legal Scholarship by Academic Turns," Laws, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-16, October.
    16. Florian Léon, 2022. "The elusive quest for high-growth firms in Africa: when other metrics of performance say nothing," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 225-246, January.
    17. Houshmand Masoumi, 2021. "Residential Location Choice in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo: The Importance of Commuting to Work," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-18, May.
    18. Zachary P Neal, 2017. "Well connected compared to what? Rethinking frames of reference in world city network research," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(12), pages 2859-2877, December.
    19. Tanja Lepistö & Tiina Mäkitalo-Keinonen & Tiina Valjakka, 0. "Opportunity recognition in a hub-governed network – insights from garage services," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-24.
    20. Holbig, Heike, 2015. "The Plasticity of Regions: A Social Sciences–Cultural Studies Dialogue on Asia-Related Area Studies," GIGA Working Papers 267, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:4:y:2014:i:4:p:753-769:d:43421. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.