Using social capital

Face-to-face social encounters are difficult in electronic music parties. Usually there is very loud music, dancing, and an extremely festive atmosphere; frequently I am introduced to friends of friends, or meet complete strangers, on the dance floor. These introductions are for the most part incredibly brief. We exchange names and a few anecdotes and continue with the party. Rave.ca mediates these ephemeral encounters by allowing their articulation within an institutionalized place; the social network site, and more particularly, on personal profiles. Most of the comments left on my profile clearly refer to offline encounters, and most of them were left either directly before or after events that the commentator and myself were attending.

Here are three comments left on my profile:

1) “hey you! come to Passeport tonight! I am playing with Mana. my set is 2-3 =)”

(Passeport is a bar in Montreal; Mana is a dj; “playing” refers to djing, also called mixing or spinning, and “set” is the dj’s presentation, usually lasting 1-2 hours)

2) “hi! nice to meet you at CTRL FRK on Saturday with Mikael!”

(CTRL FRK is the name of an event)

3) “Hello Jess ! It's was so nice to see you friday, your energy is amazing :) See you at Psybass ! Peace”

(Psybass is the name of an event)

These comments: crystallize ephemeral social relations, create a sense of place and history, and mobilize cultural and social capital.

Comments on profiles allow the accumulation of what social network theorists are referring to as “bridging” social capital. A distinction has been drawn, for the purpose of measuring social capital, between bridging and bonding social relations. The difference between the two is not complete and the line drawn is sometimes more of a hindrance for understanding online interactions. Bridging social capital refers to casual social relations characterized by low levels of intimacy and moral obligation. Bonding social capital refers to more intimate relations like family and close friends, or more broadly, to people we feel morally obliged to and interact with on a more or less regular basis. Of course, the nature of social relations is probably better described as a spectrum than as mutually exclusive categories. The binary distinction seems to undermine the importance of bridging social capital; presumably bonding social relations are richer in social capital. I would argue that bridging and bonding are simply different, and both are vital to identity and community construction.

The ability to create a list of friends on a profile allows the articulation of complex social networks. Bonding relations create smaller and more coherent groups which are networked through bridging relations to other bonded groups. For example, a tightly knit group of friends create and promote “hardtek” electronic music events. They are linked through bridging social relations to another tightly knit group of friends who organize “psychedelic trance” events. Hardtek and psychedelic trance are hugely different styles of electronic music with significantly different cultural practices. However, as a result of bridging social capital they have succeeded in organizing events together and expanding their own cultural practices by creating pluralist electronic music festivals. Rave.ca has been an important institution for the articulation of these relations because they are made publicly accessible and tangible. By articulating bridging social relations in friend’s lists, and mobilizing them through profile comments, these relations become important community resources.