This study’s focus is on the following question: How do Erasmus students from the University College of Teacher Education Styria use the internet and social software before, during and after their student exchange? This primary question can be divided into two aspects:
The study was framed by the model of social capital (Bourdieu, 1983). The term social capital is used in the literature for several different concepts. Depending on the different social science disciplines such as political science, economics, and sociology, the term is used in different ways. In sociology, social capital is referred to as resources, which the player do not have themselves, but achieve as the result of a network or on the basis of relations (Bourdieu, 1983). Social capital can be seen as the value of social relationships. The prerequisite is that this network of relationships must be established first and maintained afterwards. Nan Lin (1999) highlights the advantage of such relationships. Investments by individuals to such a network support the entire network. Furthermore, the individuals expect benefits and profits from such investments. Robert Putnam (1995) describes social capital through its different characteristics on the macro-social level. He speaks of networks, norms and trust from which individuals and the society itself benefit. Mutual benefit of social capital is in the center of his analysis. Network theorists like Lin, in contrast to Putnam, state that social capital is not located on the macro-social level. She sees social capital as a resource that is embedded in social structures. The use of such social structures according to Lin includes three elements: embedding, accessibility and usability. Following Bourdieu, Franzen and Pointner highlight the network-based dimension of social capital.
The different forms of social capital are similarly differentiated in scientific literature. For this study, strong/weak ties and bridging/bonding social capital (Putnam, 1995) were relevant.
The transfer of information between people with strong ties is smaller than between people with weak ties. There is a different level of information between people with weak ties. Individuals with weak ties help to bridge the information gap between different social communities ("bridging") by using social media. Putnam developed this model based on Granovetter's idea of bridging and binding forms of social capital.
Social software in general and online social networks like Facebook in particular enables the maintenance of weak and strong ties and the development of social capital. With different tools in different communities, relationships can be formed and maintained. The ways of supporting each other has changed through social software and social online networks. Social software makes it possible to support relations without being dependent on time and place.
This qualitative study, based on the "Grounded Theory", analyzes the individual user behavior of 6 outgoing Erasmus students in the academic year 2009/2010. The sample was compiled by analyzing student E-Portfolios and student Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-competences and by balancing gender and geographical distribution. The students were interviewed between three and five months after their return. The interviews were recorded and guided with an interview manual developed using the SPSS (collecting, testing, sorting, subsume) method. Analyzing and coding the transcripts started after the first interview. The result of analyzing all data corresponds to a theoretical four-phase model.
A theoretical four-phase model was developed to show the students’ use of the internet and of social software while staying abroad. In phase 0 (pre-mobile phase), they use the internet to collect information and to prepare for their stay abroad. In phase 1 (mobile phase 1), they use it to maintain social relationships with their home country. In phase 2 (mobile phase 2), they form new social relationships in the host country and join the local Erasmus community (peer group). The post-mobile phase (phase 3) is used for developing and maintaining social relationships, or even ending them, within the Erasmus community after returning home.
References
Bourdieu, P. (1983). Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital. In R. Kreckel (Ed.), Kreckel (Trans.), Soziale Ungleichheiten (Vol. Sonderband 2). Retrieved from http://unirot.blogsport.de/images/bourdieukapital.pdf
Lin, N. (1999). Building a Network Theory of Social Capital’. Connections, (22), 28–51.
Putnam, R. D. (1995). Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital. Journal of Democracy, 65–78.
Vogl, H. (2011). Mit Facebook und Co. auf Erasmus: Eine sozialwissenschaftliche Studie über die Nutzung von Social-Software während des Erasmus-Studienaufenthaltes. Grin Verlag.
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