Importance of Framing the argument well | W6 Q2 | Forum

I found the Ellison reading to be most compelling because of how they framed their findings and arguments leading to the findings and discussion sections. The author’s introduction honed in on several aspects that conveyed the importance of the research. For example the literature review begins with reviewing the importance of social capital. At the time social networks were the newest big thing and researchers wanted to know the impacts of the social networking sites (SNSs). Social capital has been linked to a variety of positive social outcomes, such as better public health, lower crime rates, and more efficient financial markets (Adler &Kwon, 2002, p. 1145). The authors use the literature review to really drive the point of value for social capital and the impact of SNSs home. They did a great job of framing the work.
The authors leverage the importance and the practical impact of SNSs through the examination of social capital afforded to users by their networks and the sites themselves. Because social capital is valuable in many different aspects of community and individual functioning examining it through sites that are supposed to create it is useful and timely. The authors used validated measures of wellbeing and showed strong relationships to social capital for each type of social capital engaged. I wouldn’t use the term “definitively” but I would say that the results support to a positive relationship between facebook use and social capital formation and maintenance. Their next acknowledgement of not saying which precedes the other (p. 1161) makes my point. Indeed, Facebook does play an important role in maintaining and forming valuable social capital, but that relationship can be impacted by things not considered in the article even though they did run a thorough regression. The authors also do a good job of tying their dimensions of social capital, tools for measurement, and findings together in their discussion which helps me believe their full argument more. For example, the paragraph on pg. 1162 does a good job of reminding us of the original dimension and walking through the argument using the instruments and findings. The structure is, “Our first dimension of social capital—bridging—… Our findings suggest that certain kinds of Facebook use (articulated by our Facebook intensity items)… because it enables users to maintain such ties cheaply and easily.” I really appreciate them reminding me of the value of social capital and being able to form and sustain capital.