Oldenburg’s great good places online: assessing the potential for social network sites to serve as third places

Date

2013-12

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Abstract

The third place, an environment conducive to informal socialization separate from the home or work place, has long been identified as a harbor for deliberation, information sharing, and social capital. At the same time, a decline in the presence and social contribution of the third place has been documented, along with social capital, due to social atomization, a move away from city centers, and the emergence and consumption of a variety of electronic communication technologies, most notably television and the Internet. This research addresses such concerns by identifying the presence of third place in social network sites, specifically Facebook. Using a mixed methods approach (an online ethnography and a survey) with two samples of digital natives, several conceptual characteristics of traditional third places were structurally and discursively identified in the social network site, and evidence from the ethnographic observations (N = 23) was used to inform the development of original statistical measurements of third place-ness (N = 173). Using principal components analysis to reveal the underlying factors that characterize the third place-ness of a social network site, several were found to significantly predict online and offline bridging social capital, offline bonding social capital, as well as generalized, institutional, and interpersonal trust. Ultimately, this research suggests three key points: a) even though traditional third place attendance and discursive participation is threatened, evidence indicates that similar socialization has transitioned to the social network site environment; b) ideal characteristics of traditional third places are perceived in social network sites by their users and significantly predict sociological facets of connectedness among a democratic society; and c) social discourse that is valued in traditional third places has the potential to and does emerge in social network sites, indicating an integration of the offline and the online that is finding theoretical significance in both sociological and media communications literature.

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Keywords

Third place, Social networks, Social media, Media sociology, Internet, Digital media

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