The Impact of Types of Social Capital in Social Networks on Types of Political Participation (Case Study: Citizens Aged 18 to up in Sanandaj)

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Introduction: Over the past few decades, academic attention has drawn to political participation in democratic and even non-democratic countries. Most of this academic interest is related to the concern and analysis of the eroding levels of civic engagement, the decline in voting, the erosion of public trust in democratic institutions and other symbols, including doubt, pessimism, and distrust of politicians and political parties. In addition, concerns about the erosion of political participation coincided in reality with the emergence of two completely new phenomena; first, the emergence of "unconventional forms of participation" that differ with traditional contributions and its effects in protest, and strike. It finds neither party activity nor participation in elections. The second phenomenon is the emergence of virtual social networks with positive and negative consequences for participation and political and participatory behaviors. Hence, the effect of virtual social networks and cyberspace and social relationships and interactions within this space on civil and political participation in recent years and occurrence of events such as the Arab Spring and the one-percent Movement (in the United States and Europe), are of great importance. In this regard, the present article, considering the importance of online social networking in the prominent and hidden civic and political protests and activities from the late 1980s to the present time, seeks to assess the impact of social capital on online and offline networks on participation the citizens in Sanandaj.
Material & Methods: This research is a descriptive correlational with the survey method. A hybrid questionnaire of standard questions about social capital in Williams' virtual and non-virtual space and a researcher-made questionnaire for political participation in two evident dimensions were conducted. A questionnaire based on alpha coefficients for items and formal validity, with appropriate reliability, was distributed among 400 respondents who were selected through multi-stage cluster sampling.
Discussion of Results & Conclusions: The descriptive findings of the research indicate that the average political participation was in the medium range. Although the results indicate a more appropriate and higher status of explicit political participation among Sanandaj citizens. The results of the hypothesis test and significance level have also shown that the effect of all four dimensions of social capital (Bonding and Bridging) in virtual and non-virtualization spaces on political participation has been significant. The results of this study also indicated a significant relationship between the bridging social capital and somewhat bonding social capital in the real environment with political participation. In addition, the analytical results of the study indicate the significant effect of presence in cyberspace, especially its Bridging relationships, on the forms of new political participation (latent). In contrast, the existence of real bridging social capital has had a more meaningful relationship with the apparent and conventional form of political participation.
However, the empirical results of the present study can be interpreted sociologically so that with the advent of the network society and the virtual social space, the form, content and quality of human interactions, and consequently civil and political actions, undergo remarkable changes. It is difficult and impossible to study and analyze them based on previous theoretical foundations. Hence, in civil and political actions, the term "unconventional participation" by Inglehart and other thinkers (2005, 2009) rightly emphasizes the process in which the kind of civil action from its conventional forms (including presence in parties and hardcore civil action), and the dominant aspect (although today it is only in Western societies) are new forms of civil action based on virtual communication. This is a trend that is expanding with the growth of the network community in developing countries, including Iran. Signs and examples of such a process are in the political and civil activities, in the environmental, water resources, advocacy of Iranian wildlife and clean air protection in Iran and Kurdistan, which have achieved some successes in some cases. There are also protests and strikes of the workers, truckers, marketers, writing protest letters from the guilds, unmarried gatherings, and special events based on the various congregations in different places from Persepolis to the market and the park and passage (Cyrus), among other prominent examples. The changes in the past two years have been in Iran's society and politics, and of course in Kurdistan. From this perspective, it seems that although all the changes cannot be considered by the growth of cyberspace and we explicitly spoke about the importance and positive role of cyberspace in political development and in the present case, political participation and its forms, which is likely to coincide with the growth of media and virtual social networks. A new form of social capital and a new form of trust, especially generalized trust, are shaping for the promotion and development of political participation.