Creating a methodological framework for measuring virtual capital

I’m glad to know there are some people following up on, and developing the notion of Virtual Capital further.  I thought I might add some more thoughts since I haven’t written on it in a while.  And just a note that this post is full of sociological jargon around the pre-established concepts of social, cultural and identity capital… if you are unfamiliar with these concepts… you probably won’t get very far.

My working definition of Virtual Capital:

A concept which tries to capture the collective social, cultural, and identity capital resources that an indivdual draws on and exchanges in their navigation of and participation in the Social Web (or Web 2.0 if you like).  The value of an individual’s virtual capital acculmulation is entirely subjective and based on the individual’s goals of Internet use in this interactive way.  It can, however, be objectified into a reasearch framework for quantified social analysis through the interrogation of its conversion into the physical world by means of economics. 

If we are, indeed, living in a Knowledge or Information Society, and our economy has shifted, or is in the process of shifting towards an information economy, where information becomes the driving object of production and consumption in Western Society… it stands to reason that in this objective economic sense, those who are most adept at the creation and exchange of information will be rewarded economically.

How Virtual Capital is converted into economic capital is perhaps the best way to theoretically approach and measure its potential value… it’s definitely how you would get funding for it anyway…   

Virtual capital can be accumulated by means of interaction and/or technical skills.  It requires knowledge of ettiquette and language (both English and Code), articulation and clarity of thought and intention through text-based platforms (which can all be thought of as forms of cultural capital); and the ability to make authentic trust connections through networking skills in both the social and economic realms of the platform (which can be thought of as forms of social capital). 

Presentation of the self online is also a very important aspect of Virtual Capital.  And with this comes issues of representation through graphics, signatures, amount of authenticity of the self, or in some cases, amount of gradiosity of an individual’s virtual identity…   These are the aspects of Virtual Capital which draw on one’s identity capital and one’s ability to translate that into the Social Web.  Using Cote’s framework of Identity Capital, this form of Virtual Capital can be either through “default” or “developmental” processes.  However, I guess that it is only those who possess the developmental types of identity capital that will be able to convert virtual capital into economic capital. 

So in terms of methodological approaches to the study of Virtual Capital, I propose that it is best studied through methods of Participatory Action Research (PAR), and I thank both Leslie Brown and Harold Jarche for suggesting this to me.  First of all you have to be able to qualitatively know the Social Web to be able to accurately measure its impact on the physical world quantitatively.  Because the culture of the Social Web is based on technology and interaction, you need both elements to be to understand it.   And secondly, it will do you no good to think that you can be an objective observer to study it.  You aren’t in the Social Web because you log onto Facebook or Twitter… you are in the Social Web when you are interacting in it. 

So, there are a few more thoughts on the topic… I have more specific examples and actual conceptualized research projects floating around in my noggin’ that I would be happy to develop for anyone who would like to give me funding for it