Role of Internet Dependency on Online Social Capital among Graduate Students in University of Putra Malaysia

Subject Areas : Sociological Studies of Youth

Soheila Raeisi Mobarakeh ¹ , Md Salleh Hj Hassan ²

1 - Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences, Islamic Azad University, Shoushtar Branch, Shoushtar, Iran
2 - Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Communication, University of Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Received: 2019-03-12 Accepted : 2019-03-12 Published : 2019-03-01

Keywords: Internet dependency, Understanding dependency, Orientation dependency, Online social capital,

Abstract :

This study examined to study how respondents rely on the Internet to fulfill the various life goals dimensioned into understanding, orientation and playing goals, and how this dependency relates to the generation of social capital. Further, it examined the resources of social capital in terms of bonding social capita and bridging social capital. In this study quantitative research approach was applied. To achieve the purpose of this study, the cross sectional research design was used. In this study a questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection. The population of this study is graduate science and social science students in University Putra Malaysia (UPM). One of the major assumptions that this study focuses on is that Internet understanding dependency, orientation dependency, and play dependency and news attention influenced the online social capital. The structural equation model analysis showed that use of Internet with goals of the understanding and orientation as latent constructs, were found to be significant in relationship with online social capital. The structural equation model analysis showed that use of Internet with goal of play as latent construct no positive significant relationship with social capital online.

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