Explicating and Measuring Social Relationships in Social Capital Research

The authors examine how the construct social capital is explicated and measured by communication scholars in contemporary research and argue that linkages between concepts and measures are not always clear and operationalizations of social capital are far from uniform in empirical studies. The authors also note that the measures of social capital fall along 2 dimensions: a staticdynamic continuum and an informalformal path, which are largely ignored. The authors challenge communication scholars to reexamine the theoretical underpinnings of social capital research articulated by Pierre Bourdieu and James S. Coleman and to reconsider how the role and functions of communication might drive social capital.