The practices of social capital in social network sites

An increasing number of studies on new media instruments and social media among such instruments are carried out. Social media, which by itself is the subject of research in various disciplines under social sciences, particularly has an important place among research topics in sociology. Within this context, impact of social media both on the individual and social levels needs to be studied under the discipline of sociology. One of the most striking indicators of such an impact that the social media might have on individual and social level is undoubtedly the social capital accumulation of individuals and societies. The fundamental question of this study therefore becomes the nature of the relationship between college students? social media practices and their social capitals, who are the top users of communication technologies in the country. Some 1254 college students from 62 state or private (foundation) universities responded to the designed survey in this regard and the collected data is analyzed. Results are confirmatory to the basic hypothesis of the study that individuals usually tend to translate their social capitals into their social networking site practices. Nevertheless, it is observed that the meaning and importance of social media environment and practices for its users could become significantly different among individuals. Because of this, it is stated in our concluding remarks that better results regarding social media and its user practices could only be produced through more in-depth studies.Keywords: New media instruments, social media, social networking sites, social capita