Use of Social Networking Sites and Gemeinschaft Tendency

Technology is generally thought to have developed the quality of our social life. However, in reality, society and its norms, structure, etc. rarely evolve in harmony with technological developments. There has often been a gap between the velocities of material and cultural advancement that might have implications for the direction of collective human life at large. Communication technology has developed in the last two decades at a rapid pace with a general assumption of progress and advancement at different levels, while facing the arguments of having destroyed human relationships and taken away the emotional attributes. Preceding a long debate, recent critiques have unveiled the romanticized early notion of improved human relations due to improved communication technology. In the current study, I will analyse the reality incorporating perspectives on social capital. Therefore, I will employ the idea of normal types in which Tönnies depiction of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft will be seen as idealised extremes of high and low social capital. This will encompass a fact-based empirical approach to observe the phenomenon from a positivist orientation to get to a strong conclusion.

Autorentext

Al Marjuk holds MSc in Social and Cultural Research from Brunel University, UK and a bachelor degree in Sociology from the University of Dhaka. He started as a Lecturer of Sociology at Asian University of Bangladesh in 2012. Currently, he is a Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB).