What Does Channel Say? Understanding How Social Media Social Capital Facilitates COVID-19-Related Information-Seeking and Opinion-Expression on Two Types of Platforms: User-oriented versus Content-oriented

Abstract

Social capital (i.e., resources obtained from social relationships) facilitates informational use of media, yet how in detail the mechanism functions in a multi-platform social media environment remains underexplored. Taking an affordance approach, this study aimed to investigate the differentiated effects of social media social capital on COVID-19-related information behaviors on user-oriented and content-oriented social media (USM&CSM). It was hypothesized that information exposure on USM mediates the relationship between social capital and information-seeking intention, whereas exposure on CSM was expected to mediate the relationship between social capital and opinion expression. Web-based survey data collected among Chinese social media users (N = 256) supported the hypotheses, and in-depth interviews (N = 15) further revealed how people explored the affordances of different platforms to enjoy the information resources. Implications were discussed.