“Social Capital” is defined as the networks of interpersonal relationships that connect people with convergent values and aspirations, cooperation, reciprocity, and trust. Strong social capital is linked to societies of cohesion and prosperity, developed public goods and advanced democratic institutions.
Robert D. Putnam in his scientific article “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital”, Journal of Democracy, January 1995, pp. 65-78, attributed the decline of social capital, among other things, to the social fragmentation and isolation of virtual reality created by television and the internet.
“Negative Social Capital” is the human bonds that together are intended to pursue illegal or anti-social activities, to cultivate and disperse conspiracy theories, fake news, hatred, and hostility.
Social media has opened networks of free decentralised expression and communication. At the same time, however, there were also pipelines for the transfer of social toxicity.
Currently, “Negative Social Capital” is multiplied by citizens who communicate online and then meet with each other to share paranoid perceptions and enhance certainty about their fanaticism for what they like to hate.
Where they were on the sidelines, speaking for themselves in the microphone of their minds, they now have the company of thousands of escorts who have identical opinions and are on the internet, on social media, in echo chambers, multiplying the power of their voice.
They have mutual friends, follow the same “influencers”, watch similar videos, engage in digital and online lynching anyone they consider their common opponent. “Negative Social Capital” surfs the new media, has no patience for thoughtful arguments, no tolerance for people who collaborate creatively and offer in their societies.
A “Colosseum” with lions now these sarcastic commentators waiting with the keyboard in their hands to “lock” their next moving target.
