Our study investigated the interdependencies among personality, social capital, and
SNS through investigating the structure of individuals’ online social networks. Our
main finding is that the personality traits we investigated do not affect one’s social
capital directly; instead, they affect individuals’ online social network structure, which
in turn affects social capital. Reflecting on our analysis and findings, we argue that
network structure is an important mediator of social capital, and, consequently, network
structure is an important data source for HCI researchers in social systems. Our
study demonstrates one way in which network structure can be incorporated in analysis
of SNS and their usage and, furthermore, how it can be coupled with standardized
questionnaire scales. We discuss the potential of this approach and describe how the
numerous metrics developed for network structure may be used within HCI to enrich
data collected from users and user interfaces in social systems research. We believe this
approach has great and unexplored potential in further understanding users’ behavior.