Dear AoIR fellows: I am investigating the relationship between information seeking (offline), web surfing, and social capital. I would really appreciate it, if you could point me to any literature on how these three constructs are related. Specifically to information seeking and social capital: There have been some claims that information seeking is related to social capital (the direction of the relationship is still unclear). The argument being that "People who seek information, e.g., read the newspaper, and go to libraries, tend to have higher levels of political and organizational participation, as well as more postivie attitudes towards community." or "The intensity in which people engage in reading news, etc, leads to higher levels of engagement in the community. Specifically to web-surfing or net use and information seeking offline: "It is claimed that those who are interested in politics, and news in general will use the web as one more source thus extending their already existent offline reading habits." So far the only reference that I have found is: Karen E. Pettigrew &- Joan C. Durrance - "Fostering Social Capital Using the 'Net: Perceptions of Community Network Users, Information Providers and Organizers" Thanks so much for your help! -- Anabel ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anabel Quan Haase Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto -----------------------------------------------------------------------