Digital Literacy and Online Social Capital

Purpose: Digital literacy fosters social advantages such as chances to interact with others and forge and develop social relationships by enabling online activities and leading to online social capital development.This study investigated the relationship between digital literacy and online social capital.Methodology: The research method is quantitative, descriptive, crosssectional, and correlational.Participants comprised 754 (520 female and 234 male) students of Tabriz universities during the months of June and August 2023, who were randomly selected from among those willing to cooperate and responded to the Digital Literacy Questionnaire (Ng, 2012) and Online Social Capital Questionnaire (Duradoni et al., 2022).Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling with SPSS version 27 and Amos Graphic version 24 software.Findings: Utilizing confirmatory factor analysis, the factorial structure of the research instruments was examined.The digital literacy questionnaire's threefactor structure and the online social capital questionnaire's two-factor structure were confirmed.The GFIs were higher than 0.9, and the RMSEA was below 0.08.The fit indices indicate that the structural model describing the relationship between digital literacy and online social capital is supported.The standard weights of the confidence and connectedness dimensions of the relationship between digital literacy and online social capital were 0.42 and 0.48, respectively (p<0.05).Conclusion: Digital literacy encompasses social, cognitive, and emotional skills in addition to technical ones.Therefore, digital literacy is multidimensional and lays the foundation for a new, constantly evolving style of online relationships and interpersonal connections.Higher levels of digital literacy and its components provide individuals with the ability and opportunity to convert their network of relationships into other forms of capital, obtain and provide support in the virtual space, and engage in emotional exchange, group leisure time, counselling, and collaboration.These competencies form the basis of online social capital.