Two trends intersect in this chapter. One is the dramatic increase in Internet use since the 1990s, affecting the way people live, work, and play in the developed world. Approximately 60 percent of North American adult households are on-line, with growing percentages in other countries (Howard, Rainie, and Jones 2002; Reddick, Boucher, and Groseillers 2000). For a large proportion of the population of Internet users, Internet access is a daily activity, with more than half of Internet users reporting having been on-line “yesterday”(Howard, Rainie, and Jones 2002).

The second trend is the emergence of social capital as a useful conceptual tool to examine the vitality of a neighborhood, city, or country (Putnam 1993, 1996, 2000). Although users of the notion sometimes lack conceptual clarity (Fischer 2001), thinking in terms of social capital allows researchers and policymakers to evaluate a number of core dimensions, such as public and private community, and civic engagement. There are two complementary uses of the social capital concept: