“I feel no distance with her.”: Discussing Intimacy and Social Capital on Social Media Platforms

In contrast to short lived online fame, successful Chinese Internet celebrities achieve sustained popularity, through intimacy and online social interaction with their followers. Intimacy is often implicated in what Putnam calls “bonding” social capital. To date, literature has investigated the relationships between the accumulation of social capital on social media platforms and individual psychological traits and depositions. There is a need to augment this work with a more critical, qualitative approach which recognises individual online impression management strategies and other key social and technological aspects of social media platforms. Based on an ethnographic approach, this study aims to illustrate how Internet celebrities’ self disclosure behaviors and the utilization of social media platforms enable the exchange of social capital and the formation of intimacy through online social interaction.