ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS AND ITS CONTRIBUTIONS TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONALS THROUGH MAKING SOCIAL CAPITAL
Online social networks. Social Capital. Professionals. Information Technology.
The internet and online social networks have definitely transformed the way people communicate, relate and see the world. In this context, by using social medias, the individual gets great advantages to make it easier to get new contacts and new networking opportunities, creating social capital, being considered in this work as a result of these connections. Studies indicates, however, that men and women do not benefit equally from traditional networks. Although women can work on more often than men, they accumulate fewer benefits in terms of objective and subjective career outcomes. The Information Technology (IT) profession, in particular, is marked by constant changes and great demands by increasingly qualified and updated professionals, as well as extreme gender inequality. Thus, this study seeks to analyze how online social networks contribute to information technology professionals associated with the formation of social capital. The research will take place through an exploratory research with qualitative approach, using interviews with men and women who work with IT in Natal-RN to identify the key questions of the motivations and implications of using online social networks, beyond the social capital built through these networks. The technique used for data analysis will be Content Analysis and use of qualitative Atlas.ti software.