ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the practice of how to translate a conceptual understanding of community cohesion into a mixed-methods approach that directs data collection, analysis and interpretation. It presents a discussion of membership and participation in voluntary organisations from the herper community case study. The chapter considers how the data collected within the case study illustrates its social layer, through configurations of social capital within the network. Notions of networked social capital discussed in the chapter draws on quantitative ways of indicating levels of social cohesion within a digital community, but not exclusively so. The chapter also presents qualitative data collected that demonstrates how the mediating culture of a community articulates endogenous patterns of cohesion, through themes of social activism and continuity. When exploring the notion of cohesion, the literature on community focuses our attention upon the presence of supportive relationships, organisational presence and the capacity for collective action as other ways of identifying social cohesion.
