Social Capital to the Rescue of the Fourth Estate: A Playbook for Converting Good Will into Economic Support By James Breiner Digital media entrepreneurs o!en lack the financial capital necessary to launch and sustain their operations and appear to be unattractive investments. However, there is ample theoretical work about how businesses and organizations harness social capital through networks to secure financial capital. Also, new digital media can become attractive investments when their social impact is measured. Examples of media organizations from Europe, Asia, and the Americas show a variety of ways social capital can be activated and realized. The theory and practice o"er ways for the Fourth Estate to recover some of the influence it has lost during the digital revolution. New digital media can become attractive to investors when their social impact is measured. Examples of media organizations from Europe, Asia, and the Americas show a variety of ways social capital can be activated and realized. The theory and practice o!er ways for the Fourth Estate to recover some of the influence it has lost during the digital revolution. This paper will o!er recommendations for aspiring digital media entrepreneurs based on theory and practice. French sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu laid some of the groundwork for expanding our view of economics in his essay “The Forms of Capital” (1986). There he described how social capital and cultural capital have economic value that is o"en overlooked and not measured. Just as economic capital represents a stored value of “accumulated labor,” social and cultural capital represent an investment of time and energy by individuals and families. The economic value of this capital o"en goes unrecognized because it presents itself in the guise of friendship, kinship, language, culture, educational credentials, or professional experience, he argued. “Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition,” Bourdieu wrote (1986, para. 19). “The volume of the social capital possessed by a given agent thus depends on the size of the network of connections he can e!ectively mobilize and on the value of the capital (economic, cultural, or symbolic) possessed in his own right by each of those to whom he is connected” (1986, para. 20). When applied to media RESEARCH