Investigating the influence of offline friendship on Twitter networking behaviors

Singapore National Research Foundation under its International Research Centre @ Singapore Funding Initiativ

The Effects of Online Social Networking on Social Connectedness and Friendship Quality Among Adolescents

The emergence of social networking sites (SNSs) has led to marked shifts in the ways that individuals communicate, share, and acquire information. Present-day adolescents are the first generation to grow up with these technologies and are among the most frequent users (Shapiro & Margolin, 2014). Although the technological landscape continues to evolve, the impact it has on aspects of adolescent development remains poorly understood. This study examined the possible relationship between SNS use and perceptions of social connectedness and friendship quality in a sample of Canadian and American adolescents. A self-report questionnaire developed by the author was utilized to examine the ways participants use SNSs. The Social Connectedness Scale (Lee, Draper, & Lee, 2001) and a modified version of this scale were used to measure offline and online social connectedness. The Friendship Quality Scale (FQS; Bukowski, Hoza, & Boivin, 1994) and a modified version of this scale were used to measure aspects of offline and online friendship quality. The results showed a nonsignificant relationship between the amount of time adolescents spent on SNSs for both friendship quality and social connectedness. The ways that adolescents used SNSs (e.g., for communication or non-communication purposes) were also found to be nonsignificant in their relation to friendship quality and social connectedness. These results are likely due to the variability in the ways that participants spent their time online as well as the overlap between offline and online domains. The finding that using SNSs for communication purposes did not impact friendship quality or social connectedness is likely due to the changing nature of SNSs, which facilitates visually-based information sharing and can result in superficial communication. Limitations of the study and future directions are discussed

Facebook: Changing the face of communication research

The ubiquitous social networking site, Facebook, registered over one billion active users in 2012 and continues to grow (Facebook, 2018a). Not surprisingly, communication researchers around the world noticed this phenomenal shift in communication practice, a practice aided by a combination of digital communication tools—easy to access communication networks, low cost bandwidth, smartphones, application features, and so on. These developments transformed the understanding of “social networks,” turning them from face-to-face interactions among small groups into world spanning digital connections, from networks of business or professional associations supported by analogue or “old” communication practices (such as letter writing, telephone calls, or conference meetings) into always-on real-time tracking of people’s activities. This review examines 400 articles published between 2006 and 2017 in peer reviewed communication- related journals and listed in the EBSCO Communication Source database. The database returned the initial list of articles to a query using the single search term “Facebook.” Subsequent analysis grouped the articles into a number of themes. As we will see, much of the published research that involves Facebook addresses not Facebook itself but Facebook as a source of material or research data on more particular communication topics. In a way, Facebook appears as another medium for communication. After some introductory comments on the history and prior study of Facebook, this review will present the key themes that appear in the research. These include Facebook in theoretical perspectives, Facebook used in interpersonal communication, Facebook’s relationship to journalism, Facebook in education, Facebook in political communication, corporate and organizational use of Facebook, legal and ethical issues arising with Facebook, and other areas of research

The Association of Social Anxiety and Parenting Factors with Adolescent Use of Facebook

Computers and the Internet play a substantial role in how adolescents communicate with one another. Social networking websites, in particular, are a popular medium used by adolescents in which users can develop and maintain a large number of relationships from a single profile page. Facebook represents one of the most widely used social networking websites; however, little is known about the types of factors that are associated with the way in which adolescents use it. The present study examined the association of social anxiety and parenting with adolescent Facebook use. One hundred and sixty-two adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18 completed online questionnaires that measured social anxiety, Facebook use, and parenting factors (control, monitoring, and limit setting). In addition, 192 parents completed questionnaires concerning knowledge of their child\u27s Facebook use as well as their own monitoring and limit setting behaviors regarding Facebook. Contrary to what was hypothesized, results indicated that adolescents with moderate to high social anxiety were just as likely as those with little to no social anxiety to have an active Facebook account. In addition, both groups used Facebook to maintain existing relationships (as opposed to developing new ones) and they used it equally as much. A higher proportion of less socially anxious adolescents had more friends on their Facebook profile page, and this lends partial support for the rich get richer hypothesis in which more socially outgoing individuals are using Facebook to expand their existing large offline social network. With respect to parenting, fathers were significantly more controlling of their daughter\u27s behavior compared to their sons. In addition, mothers engaged in significantly more monitoring and limit setting of their child\u27s Facebook use compared to fathers. These results suggest that mothers may be taking a more active role in monitoring and regulating the online behavior of their children

Building and Maintaining Relationships in the Digital Age: Using Social Penetration Theory to Explore Communication through Social Networking Sites

The purpose of this research is to extend Social Penetration Theory (SPT) beyond face-to-face (FtF) relational development by taking into account the unique nature of online interpersonal interactions and self-disclosure practices. More specifically, by applying SPT to social networking sites (SNSs) for relational development and maintenance, this research seeks to test the major assumptions of the theory regarding relational development and self-disclosure. Three studies were conducted to assess SPT in relation to communication online. The first study, discussed in Chapter Three, used a combination of survey and quantitative content analysis of Facebook profiles (N = 103) to look at the depth and breadth of communication across the various stages of relationships maintained online. The second and third studies, discussed in Chapter Four, considered how variables related to communication online (audience awareness, information seeking, and privacy concerns) affected relational maintenance and dissolution. The second study utilized focus groups (N = 26) to generate reasons for why users of SNSs would end relationships online (e.g., oversharing, conflict). The third and final study used this list to survey participants (N = 312) about their own social network of choice (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram). Participants were asked to consider how the reasons generated in the second study related to their own decisions to “unfriend” or “hide” specific members of their social network, reporting on up to 10 members for each participant for a total of 3,062 cases. Participants also discussed their own information seeking and audience awareness as it related to SNS use. Altogether, these three studies highlight important variables needed to consider relational maintenance and development in a multimodal world, supporting the primary claim of SPT that in weighing the costs and rewards of self-disclosure, relational closeness is the best predictor of satisfaction

An exploratory investigation on the effects of online social networking sites on college students

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects online social networking sites have on college students, mainly the effects on their communication. A study at Rowan University was conducted using a random selection of undergraduate students. The Rowan Subject pool was used to recruit students. Although each student was in different majors, all of the students were in an introduction to psychology course. To examine the effects online social networking sites have on college students, there were two separate groups of students designed to interact with one another in two different ways. A group was instructed to communicate face-to-face on a topic and the group were audio and visually recorded. The other group was instructed to communicate through a Facebook page created by the researcher. A status was posted on the main page and the subjects were instructed to communication via Facebook. To examine communication, the number of words was counted. I hypothesized due to the increased use of online social networking sites; the group communicating through Facebook would have a higher word count than the group communicating face-to-face

Online Social Networks’ Investigations of Individuals’ Healthy and Unhealthy Lifestyle Behaviors and Social Factors Influencing Them —Three Essays

More than half of U.S. adults suffer from one or more chronic diseases, which account for 86% of total U.S. healthcare costs. Major contributors to chronic diseases are unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, which include lack of physical activity, poor nutrition, tobacco use, and drinking too much alcohol. A reduction in the prevalence of health-risk behaviors could improve individuals’ longevity and quality of life and may halt the exponential growth of healthcare costs. Prior studies in the field have acknowledged that a comprehensive understanding of health behaviors requires the examination of individual’ behaviors in supra-dyadic social networks. In recent years, the growth of online social networks and popularity of location-based services have opened new research opportunities for observational studies on individuals’ healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. The goal of this three-essay dissertation is to examine the effect of various social factors, shared images, and communities of interest on healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors of individuals. This dissertation makes novel contributions in terms of theoretical implications, data collection and analysis methods, and policy implications for promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors and inhibiting unhealthy behaviors. Essay 1 draws on a synthesis of social cognitive and social network theories to conceptualize a causal model for healthy and unhealthy behaviors. To test the conceptualized model, we developed a new method—dynamic sequential data extraction and integration—to collect and integrate data over time from Twitter and Foursquare. The captured dataset was then combined with relevant data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The final dataset has more than 32,000 individuals from all states in the United States. Using this dataset, we derived variables to measure healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors and metrics for factors representing individuals’ social support, social influence, and homophily, as well as the socioeconomic status of the communities where they live. To capture the impacts of social factors, we collected individuals’ behaviors in two separate time periods. We used zero-inflated negative binomial regression method for data analysis. The results of this study uncover factors that have significant impacts on healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. Essay 2 focuses on embedded images in self-disclosed posts related to healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. While online photo-sharing has become widely popular, and neuroscience has reported the influence of images in brain activities, to our knowledge, there is no published research on the impacts of shared photos on health-related lifestyle behaviors. This study addresses this gap and examines the moderating role of shared images and the direct impacts of their contents. We relied on social learning and multimodality theories to argue that images can attract individuals’ attention and enhance the process of observational learning in online social networks. We developed a novel method for image analysis that involves the extraction, processing, dimensionality reduction, and categorization of images. The results show that the presence of photos in self-disclosed unhealthy lifestyle behaviors positively moderates friends’ social influence. Moreover, the results indicate that the contents of shared photos influence individuals’ health-related behaviors. Essay 3 focuses on the role of personal interests in individuals’ health-related lifestyle behaviors. Prior studies have demonstrated that health promotional programs can benefit from targeting individuals based on their interests. Specifically, prior studies have emphasized the role of interests as a factor influencing behaviors. However, current literature suffers from two major gaps. First, there is no systematic and comprehensive approach to capture individuals’ interests in online social networks. Second, to our knowledge, the role of interests in individuals’ healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors as disclosed online has not been investigated. To address these gaps, we examine the role of individuals’ interests in their health-related behaviors. The theoretical foundation of this study is a synthesis of homophily and self-determination theories. We developed a novel method—the homophily-based interest detection method—that involves network simplification, network clustering, cluster labeling, and interest metrics. This method was applied to social networks of individuals in Essay 1 to measure individuals’ interests. The results show that health-related interests are associated with individuals’ healthy and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. Our findings indicate that other forms of interest, such as music taste and political views, also play a role. Moreover, our results show that belonging to healthy (unhealthy) communities of interest has an inhibitive role that prevents postings of unhealthy (healthy) behaviors