Cultivating Social Resources on Social Network Sites: Facebook Relationship Maintenance Behaviors and Their Role in Social Capital Processes

This study explores the relationship between perceived bridging social capital and specific Facebook‐enabled communication behaviors using survey data from a sample of U.S. adults (N=614). We explore the role of a specific set of Facebook behaviors that support relationship maintenance and assess the extent to which demographic variables, time on site, total and “actual” Facebook Friends, and this new measure (Facebook Relationship Maintenance Behaviors) predict bridging social capital. Drawing upon scholarship on social capital and relationship maintenance, we discuss the role of social grooming and attention‐signaling activities in shaping perceived access to resources in one's network as measured by bridging social capital.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108031/1/jcc412078.pd

Affordances-in-practice:an ethnographic critique of social media logic and context collapse

Drawing on data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in Mardin, a medium-sized town in southeast Turkey, this article shows that social media users actively appropriate online platforms and change privacy settings in order to keep different social spheres and social groups apart. Keeping different online social contexts distinct from each other is taken for granted as a way of using social media in Mardin. By contrast, social media scholars have extensively discussed the effects of social media in terms of context collapse. The article highlights how context collapse is the result of patterns of usage within Anglo-American contexts and not the consequence of a platform's architecture or social media logic. It then suggests a theoretical refinement of affordances, and proposes the concept of affordances-in-practice

Participant Perceptions of Twitter Research Ethics

Social computing systems such as Twitter present new research sites that have provided billions of data points to researchers. However, the availability of public social media data has also presented ethical challenges. As the research community works to create ethical norms, we should be considering users’ concerns as well. With this in mind, we report on an exploratory survey of Twitter users’ perceptions of the use of tweets in research. Within our survey sample, few users were previously aware that their public tweets could be used by researchers, and the majority felt that researchers should not be able to use tweets without consent. However, we find that these attitudes are highly contextual, depending on factors such as how the research is conducted or disseminated, who is conducting it, and what the study is about. The findings of this study point to potential best practices for researchers conducting observation and analysis of public data

On violating one’s own privacy: N-adic utterances and inadvertent disclosures in online venues

Purpose: To understand the phenomena of people revealing regrettable information on the Internet, we examine who people think they’re addressing, and what they say, in the process of interacting with those not physically or temporally co-present. Design/methodology/approach: We conduct qualitative analyses of interviews with student bloggers and observations of five years’ worth of their blog posts, drawing on linguists’ concepts of indexical ground and deictics. Based on analyses of how bloggers reference their shared indexical ground and how they use deictics, we expose bloggers’ evolving awareness of their audiences, and the relationship between this awareness and their disclosures. Findings: Over time, writers and their regular audience, or “chorus,” reciprocally reveal personal information. However, since not all audience members reveal themselves in this venue, writers’ disclosures are available to those observers they are not aware of. Thus, their over-disclosure is tied to what we call the “n-adic” organization of online interaction. Specifically, and as can be seen in their linguistic cues, N-adic utterances are directed towards a non-unified audience whose invisibility makes the discloser unable to find out the exact number of participants or the time they enter or exit the interaction. Research implications: Attention to linguistic cues, such as deictics, is a compelling way to identify the shifting reference groups of ethnographic subjects interacting with physically or temporally distant others. Originality/value: We describe the social organization of interaction with undetectable others. N-adic interactions likely also happen in other on- and offline venues in which participants are obscured but can contribute anonymously.postprin

Social media for health promotion and weight management: A critical debate

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: In 2016 an estimated 1.9 billion adults world-wide were either overweight or obese. The health consequences of obesity are responsible for 2.8 million preventable deaths per year. The WHO now considers obesity as a global epidemic and recommends population-wide health promotion strategies to address this issue. Weight gain is caused by increased energy intake and physical inactivity, so treatment should focus on changes to behaviour regarding diet and physical activity. Discussion: The WHO has also recognised the importance of social resources as a valuable agent for behaviour change in health promotion. Social resources are translated at the community level as support provided by significant others such as family, partners and peers, in the form of information, material aid and encouragement. Social support has been shown to improve health and well-being, whereas social isolation has been shown to have a negative impact on health outcomes. Social support provided by peers has been shown to be a useful strategy to employ in weight management programmes. The documented increased use of ICT and social media has presented health promoters with a potentially useful medium to increase social support for weight management. Conclusion: While the use of social media for health promotion is an emerging field of investigation, preliminary research suggests that it increases participant engagement, and may provide a cost-effective tool to provide social support for individuals participating in weight management programmes. With stringent privacy protocols in place, social media may be a useful, cost-effective accompaniment to multifactorial weight management programmes. However more research is needed to identify how to make the best use of social media as health promotion tool