The Effect of Facebook Use on Family Relationships - 275 Words

The Effect of Facebook Use on Family Relationships (Dissertation Sample) Content: SECTION 4. Discussion/Application/ ConclusionDiscussionFindings from the survey of Facebook users (N=364) on the role Facebook plays in relationship indicate that Facebook users engage in a variety of reasons for staying connected on the site (see the full survey results attached in Appendix A). See Table 1 below for the most common role Facebook plays in a relationship with a family member.Table 1: Common role Facebook plays in a relationship with a family member from the survey Items No. of Responses1: Facebook is a convenient way to stay in touch with (persons name). 582: Facebook keeps me up to date on (persons name)'s life. 423: Because of Facebook, I feel like I know what's going on in (persons 39name)'s life.4: Facebook makes it easy for me to keep in touch with (persons name). 245: Because of Facebook, I feel like I know what (persons name) hasbeen up to, even when we haven' t interacted in a while. 236: Facebook makes me feel closer to (persons name). 177: Facebook has positively impacted my relationship with (persons name). 158: Facebook helps me understand (persons name) better. 199: Interacting with (persons name) through Facebook makes me feel like I know him/her better. 2910: Being Facebook Friends with (persons name) has improved our relationship. 59____________________________________________________________________________Most participant`s indicated the most reasons for using Facebook is for relationship maintenance purposes. For example, one of the participants said she used the Facebook site to reconnect with old friends and keep in touch, socially surveill (through passive consumption of content), and communicate with others. Consequently, most users reasons for using the site shouldto some extentreflect relationship maintena nce identified in previous research in offline (Stafford, 2010) and online (Rabby, 2007) contexts. The findings from the survey suggest that close relationships do not benefit the most from being connected on the site; rather, those who primarily rely on Facebook to interact, those who live at a greater physical distance from each other, and weaker ties see the site as having the greatest positive impact on the quality of their relationship. In this way, while Facebook may serve a supplemental role for closer relationshipssimilar to Hampton and Wellmans (2001) findings about email more than a decade agofindings suggest the site may actually serve to enhance the quality of weaker relationships and prevent those connections from fading away completely.First, when considering Facebooks potential impact on relationship processes, researchers have recently suggested that social media contain a unique set of affordances that differentiate them from other forms of FMC (Boyd, 2010; Treem L eonardi, 2012). For example, interactions between Friends on FB may be visible to a users entire Friend network and persist long after that interaction takes placeand can be added to and updated at a later time. Furthermore, connections on these sites are formally associated through Friending, while all content users create and post are associated to their names. Consequently, the highly persistent, visible, and connected nature of interaction on FB likely impacts relationship maintenance practices; for example, in studying teens FB practices, Boyd and Marwick (2011) identified a set of strategies teens employed on Facebook and other social media sites to maintain privacy while sharing content with the public and/or their other connections on the site. Finally, when studying interactions facilitated through FBwhich are largely based on quick and convenient communication rather than the lengthy, more complex interaction patterns associated with in-depth disclosuresresearchers must be gin to expand their conceptualization of what kinds of behaviors constitute relationship maintenance. For example, Liking is the most frequently performed behavior by Facebook users (Hampton et al., 2011), most likely because of the low effort in time and cognition associated with clicking the Like button on a Friends status, link, video, or photo. Tong and Walther (2011) note that these kinds of behaviors are reminiscent of the passing of virtual tokens between two relational partners and could be comparableto some extentto engaging in a shared activity, which has long been identified as a primary form of relationship maintenance.Second, when considering relationship maintenance research broadly, studies haveconsistently relied on samples of close-tie relationships and measureslike Stafford and Canarys (1991) Relationship Maintenance Strategy Measurethat are biased towardgeographically proximate dyads. In the framework of close ties such as spouses, the focus ofmuch of the initial research, measures that assessed the extent to which partners sharedhousework and interacted with each others family made sense; however, these same measureshave continued to be applied in subsequent years, both among non-intimate dyads and in onlinesettings, raising questions about the validity of some of the items. For example, in his study ofindividuals who maintained primarily and exclusively Internet-based relationships, Wright(2004) found that a significant proportion of people listed a strategy other than one of Staffordand Canarys (1991) as the most important strategy for maintaining their relationship. With FB,these measures may be even less inappropriate, considering the average users Friend network in the U.S. contains 229 connections (Hampton et al., 2011). Considering the number ofmeaningful relationships individuals can cognitively maintain (Dunbar, 1995), this means thatthe site is potentially being used to maintain a much larger percentage of weaker ties thanstronger ties. Therefore, measures structured to reflect strong-tie relationships would seeminsufficient. Furthermore, as with any form of FMC, a benefit of Facebook is that it removesgeographic constraints to relationship maintenance; therefore, measures structured to reflectgeographic proximity would also seem insufficient.ApplicationThis term paper contributes to existing research on family and consumer science (FMC) in two important and distinct ways. First, it extends our understanding of the role social network sites such as Facebook play in relationship. Second, it directly addresses two challenges FMC researchers have faced when measuring relationshipand acknowledges that these technologies enable people to maintain a variety of relationships in new ways because of the technical structure of the sites and the lowered transaction costs to interaction. As we move forward in this area of research, it is essential that researchers acknowledge the affordances of technology and consider how individuals may be using specific features of technologywhether it is the asynchronous nature of email or the view-when-you-like component of passive consumption on social network sites to manage both close connections as well as ties that may have otherwise faded away without technology. With these factors in mind, the term paper explored the development of Facebook-specific relationship maintenance strategies: Supportive Communication, Shared Interests, Social Information Seeking, and Passive Consumption. These relationship strategies both reflect the long tradition of scholarship on relationship maintenance and acknowledge the unique ways in which relationships can be maintained through the site. While three strategies identified through this analysis are non-medium specific, the fourth, Passive Consumption, reflects behaviors almost exclusively afforded by technologyas one could argue that a person could passively consume information about another by observing them at a loca l restaurant or park (an uncertainty reduction strategy noted by Berger Bradac, 1982). Passive strategies were also identified as one of four online information-seeking strategies in research by Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon, and Sunnafrank (2002); in their work, the focus was on information that could be drawn about another through mediated channels without that persons knowledge, such as being blind-carbon copied on an email or lurking on a message board.ConclusionThis research concludes that existing research on computer mediated communication impacts relationship maintenance in two important and distinct ways. First, it extends our understanding of the role newer communication technologies such as Facebook plays in the relationship maintenance process. Second, it directly addresses two challenges computer mediated communication researchers have faced when measuring relationship maintenancethe focus on strong tie relationships and strategies requiring proximityand acknowledges tha t these technologies enable people to maintain a variety of relationships in new ways because of the technical structure of the sites and the lowered transaction costs to interaction.It is also expected that the affordances of the technology (Boyd, 2010; Treem Leonardi, 2012) enable users to engage in maintenance behaviors that were previously more difficult or not possible without the technology. Researchers have noted that Facebook reduces the temporal and spatial constraints to communication (Boyd, 2008; Rabby, ...