9:40 Researching interaction in social media: Examining online and offline commu

nication processes in online dating and social network sites

Nicole B. Ellison
Looks at online and offline communication processes
Data collection through surveys and interviews - qual and quant
Background in communications
Done work on server level data
Thought might be more useful to highlight things she brings as an outsider
Insights from communications perspective: looking at how processes change over t
ime
Critical to really understand the online context in which online data is produce
d
Extremely exciting time for examining social media, but interpretation is critic
al
Online / Internet is a space that is fundamentally the same - does a disservice
to all the ways people are connecting / interacting on these sites
Think about user perceptions, either in surveys or reviews, very important for i
nterpreting social data
Offline activity is not evident in online data, so missing a piece of the story
Look at how offline and online communciations strategies are impacting each othe
r
Biases; measure differences between offline characteristics and online self repr
esentation
MySpace: people are encouraged to lie about place or age to protect themselves
Over arching question is focussing on communications technologies and how they s
hape and support our online activities
Papers on website
One of the main thrusts has been looking at facebook use and social capital
Does FB use play a role in allowing people to maintain and use their social capi
tal (yes)
In follow up work, unpack FB use and think about specific practices that people
are involved in and what are their social capital implications
Moving away from FB intensitity to look at ways in which people are using this s
ite
Looking at tie strength in friends and whether quantity/quality of friends make
a difference
Bowling Alone reference Robert Putnam
Two kinds - bonding social capital is associated with strong ties, emotional sup
port, provision of scarce resources
Bridging social capital - weak ties, individuals will provide you with diverse p
erspectives and novel world views and increase opportunities - SNSs allow us to
easily maintain a larger network of ties, assume these are mainly weak ties
Done a series of surveys and interviews; 5th annual FB survey this year
2007 work looked at relationship between social capital and facebook use - signi
ficantly predicted bonding social capital
Communications practices - are people using FB to maintain existing relnships, m
eet new people, or something in between
Some evidence that meeting new people is less common, and far more common use to
maintain existing ties
Wanted to investigate this further - look at practices in terms of whether more
productive than others from a social capital perspective
Diff experience in using a computer to read commercial spam to creating YouTube
videos - outcomes of specific uses
Developed series of survey items to ask users to imagine different types of peop
le and imagine how they'd interact with them online or offline
Total stranger, someone from your residence hall, close friend
Trying to get at the notion of latent tie - technically possible, not yet social
ly activated
Online tool enables you to make a connection you wouldn't otherwise make
Latent ties becomes more diluted when talking about almost 500M users on FB
There is some offline connection but you've never activated it - may recognise t
hem in passing
Also factor in three dimensions from previous work, based on those dimensions
Initiating is where you use FB to connect with strangers
Maintaining is where you have a close friend and they are also on FB, you are li
kely to do various online activities with them
Social information seeking where people try to find out additional info about so
meone that they have some kind of offline connection with, trying to figure out
something about someone, maybe to find common ground and lower barriers to commu
nication
How many total FB friends do you have at university or elsewhere - 300
How many of your total friends do you consider actual friends - 75
Predictors of bridging social capital - total number of friends, no, actual frie
nds, yes
For bonding social capital, similar result
Notion of latent ties - what's important is not the ability to connect, but to c
onnect with someone that has a relevant social context - finding something about
them that you have the ability to talk about and share common ground
User perceptions are important - a lot of offline activity is hidden
Self presentational goals in online dating - the eventual meeting will temper wh
at you will present online
Took participants into lab, weighed them, looked at age, to get ground truth on
how people are misrepresenting themselves online
Found that 81% provided deceptive information (87% males, 76% females)
Some whoppers: 3 inches, 35 pounds, 9 years
Majority of lies were 1%-5% deviation from actual self
www.msu.edu/ squiggle nellison papers