Relationships. BRIAN S. BUTLER .... allowing people to select relationship partners from a much larger .... receiving venture capital, managers monitoring.
Social Media and Relationships BRIAN S. BUTLER University of Maryland, US
SABINE MATOOK University of Queensland, Australia
In an increasingly digital world, social media systems have become deeply embedded in many day-to-day relationships. A grandmother sees pictures of all her grandchildren’s activities and accomplishments, even though the family is dispersed all over the world. A college student receives a reward for referring her roommate to an online site that has an open programmer position. Videos of cats, babies, and famous (and not so famous) people are seen widely as they are shared from one person to another. Politicians face scandals when private messages and photos become public. Project team members are able to work together more effectively because they are made aware of each others’ work habits and outcomes. Young adults keep in touch with friends from high school and find new friends at college through email and Facebook. Salespeople carefully monitor who they connect to on LinkedIn to avoid being accused of stealing their firms’ clients. In each case, social media affects relationships, and in so doing significantly affects the way people work, learn, and live. Social media are a collection of technologies and applications that allow individuals to communicate, exchange information, and share digital artifacts (e.g., photos and videos) with one another, often in the context of larger groups, communities, or networks. Social media systems are very diverse. They include wikis, micro and normal blogs, online social networks for personal and professional use, virtual worlds, and online community platforms (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Social media systems can be standalone or be incorporated into larger multipurpose platforms. They can operate entirely within a single
organization or support interaction and sharing outside the context of traditional organizations. Although the nature of the underlying technologies and features of specific social media systems vary significantly, a common element of all social media systems is that they affect, and are affected by, the relationships that their users are involved in. Social media systems all support some form of interaction and information sharing, whether it is explicit interaction based on the exchange of discrete messages among identified individuals (e.g., social networking sites), or indirect interaction that takes place through the construction and discussion of shared artifacts (e.g., wikis and blogs). However, explaining the use and impact of social media systems requires recognition that interpersonal communication is not an isolated mechanical action. How a social media system is used, what information is exchanged, what communication occurs, and how that information sharing affects individuals and their behavior is inevitably shaped by the relationships that individuals have with one another. Social media use and the interactions it supports exist within the context of family relationships, work relationships, collaborations, acquaintance relationships, and friendships. Understanding the full potential, impact, and limitations of social media systems requires an analysis of how they are affected by and affect interpersonal relationships. More than simple information sharing, social media systems matter because of the ways they leverage and change relationships.
Online and Offline Relationships and Social Media There is a well-developed, interdisciplinary body of research that considers how social media enabled online relationships relate to offline relationships. As the scale and scope of the internet have grown, online relationships, or relationships in which individuals interact entirely through computer mediated communications systems such as email, have become more common. These
The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, First Edition. Edited by Robin Mansell and Peng Hwa Ang. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/9781118290743.wbiedcs097
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relationships typically are contrasted with offline relationships in which interactions between individuals occur through traditional media such as telephone or face-to-face conversation. Scholars and commentators have described three ways in which social media enabled online relationships relate to traditional, offline relationships: (1) social media systems enable new relationships by overcoming the limitations of offline relationships; (2) social media systems enable online relationships that substitute for, and thus diminish, offline relationships; and (3) social media systems enable online relationships that complement and reinforce offline relationships (Ellison et al., 2010).
Online relationships as new opportunities Much of the initial excitement about social media systems over the past several decades has stemmed from a somewhat utopian view of their potential to enable relationships that otherwise would be difficult or impossible. Through the use of social media, individuals can “meet,” befriend, and work with people in organizations and countries that would otherwise not be accessible. For example, microblogs enabled some political activities in the Middle East during the Arab Spring in 2011; and social networking sites allow individuals with rare medical conditions to receive information and support from one another. Online relationships underlie the formation of new groups and the emergence of new social links between existing communities (Ellison et al., 2010). Individuals living in geographically isolated communities can develop learning, collaborative, and social relationships outside their immediate area. Employees in distributed, multinational firms can develop the relationships they need in order to find and use expertise within the larger organization. The ability to support the formation of new relationships that bridge geographic, political, and social boundaries is a significant driver of social media’s transformative impact on organizations and society.
Online relationships as substitutes There is a longstanding, popular narrative about social media enabled online relationships substituting for, competing with, and otherwise
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R E L AT I O N S H I P S diminishing offline relationships (Wang & Wellman, 2010). For example, a commonly expressed concern is that teenagers are not developing valuable communication and social skills because they only interact through features of social media systems such as pokes, tweets, and texts. Similar concerns surface about social groups in public settings such as restaurants and parks, where the individuals in the groups are present but ignoring one another because they are focused on their mobile devices. Such anecdotes support the idea that social media enabled online relationships can displace and damage offline interaction and relationships. Research on relationship formation suggests that social media systems may increase the homogeneity of relationships with potentially negative consequences. When given a choice, individuals tend to form relationships with others who are like themselves. This tendency, known as homophily, results in relationship networks composed of people with similar attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and even appearance. In offline contexts, individuals’ choices are limited by geographic, organizational, and social constraints and, as a result, relationship networks tend to be diverse. Social media systems reduce these constraints, allowing people to select relationship partners from a much larger population. The principle of homophily suggests that when social media enabled online relationships substitute for offline relationships, people will create more homogeneous sets of relationships, a phenomenon with important implications for political news and information sharing networks. Questions have also been raised about the quality of online relationships when they substitute for offline relationships. In some regards, online relationships are direct substitutes for offline relationships. Communication with a colocated friend and interaction with a friend who is halfway around the world are, at some level, just two competing ways for individuals to spend their time and energy. Individuals routinely make such choices and choose the relationship that they value and benefit from more. However, while online and offline relationships seem to be direct substitutes, differences between the media introduce subtle differences in the relationships that individuals may not take into account. Social media enabled online relationships may seem like
SOCIAL MEDIA the more efficient way to find and form friendships, but those relationships can be insufficient if physical touch or intensive persuasion are necessary. Similarly, social media systems may enable long-distance collaborations, but participants often find that those relations are more fragile, leading to problems when crises arise and needs change. As a consequence, social media enabled online relationships are often imperfect substitutes for offline relationships, and when individuals fail to take the differences into account unexpected negative outcomes can emerge. The possibility of online relationships replacing offline relationships is a second, more ambivalent or dystopic factor in social media’s transformative impact on organizations and society.
Online relationships as complements Although there are contexts in which social media systems enable new and/or substitute for offline relationships, it is most common for online relationships to complement offline ones (Wang & Wellman, 2010). Early studies of online communities, email, and discussion forums in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that social media enabled online relationships were poor substitutes, associated with dysfunctional interaction behaviors (e.g., flaming), loss of identity cues, weaker relationships with family members living in the same household, smaller social circles, and higher levels of depression and loneliness. However, subsequent studies have found little evidence for these negative substitution effects, and instead showed that there are many ways in which online and offline relationships complement one another. As individuals increase their use of social media systems, they tend to have more contact with their friends and family members, resulting in larger and more diverse social networks. Greater use of social networking sites and larger online social networks is associated with having more social ties and higher levels of social interaction offline. These spillover effects occur because social media systems are used to arrange, coordinate, and follow up on offline meetings and social events. Relationships formed online are often continued offline as they develop. While there may be contexts in which online and offline relationships function either
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independently or as competing substitutes, in most cases they act as complements. Existing offline relationships affect the way individuals use social media systems and how online relationships can enhance and support offline ones. The complementarity of online and offline relationships means that social media systems are subject to a “rich-get-richer” phenomenon. Individuals with stronger, more diverse, more extensive relationships offline are able to use social media systems to maintain and add to those relationships online, while those with weaker, less diverse, smaller social circles receive less relational benefit from the use of social media (Kraut et al., 2002). The capability of social media enabled online relationships to complement offline relationships is a third basis for social media’s transformative impact on organizations and society. While a strong distinction could be made between online and offline relationships, as social media have become more widely available, more powerful, and more generally accepted, this dichotomy has become problematic for both theory and practice (Wang & Wellman, 2010). As the number and diversity of relationships supported by and affected by social media systems have grown, it has become unclear what it means to talk about online relationships as a category or type. At the same time, media convergence, emergence of mobile technologies, and broad availability of social media systems have reduced the barriers that led individuals to distinguish between online and offline relationships. Phone conversations, tweets, texts, pokes, shares, likes, chats, and emails are routinely used by individuals to set up meetings, arrange dates, continue conversations, and even interact with people who are physically co-present. Thus it becomes increasingly difficult to make a distinction between online and offline relationships in both practical and conceptual terms. Whereas some useful insights have arisen from examination of relationships in terms of their “location,” it is an increasingly problematic way of understanding social media systems and relationships.
Social Media and Types of Relationships Individuals use social media systems in the context of many different relationships. Friends
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exchange pictures and videos clips. Consumers interact with one another and with representatives of the organizations providing products and services. Research collaborators plan and execute projects. Family members share news of accomplishments and significant life events. In each case, the basic capability of social media systems to support communication, information exchange, and sharing of digital artifacts is appropriated by individuals in support of their relationships.
Friendships Friendships are a common type of relationship that are found among individuals of all ages, cultures, and social contexts. These relationships, which include acquaintances, casual friends, and close friends, are voluntary and reciprocal relationships in which partners respond to each other personally and show communal caring. Individuals gain a variety of benefits through friendships, including ego support, self-affirmation, security, utility, and stimulation (Wright, 1984). Friendship relationships provide attachment, companionship, help, and emotional support. Friendships vary in intensity, and the closeness among friends is often used as a measure of relationship strength. Social media systems have a variety of affordances that support friendship relationships. Social networking sites, a class of social media systems specifically designed to support relationship management, allow individuals to create rich personal profiles, identify relationship partners, interact with one another, and traverse relational links in a variety of ways (Ellison et al., 2010). Each of these activities supports the creation and maintenance of friendship relationships. Most notably, social media systems support several forms of reciprocity, a central feature of friendship relationships. At their core, friendships are bi-directional relationships in which the parties must both voluntarily and actively choose to participate. Social media systems offer a variety of ways for individuals to enact reciprocity. In some cases, such as Facebook, recognition of a relationship within the system requires explicit acknowledgment by both relationship partners. In others, such as Twitter, mutual acknowledgment is possible, but not required. Similarly,
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R E L AT I O N S H I P S when individuals share messages, images, or information, social media systems encourage recipients to respond with action such as likes, accepts, comments, and replies, each of which is a form of acknowledgment and reciprocity that supports and strengthens the relationship. Repeatedly performing these reciprocating behaviors allows friendships to be maintained, and even become closer, over time. The voluntary, reciprocal nature of friendships in social media systems also results in them being characterized by relative equality in power and status. On average a user has in his or her network relationship partners that are of the same status and who cannot make imposing demands. In situations when imbalanced relationships emerge among mainly friendship relationships, then a change in behavior is observable, such as decreased levels of self-disclosure or, in extreme circumstances, dissolution of the relationships. It has sometimes been argued that friendships that only exist in social media systems are less satisfactory than those that are maintained through both online and face-to-face interactions (Kraut et al., 2002). This suggests that hybrid friendships should dominate, with purely online and purely offline relationships becoming less common over time. While a hybrid approach to friendships may be a superior way to maintain and to strengthen a friendship between two individuals, individuals may also maintain a portfolio of relationships consisting of a number of different friendships that satisfy different social needs. Thus purely social media enabled friendships may be well suited for social and emotional support. Text based features of social media systems facilitate postings where friends can articulate their congratulations, encouragements, and best wishes as an easy-to-use possibility for giving support. Whether selecting among or combining different media, individuals have a steadily increasing collection of options when it comes to maintaining relationships with their friends.
Kinship relationships Kinship relationships are the relationships that individuals have with members of their family by virtue of birth, marriage, or adoption. At one level, these relationships are different from
SOCIAL MEDIA friendships because they are often not voluntary or reciprocal. Except in the case of some marriages, an individual is related to other members of their family because of someone else’s choice, not their own. Relationships among family members are also subject to status differences, social norms, and expectations that make kinship relationships nonreciprocal. In spite of these differences, however, kinship relationships have elements that are similar to friendships and other relationships. Like friendships, kinship relationships are enacted through exchanges and interactions. Exchanging gifts, sharing information, and maintaining an awareness of the activities of others are important behaviors in kinship relationships. Although there may be social norms about these behaviors, how much an individual chooses to engage in relational activities with particular family members is voluntary. As a result, the frequency with which these activities occur reflects the closeness, strength, and importance of the kinship relationship for the individuals involved. The nature of kinship relationships means that social media systems have distinct effects on kinship and family relationships. In cases of marriage, dating, and romantic relationships, which in many cultures blend the features of friendship and kinship, social media systems play an increasingly significant role. Online dating, in which individuals discover, evaluate, and interact with one another through both formal services and informal social contacts, is an increasingly common phenomenon. In these relationships, issues of how individuals present themselves and how people form impressions of one another come to the fore. Social media systems’ features for creating rich personal profiles both support the formation of long-term relationships and provide opportunities for deceptive self-presentation. Social media systems also affect kinship and family relationships because they provide additional means for individuals to share information and communicate with one another. Social networking sites, photo sharing platforms, and group communications technologies all allow family members to remain connected with one another across distance, time, and national boundaries. Parents can monitor children’s behavior and activities, even after they leave home. Older
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family members can continue to interact with others even after their ability to travel becomes impaired. Individuals who share only minimal kinship ties can find one another through online genealogical communities and develop those otherwise latent relationships. Within the context of otherwise nonvoluntary kinship relationships, social media systems allow individuals to share information and communicate with one another in ways that strengthen those relationships.
Professional relationships Relationships are also a critical aspect of how people and organizations work and collaborate. Job seekers learning about employment opportunities, entrepreneurs discovering and receiving venture capital, managers monitoring and influencing activities in their organization, and team members coordinating their collaborative efforts – all of these activities rely, in part, on professional and collaborative relationships. As with friendships, professional relationships vary with respect to their strength. Although professional relationships typically lack the emotional component of friendships, they differ in terms of frequency and diversity of interaction. At one extreme, strong professional relationships, such as might exist between close colleagues, involve frequent interactions and cover a wide range of topics. These strong relationships, which evoke trust and interdependence, can be critical for resolving problems when individuals and organizations face crises and internal conflict. While strong professional ties are important, individuals typically have many more work relationships that are based on infrequent interaction and minimal dependence. Yet, in spite of their limitations, weak ties are critical to individuals’ ability to succeed in work settings. For example, studies of the effectiveness of word-of-mouth influence have found that strong ties with friends, family, and close confidants are more influential than weak ties when sensitive information is shared within groups, while the reverse is true for general information sharing across groups (Smith et al., 2007). Weak ties are valuable sources of exploratory information, whereas close relationships are essential to mobilize resources and support. Together, the strong and weak relationships that individuals have in the workplace play
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a significant role in shaping their information, opportunities, and influence. A variety of social media systems have been developed to facilitate professional relationships. General professional networking systems, the most prominent of which is LinkedIn, provide a platform for individuals to track and leverage their relationships with professional colleagues and contacts. Within particular contexts, such as scientific research and specialist communities, domain specific networking systems have been created to help individuals discover partners, collaborators, and coauthors. Large organizations often implement social media systems to promote the formation and use of relationships among employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. One of the most significant unanticipated consequences of social media systems for professional relationships is the blurring of boundaries between social contexts. Family, friends, and colleagues are roles that often exist largely within separate social spheres. When possible, individuals manage their relationships with friends, family, and work colleagues in ways that assume that the individuals from the different spheres will not be interacting, or even be aware of each other. However, social media systems, such as Twitter or Facebook, have the effect of bringing these relationships (and individuals) together. As a result, on social networking sites, boundaries between individuals’ private and professional relationships are blurred. In analyzing the composition of individuals’ Facebook contacts, Manago, Taylor, and Greenfield (2012) found that the majority were acquaintances (27%), followed by coworkers and teammates with 24%; close contacts such as best friends and romantic partners made up 24%; and only 18% of contacts came from the user’s past, such as high school friends. This blurring of boundaries, known as context collapse, means that relationships that previously could be treated as independent become interdependent. Information and behavior that might have been treated as semiprivate potentially become semipublic. As social media systems have proliferated, boundaries between work and personal life that could previously be relied upon have, for many people, become permeable and, sometimes, even disappeared. The incorporation of social
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R E L AT I O N S H I P S media systems within the workplace has begun to change both professional relationships and the relationship between employees and employers in ways that researchers have only begun to understand.
Consumer relationships Another context in which social media systems affect critical relationships is retail marketing and commerce. At one level, retail commerce involves economic transactions that take place between consumers who provide financial resources in exchange for products or services provided by producers. While this type of exchange can be thought of as being only a transactional, economic relationship, doing so potentially ignores other, more social, aspects of relationships that affect the functioning of consumer marketplaces. Individual consumers develop relationships with producers that go beyond basic economic exchanges (Granovetter, 1985). Individual consumers exhibit loyalty and trust in producers; they interact with them, and often declare themselves as being affiliated with individual producers and companies that they do business with. In addition to producer–consumer relationships, consumer–consumer relationships also play a significant role in retail commerce. For many purchases, consumers rely on their relationships with one another to learn about products, services, and providers. This information sharing, referred to as word of mouth, is an important factor in many purchase decisions. Thus, while retail commerce may appear to consist of relatively mechanical, economic transactions, it is in fact a set of activities that are both embedded in and enacted through a complex web of social relationships. As with friendships, kinship, and professional relationships, social media systems have a variety of implications for consumer relationships. Social media systems are used in both consumer–producer and consumer–consumer relationships. Consumer–producer relationships are realized in social media systems when individuals take actions that associate them with specific product or service providers, such as when a consumer adds a company as a Facebook friend or signs up for a company’s online community. Features of social media systems simplify the
SOCIAL MEDIA formation of consumer–producer relationships. Facebook’s “Like” button allows consumers to establish affiliation and communication with a company with a single click. Producers benefit from being added to a consumer’s Facebook friends list because of the implicit endorsement and visibility they receive when the affiliation is communicated to others in the person’s social network. Social media marketing seeks to develop and leverage these relationships in order to influence purchasing decisions. The widespread adoption of social media systems has led many organizations to change their marketing efforts, shifting from broadcasts through mass media to relationship oriented use of social media. Word of mouth, or consumer-toconsumer communication about products and service experiences, has significantly increased in importance. Word-of-mouth marketing employs professional marketing techniques to actively shape how individual consumers use their relationships to share and acquire information about products and services (Kozinets et al., 2010). Close friends on Facebook, other Facebook contacts, third-party blogs, and independent review sites have all been identified as important sources of trustworthy information (Harris & Dennis, 2011). Less trusted are celebrities with independent voices and information provided by retailers or producers. These sources are suspect because consumers assume that the other parties have a strong self-interest to promote the product and highlight its benefits. This ranking of social media information sources mirrors the different types of relationships an individual might have – ranging from very close relationships to very loosely connected relationships. Individuals who are known by a consumer, with whom they interact frequently, and who they perceive as nonbiased are more trusted to provide information and recommendations than sources such as salespeople, celebrity spokespeople, or company websites. Social network analysis and social media systems allow companies to identify the most influential individuals in large networks (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Information about relationships captured in social media systems enables producers to identify relationships that bridge otherwise dispersed networks. These ties, which cross structural holes, can provide a firm access
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to otherwise closed networks of potential customers (Burt, 1992). Starbucks, a pioneer and leader of effective social media use, has three customer dialogue management strategies which rely on these social media systems and consumer relationships: megaphone, magnet, and monitor (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010). A megaphone activity involves Starbucks in sharing information directly with its customers via Twitter (3.5 million followers), YouTube (Starbucks has its own YouTube channel), or Facebook. These actions strengthen its brand name and spread timecritical information. The magnet strategy uses the same systems and relies on consumer–producer relationships, but operates in the opposite direction, with customers sharing information with Starbucks. This inbound communication is used by the firm both to capture customer feedback and to identify potential innovations, such as new drinks or flavors. Using social media systems for megaphone and magnet activities allows Starbucks to enhance and leverage existing consumer–producer relationships. Monitor activities involve using social media systems to observe consumer–consumer interactions that are relevant for Starbucks, such as customer reviews posted at Yelp. The observer role gives Starbucks a knowledge advantage that increases the chances that the marketing messages it designs will be shared by word of mouth (i.e., “go viral”). By monitoring social media based communications among consumers, Starbucks also gains insights into trends and gathers market intelligence. These three strategies, and the benefits Starbuck receives from them, illustrate the different ways that organizations can use social media systems to support and realize benefits from consumer–producer and consumer–consumer relationships. Scholars, advertisers, and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics, and viral marketing. But the linked structures of social networks do not necessarily reveal actual interactions or meaningful relationships among people. For example, within Twitter, the driver of real usage is not raw follower counts, but rather a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the publicly declared set of friends and followers. Scarcity of attention and the daily rhythms of life and work lead people to interact
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with a small number of people who matter and reciprocate their attention. Another way that social media systems alter the relationships between firms and their consumers is by allowing the relationship to shift from being based purely on two complementary roles (producer and consumer) to one in which at least some individuals participate as co-producers. Companies increasingly seek to establish relationships with individuals in which consumers take more active roles in coproducing innovations, value, and meaning. Beyond simply soliciting ideas from customers, crowdsourcing and open innovation are the practice of involving individuals in problem solving and idea-generation processes which traditionally were performed entirely in-house (Howe, 2008). Through social media based crowdsourcing platforms, such as 99designs, iStockphoto, and Crowdspring, companies create knowledge intensive relationships focused on formal exchange of ideas for money, recognition, and other forms of motivation. By allowing individuals to learn about and participate in problem solving and innovation processes, social media systems have the potential to alter the role of individuals in consumer relationships from that of relatively passive participants to that of active creators. Friendships, kinship, professional relationships, consumer relationships, and co-production relationships – each type of relationship affects and is affected by social media in different ways. The affordances that social media systems provide allow individuals and organizations to create profiles, exchange information, make associations, and see the ties that others have created and maintained. As described above, how these capabilities are used and the impact they have depend on the objectives, expectations, and nature of each type of relationship. Yet examination of different types of relationships reveals an additional way that social media systems can affect relationships: They can redefine them. Facebook allows users to identify “friends.” LinkedIn asks people to identify “classmates” and “colleagues.” Twitter users become and acquire “followers.” On the one hand, these are simple labels, which signal to users when and how to use the social media systems. On the other hand, when the use of a particular system, such as Facebook, becomes
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R E L AT I O N S H I P S widespread, it can result in the development of an alternative relationship type with its own expectations, norms, and structures (i.e., real friends vs. “Facebook friends”). As a result, the examination of the interplay of relationship and social media systems in terms of relationship types, while powerful, must be exercised with caution to avoid misrepresentation and misunderstanding.
Social Media and Relationship Dynamics A social relationship exists when two entities have interactions with and expectations for each other over a substantial length of time. While it is possible to consider relationships as static phenomena, in reality relationships are dynamic. Relationships form, develop, and end. Characteristics of relationships that transcend the different stages may still vary in intensity, visibility, and importance over time. Changes within relationships can be deliberately initiated by participants or happen by chance. Thus understanding social media and relationships requires a consideration of how they interact at the different stages of relationship evolution.
Relationship formation The formation of a relationship depends on a number of factors including proximity, first impressions, similarity, and complementarity (Dwyer, 2000). The online environment of social media increases or decreases the relevance of some of these factors. Physical proximity is less important because social media systems allow individuals to be physically separated and still frequently interact. Indeed, Facebook is praised for its ability to rekindle relationships between school peers or childhood friends who have moved apart. However, while social media reduce the importance of physical proximity as a factor in relationship formation, they can introduce new functional or communication barriers. Boundaries between social media systems, whether they arise because of corporate structure, technology features, or national policies, all make it less likely that a relationship will form between two individuals using different social media systems. For example, in China the social networking site Facebook is blocked. This policy results in a
SOCIAL MEDIA strong boundary between Facebook and other Chinese oriented social networking sites such as RenRen. Integration between social networking sites can facilitate the formation of relationships among individuals from the different user populations, but corporate strategy and technology limitations can prevent these bridges from being created. Just as physical proximity is an important enabler for traditional relationships, in the landscape of social media systems, media proximity that allows individuals to encounter and interact with one another plays an important role in the formation of social media enabled relationships. First impressions, often based on physical appearance, are another significant factor in faceto-face interaction that impacts on the extent to which individuals want to form relationships with one another. Early discussions of text based social media systems operated from the assumption that the absence of visual cues would reduce, or even eliminate, the impact of appearance on relationship formation. However, Walther’s (1992) social information processing theory argued that people needed more time to reduce the uncertainty about the potential relationship partner because limited cues are available. To counterbalance the vacuum created by the lack of visual cues, individuals add various personal details to their profiles. When individuals decide about forming relationships based on online interactions, these personal profiles are used to form impressions of the potential relationship partner and allow for affection and liking to manifest. Furthermore, social media systems with multimedia capabilities allow individuals to attach photos and videos to their online profiles, re-emphasizing appearance as a factor in relationship dynamics. However, even with the advent of multimedia profiles, it remains the case that social media systems differ from face-to-face contexts in that they allow individuals much finer grained control of what they wish to reveal about themselves. An abstract factor that affects the formation of relationships is the fit between the interests, skills, and resources of the participants. Homophily, or attraction of similar individuals, is a strong tendency in the formation of relationships. Whether it is based on surface characteristics, such as race, gender, or ethnicity, or deep characteristics, such as values and beliefs, individuals often seek
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out and form relationships with others who are like themselves. However, homophily is counterbalanced by a need for complementarity. Because exchanges play a significant role, viable relationships often involve individuals whose interests, capabilities, and needs complement one another. Together the two tendencies of homophily and complementarity are significant factors in the formation of relationships. Whether homophily or complementarity dominates depends on the nature of the relationship. Resource and need complementarity is a greater concern in the formation of utility oriented relationships, such as professional affiliations or work related collaborations. Sites such as LinkedIn provide recommendations, discussions of job openings, searches for information, and introductions to otherwise unreachable individuals all based on complementarity in order to support the formation of professional relationships. In social media systems, such as Facebook, that focus less on utilitarian, but still on voluntary relations, the technology provides recommendations, searches, and alerts that focus more on similarities, reflecting the greater importance of homophily. Social media systems change the conditions under which relationships form. By reducing the need for physical proximity, these systems support faster, broader relationship formation. By changing how personal information is conveyed, they shift the locus of control, change the dynamics of self-presentation, and alter the role of impression management in relationship formation. Thus, while the fundamental basis for relationships does not change, social media systems can significantly alter what relationships exist by how they encourage and promote relationship formation.
Relationship maintenance and development One way that relationships develop is when the participants perform behaviors that reduce the social distance between them. Exchange based theories of relationships, such as social exchange theory or social comparison theory, suggest that expectations of positive rewards are the driving force for relationship development. These rewards can include pleasant communications,
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the exchange of photos, and the sharing of news. Social media systems provide features that facilitate the exchange of rewards among relationship partners. Despite the uncertainties associated with gift giving, as first articulated by Marcel Mauss in his seminal work The Gift, the cost of a digital gift, such as “Like” or a supportive comment, is low compared to an offline gift. Digital gifts and other gift giving practices in social media turn the event focused act of handing over a gift as a present for a special occasion into an everyday practice and, in doing so, significantly affect relationship evolution (Skågeby, 2010). Another way that relationships develop is when the partners share gradually more personal information. Based on generalized reciprocity, increased self-disclosure of one individual is likely to lead to higher self-disclosure by the other, strengthening the relationship. Users disclose personal information in social networking sites for a variety of reasons, including convenience, the ability to build relationships and received value from them, recognition, and enjoyment of interpersonal relationships (Krasnova et al., 2010). These factors are analogous to findings from technology acceptance research that showed perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and perceived usefulness to be pivotal drivers for technology use. Social media systems leverage the correspondence of motivations for self-disclosure and technology use to promote continued use of the technology and evolution of the relationships affected by it. The role of social media systems in relationship maintenance and development is particularly important for the mobile workforce and teleworkers. These individuals are often physically separated from their family, friends, and coworkers and, as a result, often find it difficult to maintain these relationships. For these individuals, social media systems provide a way to increase feelings of belonging and social integration through the continuance of the physically cut-off relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Driven by the desire for attachment, these individuals use both active and passive features of social media systems to communicate with others in their social network and maintain their relationships (Burke, Marlow, & Lento, 2010).
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R E L AT I O N S H I P S Relationship dissolution Relationships that have grown close over time are characterized by increased self-disclosure and the sharing of personal details. Yet the absence of face-to-face interaction complicates verification of the exchanged information. Thus it is easy for individuals to create representations of themselves, provide false or misleading information, or purposefully omit certain information to gain personal benefits. Concealing an individual’s true identity is even part of some social media systems by design. For example, in Second Life and other virtual worlds, individuals are represented by avatars whose representational image is pure fiction. However, in the context of relationships, deception about self-identity, whether intentional or not, can have detrimental impacts. Consequently, deceiving – which is easily done in social media systems – may result in termination of the relationship. Ending a relationship in the social media environment can be done without much effort or personal involvement. Yet the reasons to end a relationship in the virtual space are often less likely to relate to conflicts between relationship partners. Conflicts over personal disposition (e.g., one of the parties being inconsiderate) or specific behaviors (e.g., being late) may matter less in social media systems, while too much interaction can be perceived as disturbing and result in a relationship being dissolved. Individuals are also more likely to formally end a relationship because of the information overload caused by a partner’s extensive communication activities, such as a constant stream of Twitter messages or Facebook postings. Under these conditions, the individual wants the stream of uninteresting, boring, or otherwise undesirable communication to stop and achieves this by withdrawing from the relationship. Social media systems provide features that support withdrawing by reducing interaction frequency, changing security and visibility features for the relevant person, or blocking the person completely (Wisniewski, Lipford, & Wilson, 2012). Social media enabled relationships can also be ended by removing the other party from the explicit records of one’s contacts. Whether this change is reported broadly depends on the system and the types of relationships it supports.
SOCIAL MEDIA In some cases, such as Facebook’s somewhat notorious “relationship status,” changes are broadcast widely. In others, such as Skype, removing a person from one’s contact list does not trigger a notification to the removed individual. Social media systems allow ending a relationship in a nuanced manner, making the termination less confrontational and less stressful emotionally for the relationship partners. Instead of removing a contact as a Facebook friend, individuals can increase the social distance between themselves and the other person by restricting the amount of information visible to them. Again, it would not be detectable for the removed partner that the relationship is being weakened. If a user chooses not to keep the relationship dissolution private, social media systems also allow communication of the change. Social media are a diverse collection of technologies and applications that allow individuals to communicate, exchange information, and share digital artifacts with one another. These basic capabilities can be appropriated to support many different types of relationships. Whether creating substitute relationships, enabling new types of relationships, or complementing existing relationships, social media systems are important influences on the way people and organizations relate to one another in all spheres of life.
SEE ALSO: Blogging; ICT and Gender; Identity and Agency; Impression Management in Social Media; Microblogs; Mobile Lifestyles in the Business World; Online Consumer Behavior; Online Games, Casual; Online Games and Children; Online Games, Community Aspects of; Online Games, Cooperation and Competition in; Online Games, Player Experiences in; Privacy and Social Media; Professional Gaming; Social Media; Social Media and Activism; Social Media and Youth References Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
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Burke, M., Marlow, C., & Lento, T. (2010). Social network activity and social well-being. Paper presented at the CHI ’10 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 10–15 April, Atlanta, GA. Burt, R. (1992). Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dwyer, D. (2000). Interpersonal relationships. London, UK: Routledge. Ellison, N. B., Lampe, C., Steinfield, C., & Vitak, J. (2010). With a little help from my friends: How social network sites affect social capital processes. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 124–145). New York, NY: Routledge. Gallaugher, J., & Ransbotham, S. (2010). Social media and customer dialog management at Starbucks. MIS Quarterly Executive, 9(4), 197–212. Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481–510. Harris, L., & Dennis, C. (2011). Engaging customers on Facebook: Challenges for e-retailers. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 10(6), 338–346. Howe, J. (2008). Crowdsourcing: How the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. London, UK: Business Books. Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68. Kozinets, R. V., De Valck, K., Wojnicki, A. C., & Wilner, S. J. S. (2010). Networked narratives: Understanding word-of-mouth marketing in online communities. Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 71–89. doi:10.1509/jmkg.74.2.71 Krasnova, H., Spiekermann, S., Koroleva, K., & Hildebrand, T. (2010). Online social networks: Why we disclose. Journal of Information Technology, 25(2), 109–125. doi:10.1057/jit.2010.6 Kraut, R., Kiesler, S., Boneva, B., Cummings, J., Helgeson, V., & Crawford, A. (2002). Internet paradox revisited. Journal of Social Issues, 58(1), 49–74. Manago, A. M., Taylor, T., & Greenfield, P. M. (2012). Me and my 400 friends: The anatomy of college students’ Facebook networks, their communication patterns, and well-being. Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 369–380. doi:10.1037/ a0026338 Skågeby, J. (2010). Gift-giving as a conceptual framework: Framing social behavior in online networks. Journal of Information Technology, 25(2), 170–177. doi:10.1057/jit.2010.5
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Smith, T., Coyle, J. R., Lightfoot, E., & Scott, A. (2007). Reconsidering models of influence: The relationship between consumer social networks and word-ofmouth effectiveness. Journal of Advertising Research, 47(4), 387–397. Walther, J. B. (1992). Interpersonal effects in computer-mediated interaction: A relational perspective. Communication Research, 19(1), 52–90. doi:10.1177/009365092019001003 Wang, H., & Wellman, B. (2010). Social connectivity in America: Changes in adult friendship network size from 2002 to 2007. American Behavioral Scientist, 53(8), 1148–1169. Wasserman, S., & Faust, K. (1994). Social network analysis: Methods and applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wisniewski, P., Lipford, H., & Wilson, D. (2012). Fighting for my space: Coping mechanisms for SNS boundary regulation. Paper presented at the the CHI ’12 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 5–10, Austin, TX. Wright, P. H. (1984). Self-referent motivation and the intrinsic quality of friendship. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 1(1), 115–130.
Brian S. Butler is a professor in the College of Information Studies and in the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland where he is Director of the Master of Information
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R E L AT I O N S H I P S Management Program and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information. His work, which has appeared in Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Organization Science, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, and the Journal of Medical Internet Research, combines theories and methods from organizational theory and management to better understand how emerging technologies alter the way teams, communities, and organizations function. Sabine Matook is a senior lecturer in information systems at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland. She received her doctoral degree from the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. Her research interests focus on the IT artifact, social media, and agile IS development. Her work has appeared in the European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Management, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, and Decision Support Systems. She has presented research papers at a variety of international conferences. Her teaching areas include systems analysis and design, management information systems, and IS research methodologies.
