This review delineates core components of the social media ecosystem, specifying how online platforms complicate established social psychological effects. We assess four pairs of social media elements and effects: profiles and self-presentation; networks and social mobilization; streams and social comparison; and messages and social connectedness. In the process, we describe features and affordances that comprise each element, underscoring the complexity of social media contexts as they shift to a central topic within psychology. Reflecting on this transitional state, we discuss how researchers will struggle to replicate the effects of dynamic social environments. Consequently, we outline the obstacles in isolating effects that reoccur across platforms, as well as the challenges and opportunities that come with measuring contexts across periods. By centering on the elements that define the online ecosystem, psychological research can establish a more durable foundation for replicating the effects of social media and chronicling the evolution of social interaction.
Motivated by work that characterizes view-based social media practices as “passive use,” contrasting it with more desirable, interactive “active use,” this study explores how social media users understand their viewing and clicking practices and the empirical relationship between them. Employing a combination of eye tracking, survey, and interview methods, our study (N = 42) investigates the non-click—instances where people intentionally and thoughtfully do not click on content they spend time viewing. Counterintuitively, we find no difference in viewing duration to clicked versus non-clicked Facebook content. We find that use motivations and Facebook feed content are significant predictors of click behavior but measures of overall use, such as network size or minutes of use per day, are not. Our interview data reveal three audience-related concerns that contribute to deliberate non-clicking and illustrate how non-clicked content contributes to social connectedness when imported into other channels. We discuss implications for researchers, users, and designers.
Adolescents in the United States today can choose from a variety of social media platforms, which afford varying degrees of anonymity, allowing users to engage in anonymous, pseudonymous, or "real name" interactions in order to meet social or informational goals. Although many social media platforms are "profile-centric" and include an emphasis on the profile of a specific user and his or her actions (Ellison & boyd, 2013), others specifically encourage anonymous (e.g., Yik Yak) or pseudonymous (e.g., Reddit) interactions. Despite known benefits associated with varying degrees of identifiability, few platforms enable users to choose between multiple forms of identity expression using a single account. In this article, we use semi-structured interview data collected from US adolescents aged 13-18 years (N = 22) to explore adolescents' use of selective anonymity on an online platform that allows for both anonymous and pseudonymous interaction. We contribute to scholarship on mediated anonymous interaction by explicating the reasons why young adults might choose to interact in contexts that do not contribute to their overall social media presence (e.g., their "real name" or persistently identifiable accounts) by examining adolescents' social practices on Ask.fm, a question-and-answer (Q&A) site popular with teenagers, and the outcomes they associate with its use. Adolescents' use of anonymous interaction is an important topic of study given the developmental processes associated with this stage of life, the high rates of social media use among this population, and the affordances of social media sites that shape the social and psychological outcomes of their use. Prior literature associates anonymity with both positive and negative outcomes. For instance, anonymous and pseudonymous platforms are often linked with disinhibited behaviors (Suler, 2004), which can include abuse and harassment (Cho & Acquisti, 2013; Diakopoulos & Naaman, 2011). However, because people 670673S MSXXX10.1177/2056305116670673Social Media + SocietyEllison et al.
In this paper, we investigate how individual differences in availability preferences are related to (1) self-reported quality of interaction with strong and weak ties and (2) perceptions of bridging social capital. We employed experience sampling methods and collected data over the course of two weeks-combined with surveys at baseline and endpoint, from a random sample of college students (N = 154). We show that individuals who prefer to be more available to others report more rewarding interactions with weak ties. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the quality of weak tie interactions mediates a positive relationship between availability preferences and bridging social capital. We conclude by discussing the relationships between availability, interaction quality, and bridging social capital. We propose availability preferences as a key construct to be considered in future research.
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