UPDATE - new blog

Hello friends,

I've changed blogs and I'm now working under www.kristinmarks.com so please check out my posts there.

Thank you!

Oprah Survey

If you have seen the Oprah Show, you are invited to participate in a simple and fun questionnaire asking for your thoughts and feelings about Oprah, her show, and general TV viewing. Your time and effort will greatly benefit college professors seeking to understand media selection and perceptions. There is no corporate interest involved in this survey; it is purely academic. We would truly appreciate your participation.
If you are interested, please click the link below:

https://lsucommunications.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0wRwo1aRDUPqdco
Thank you very much!

Friendship definition changing with advancments in social media

“With the proliferation of social networking sites and the aggregation and documentation of comprehensive “social networks,” future research should address how the contemporary definition of “friend” is changing.”

Stefanone, Lackaff & Rosen

Social networking sites allow us to friend anyone and anytime with the technological advancements of smart phones.  I know I’ve asked the question, “Are you on Facebook?”  During discussions with my friends, I’ve heard the statement, “it’s not official until it’s on Facebook,” in reference to new friendships or new relationships.  These comments were made jokingly but it is important to recognize how social media influences they ways in which we define relationships. 

The above quote clearly recognizes this shift in how we define our friendships.  Do we define our friendships by the friends I interact with face to face or my online friends?  Some video game research shows that players feel that their friendships built online have the same strength as face to face friendships.

Other research shows that parasocial relationships provide only supplementary relationships and do not replace primary relationships.  Maybe the changing definition of friendship is occurring only on a case by case basis right now.  As technology continues to develop how much will friendship change?

Some people prefer texting to actually talking to someone over the phone.  Others prefer email than a phone call.  There are so many mediums to choose from that I wonder if phone conversations will end altogether. 

The article where I found the quote also noted the idea of “friend promiscuity” which means that someone will “friend” anyone on social media sites just to increase his/her number of “friends.”  Social media websites are creating new conditions.  There is now a disorder called social media hoarding, which involves a user spending an obscene amount of time on social media websites and time spent away causes discomfort for the user.

What other conditions may develop from social media? Some of the changes social media brings are useful and beneficial.  However, I am concerned about the depths the negative  components of social media bring to users.    

Are smart phones really smart?

A collogue of mine (this is a shout-out to you Phil) brought to my attention an article written by Berkos (2010) discussing the role of imagined interaction in online communication.  Berkos (2010) explains that “computer mediated communication (CMC) is as much a part of their social life as talking on the telephone.”  People use the Internet to socialize via email, newsgroups, discussion boards, blogs, and instant messenger (IM).  With the adoption and wide-spread usage of smart phones, the telephone is no longer solely a form of verbal communication.  The boundaries are further blurred as people can have CMC on smart-phones.  People are using smart phones less and less for verbal communication and instead they are generating emails, text messages, and social media updates more frequently.  Nie et al. (2004) explains that the average Internet user in the United States spends 3 hours a day online.  Most of this online time is associated with work with more than half attributed to communication. 

The most interesting fact to me from the Berkos (2010) article was that CMC allows for multiple drafts to be written with extreme ease.  Not only can one rewrite and create several drafts but they can be saved, revisited, and send to multiple receivers.  Online communication provides benefits that hand written communication does not allow.  Although, the nature of CMC allows for multiple drafts, I am uncertain if all Internet users employ that method.  In particular, I have come across spelling and grammar errors in emails and social media updates.  Mistakes in emails are particularly frustrating because there is an editing feature to correct for errors.  Because the nature of Twitter requires countless updates, the ability for drafts seems irrelevant.  So why do we revise emails and not Twitter updates? Is it due to the differing audiences or the differing mediums?  Although the two mediums have different purposes the content generated is still documented in cyberspace.  Maybe it is due to the fact that we know more about the consequences of poorly written emails and less about social media.  Do we need an edit function on social media before we can post?  And is it a good thing that we are so dependent on these edit functions rather than catching these errors ourselves?  Even I used Microsoft Word to draft my post before entering it into Blogger because Spell Check is easier to use. 

Why aren’t people utilizing imagined interactions for social media posts more frequently? It could be due to the fact that there isn’t one receiver but many.  Because emails have a direct receiver(s), we take more time in composing our thoughts.  Social media has a different type of feedback reducing our concern for grammar and spelling.

I wonder how this will change as technology develops.  Maybe Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook will generate an edit feature.  Only time will tell.

Language Creates New World Online

Riva and Galimberti (1998) describe how computer-mediated communication interacts with identity and social interaction.  They explain that “communication is not only – or not so much – a transfer of information, but also the activation of a psychosocial relationship, the process by which interlocutors co-construct an area of reality” (Riva & Galimberti, 1998, p. 1).

When I read this sentence it took me a minute to fully grasp what they were claiming… plus I had to look up interlocutor.  An interlocutor is one who takes part in dialogue or conversation.  These researchers note an important aspect of relationships, that communication is a key element in building relationships.  The really interesting component is that the communicator constructs his/her own reality.  This supports the theory of linguistic relativity; that language helps to shape our understanding of reality.  This idea affects both the communicator in how they draft their message and how the receiver interprets that message. 

Knowing this process helps us to understand how social media may play a role in the relationships we build.  My last post discussed how Facebook in particular causes negative feelings by users which demonstrate their own reality construction of the intended message.  Computer mediated communication allows for more misinterpretations to occur between the communicator and message receiver.  Maybe people should write more clearly to reduce this? Maybe readers shouldn’t take Facebook so seriously?  Maybe readers should ask the communicator what their intention actually was?

It seems that the articles I’m reading have mostly negative views regarding social media. Richard Landers on his blog Thoughts of a Neo Academic writes about a study conducted analyzing Twitter’s effect on G.P.A.  This study utilized Twitter as a teaching tool which had positive results as students G.P.A. scores improved.  However, there were confounding variables demonstrating the need of further research on this topic.  My point here is that people are also searching for the positive components that social media has to offer. 

Both studies show that social media is changing the way we interact and we learn.  Social media is a new phenomenon that requires much further research to really determine if it has more positive or negative effects on the population or more likely some combination of the two.     

Does the written word hurt even more?

I came across a blog titled “Thoughts of a Neo-Academic” by Richard Landers, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA.  One of his recent posts describes how people can have bad experiences on online social networks.  He refers to research conducted by Tokunaga in Cyberpsyhcology, Behavior, and Social Networking. 

Tokunaga discovers ten types of negative experiences social networking users have online.  They are:

1. The person initiates a friend request which is denied or ignored by the person he sends it to.
2. The person tags a photo or leaves a message on a friend’s profile and later discovers it has been deleted.
3. The person visits a friend’s profile and discovers he is not ranked where he thinks he should be ranked on a “Top Friends” list.
4. The person learns that someone else has been “stalking” their profile.
5. The person waits longer than he expected for a response to a post.
6. The person discovers negative (e.g. flaming) comments on his profile, left by other people.
7. The person discovers someone else has written something about him that he did not know about – interestingly, the information does not need to be negative to be unwanted.
8. The person discovers that even though a friend request has been accepted, he has limited access to the new friend’s profile.
9. The person was removed as a friend.
10. The person discovers a group he wants to join but is not permitted to; alternately, the person discovers a group has been made about him without his permission.

Any of these can be damaging to someone’s self-esteem.  For some, they may be able to shake it off with little cognitive energy while others may develop intense anxiety.  This new form of cyber-bullying has taken form in many ways.  It can be as aggressive as intentionally typing negative comments or something much more subtle which is what Tokunaga found.  Social networks are wonderful for connecting long lost friends but inherently the Internet has some faults.  Tone, cadence, and intent are lost in cyberspace.  For example, number five on the list above explains that an author on a social media website is offended that someone took too long to reply to a post.  We take this untimely response as a personal attack that the responder does not care about us.  But there may be an alternative reasoning… maybe this person was out of town or had work deadlines to meet which prevented him/her from responding.  The online world removes the information we receive from body language.  The non-verbal communication is critical in developing and strengthening relationships because it helps to uncover the intent of comments. 

Cyber-bullying effects the adolescent population the most.  This happens because adolescents have become aware of how the appear to others and are concerned about that appearance.  Adolescents are considering the roles they will have in their adult world.  They do so by participating in a variety of activities (e.g. sports, extracurricular activities, etc.).  Erik Erickson, a psychologist offers that there are eight stages of psychosocial development and identity is the fifth stage occurring at the adolescent years.  Adolescents are striving to create their own unique identities by overcoming challenges.  Cyber-bullying on social media networks is creating a new set of challenges.  Not only do adolescents have to face challenges in their physical day-to-day lives in high-school, they now experience heartache online. 

Social media has both positive and negative consequences.  Cyber-bullying is occurring and it needs to be addressed in schools and in family discussions.  Furthermore, it is critical that adolescents are being provided the opportunities to develop strong identities in the “real world” which will allow them to disregard potentially negative comments online.

Most people have discounted the old saying that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”  We now know that words do hurt.  Does the written word hurt even more?   

Tokunaga, R. (2011). Friend me or you’ll strain us: Understanding negative events that occur over social networking sites. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

What kind of social media user are you?

I was perusing Nick Bowman's blog to discover some blogs he follows.  One blog is by Richard Landers at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA is an industrial/organizational psychologist who discusses technology, education and training research.  One of his posts describest the four kinds of social media users.

http://neoacademic.com/2011/02/18/there-are-four-kinds-of-social-media-users/

The four categories are: versatile, novel, expert communicator, and introvert.

Versatile (36.3%):  This is the most common user type.  Usually this user has fewer than 100 friends on the social networking site but actively engages with these friends.  Users interact on this site by sending messages both privately and publicly, comment on threads, update their profiles, and share links.  Usage on these sites is between 1-5 hours per day. 

Novel (25.3%):  The novel user also has fewer than 50 friends on the social networking site and has accounts on two sites.  This user logs in between 1-5 hours per week and updates his/her profile in addition to uploading photos. 

Expert Communicator (19.88%):  This is the most active social networking site user that uses these sites for more than 5 hours per day and typically has more than 100 friends.  This group engages with people they have little in person interaction with and uses social networking sites to maintain these relationships. 

Introvert (18.62%):  The introvert uses social networking sites to replace email and usually have an account on one site.  The communication on this site typically is through private messages.   Users usually have fewer than 50 friends.

What kind of user are you?

Please answer the poll question that is to the left of the title of this blog. 

Alarcón-del-Amo, M., Lorenzo-Romero, C., & Gómez-Borja, M. (2011). Classifying and Profiling Social Networking Site Users: A Latent Segmentation Approach. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0346 [↩]

Relationships

Social relationships are only becoming more prominent as technology continues to grow to allow these relationships to flourish.  Technology now allows us to communicate face to face on our cell phones and we can comment on pictures of friends we knew in middle school.  Relationships are no longer confounded by people we have actually met.  We create relationships with characters on scripted television shows and reality show characters.  We can watch them live on television or online.  We can even engage in discussion about these people on blogs.  These types of relationships are called parasocial relationships.  An example of this type of relationship was apparent when actors Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt divorced.  A variety of people choose either Team Anniston or Team Jolie.  Viewers do not have a direct relationship with these individuals but maintained strong attitudes towards the divorce. 

This relationship is an example of social identity.  Social identity is built upon the groups an individual admires and identifies with.  According to Severin and Tankard (2001) social identity does not operate all the time but rather is enacted in certain situations.  Peer pressure and social norms can force us to create opinions which in turn develop our social identity through the diffusion of innovation. If an idea gains acceptance by the majority then an individual feels compelled to create an opinion to avoid conflict.  This identity creation may not accurately reflect the individual.

Communication theories: Origins, methods, and uses in mass media. 5^th edition, by Werner Severin and James Tandard. (2001).

Social Identities

During my research for another project, I came across this article.  The article explores how in and out groups react to national scandals.  The scandal occurred after Jamaican born, Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson.  Johnson was quoted as “the man from Canada broke an Olympic record” in a Vancouver newspaper. After he won the gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, it was discovered that he had been under the influence of steroids and was forced to return his medal.  The following day after the qualification the Canadian press stated that “the Jamaican-born speedster voluntarily surrendered his medal.” These quotes demonstrate that an individual is considered a “champ” when positively representing others and a “chump” when negatively representing others. 

Research shows that individuals strive to maintain positive self-images.  People try to improve their image by motivated association or dissociation with others.  Because individuals hold multiple social identities that play a dynamic role in our everyday interactions with the social world, people are able to highlight one identity over another to maintain a positive self-image.  The identities that are selected most often are going to be the most developed and will become harder to dismiss.  In the example of Ben Johnson, Canadian residents may not have had a strong developed identity with him which allowed fans to easily change their opinion.  This identity development follows a similar trajectory as Zaller in The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.  The more information , education, and emotional attachment an individual holds toward one social identity the more resistant he/she will be towards dismissing that particular identity.  

Cited: Stelzl, M., Janes, L., & Seligman, C. (2008). Champ or chump: Strategic utilization of dual social identities of others.   European Journal of Social Psychology.  38, 128-138.

Connectivity

 Who's the Boss, You or Your Gadget"  is available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/business/06limits.html?_r=2&smid=tw-nytimes which describes the relationship people have with technology - "smart phones, text messaging, video calling and social media."

Although being connected 24/7 allows us to engage in our friendships/relationships through constant conversation and access news as fast as we can type, but are people losing the ability to be in the moment? Psychologists argue that separating the parts of your life are key in reducing stress and anxiety.  How much are we losing if we are not able to be in the moment because we are too busy updating Facebook or reading where our friends have just checked-in?

I saw a preview for a new reality show on the Lifetime Network entitled One Born Every Minute.  This program is set in a hospital and shows the joys and trials of about-to-be-parents and the staff is the process of giving birth. The clip showed a woman updating her Facebook status about the progress of her labor.  This made me think about my friends and their time in the delivery room. I have seen several mobile updates to Facebook during my friends’ time in the hospital.  The photos are being uploaded by the fathers and/or friends.  Having spent many hours in the hospital for my niece’s birth, I do understand the abundance of downtime.  However, this was a time before mobile uploads and I managed to find things to occupy my time - such as be with my sister and keep my family company. I did not have my nose in my phone.  Maybe I would have behaved the same way as the characters on the show if I had mobile upload abilities to Facebook.

This need to constantly update our Facebook has become an extension of our identity and a medium to promote that identity.  It is fascinating because not everyone I know behaves in this minute by minute update phenomenon.  Some of my friends do not even have smart phones and simply do not have access to the mobile uploading technology.  Do those with smart phones have different identities than those with smart phones? Social media provides a novel outlet for self-promotion which can be an effective tool.  Could this be another outlet for narcissists to participate?  Every post or update is a form of self-promotion.  Rather than insisting that post-ers or update-ers are narcissists, we should look at the individual’s content and frequency.  

The following quote is from a blog called Self-Promotion 2.0 – Promote Yourself without Looking Self-Promotional http://remarkablogger.com/2009/04/06/self-promotion-20-promote-yourself-without-looking-self-promotional/.  I thought it was a nice addition to my blog topic.

"What is self-promotion?

Imagine you’re at a party, and you meet the guy who only wants to talk about himself. You know, that guy. Everything is about him. I bet that’s what you think of when you think about self-promotion: smarmy, selfish tactics that turn people off because they they bring no value.
On blogs, this kind of self-promotion arrives in the form of comment spam.  The kind of comments I hate the most are not the automated ones, but the ones where someone actually put in some time and effort to say something, except they didn’t say anything truly valuable or worthwhile. They just wanted to drop a link. For the time spent, they could have achieved something much more.
On social media, this kind of self-promotion results in one-sided posts that promote only one thing: the person sending the message. These posts (tweets/stumbles/diggs/reddits/whatevers) only contain links to the person’s own sites, contain a large amount of affiliate links, and are often nothing but a sales message. None of this is considered terribly valuable by most people."

How many layers do we have? Are people really like onions?

“Intersectionality, the mutually constitutive relationship among social identities, is a central tenet of feminist thinking and has transformed how gender is conceptualized in research.”

Before describing how people are influenced by entertainment media, identity first needs to be described.  One key aspect to the study of identity is the intersectionality methodology studying “the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations” (McCall, 2005).  Under this framework, the theory seeks to examine how socially and culturally constructed categories such as gender, race, class, disability, and other components of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels which can contribute to systematic social inequality.   

I discovered that a website is dedicated to the further research on intersectionality which can be found at http://www.intersectionality.org/.  

If societies and cultures are able to construct various dimensions of identity then what power does entertainment media have on identity construction? People utilize entertainment media to help construct their identities.  For example, I was watching an episode of Chelsea Lately with guest star Wilmer Valderrama, who is of Columbian and Venezuelan descent.  Chelsea asked why he still had a thick accent even though he had lived in the United States since his adolescence.  Valderrama explained that when he moved back to the US he watched countless episodes of I Love Lucy and took his language cues from Desi Arnaz, thus never “losing” his accent.  Would Valderrama’s accent be less prominent if he had watched another show or did not speak his native language with family? 

In this example, television was able to help an individual learn English but inadvertently perpetuated gender and ethnic stereotypes.  Who knows what other latent learning was taking place if at all.         

             

Cited:   McCall, L. (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs, 30,

1771–1800.

Shields, S. (2008). Gender: An intersectionality perspective.  Sex Roles. 59, 301-311.  

Take this survey!

Vanderbuilt University is conducting on online survey  http://kirbyvandypsych.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8HcG4kCcvkRds56 on cognitive style and personality. 
Let's help out some researchers!

How unique are we?

Identity separates us from the rest of the population; we become unique.  We create and develop our own personality, our own interests, and our own hobbies; each element separates us from others.  We build relationships and participate in a variety of groups.  We are able to define ourselves as we become less abstract. 

            Scripted television shows, reality programming, movies, print magazines, social media etc. create part of our environment.  The media, particularly entertainment and social media act as another element impacting how individuals identify themselves. We are able to engage in relationships on Facebook or Twitter.  We are able to create para-social relationships with scripted characters and reality show characters.

            My blog will describe the interplay between entertainment media and identity development.  Specifically, how each gender copes with the messages displayed.