Does Sociality Become Virtual or Natural in Social Network Services? The Example of Facebook

Abstract

Sociality means a number of individuals living and interacting together, which can lead to complicated social relationships and structure. In recent years, Social network services (SNSs) and online communities have been growing quickly. SNSs offer a variety of social behaviors that simultaneously expand and challenge our conventional understanding of sociability. Specifically, SNSs provide flexible and personalized modes of sociability, which allow individuals to sustain strong or weak ties through a variety of online tools and strategies. This study aims to discover whether the social relationship based on SNSs is merely a virtual relationship, or a natural relationship as it is in the off-line world. Data will be collected among Facebook users using an online survey. Subsequent statistical analyses will be conducted to test whether SNSs-based sociality is virtual or natural. The result will provide how sociality changes on social network sites which can help SNSs users rethink how to manage ties. In addition, the result offers ideas for SNS developers to provide better services to improve users’ gratification.



Author Information
Chien Chia, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Ying-Jiun Hsieh, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Lan-Ying Huang, National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan

Paper Information
Conference: ACP2015
Stream: Linguistics

This paper is part of the ACP2015 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon