Week 10 lecture notes_com325

Week 10 Lecture Notes COM
325
Personal Connections: chap 7, pages 112-118
Blogging: chap 7 (pages 169 -175)
Everybody Writes: (pages 139 – 159)

Internet
Relationships
 Like other new media, the Internet offers the
opportunity to form new relationships, viewed as a
plus or a minus depending on the view of new media:
 Dystopian view:
 Some between people who should not meet
 Considered a pale substitute for authentic
connection
 Utopian view:
 Is a bridge to meaningful connections

Relationship
Formation
 Relationships traditionally form in four stages:
 Forming,
 Developing,
 Maintaining,
 Ending
 Scholarly research has investigated how relationships
form online, examining how:
people meet,
present ones self, in a profile
form impressions of others

LatentTie
 Social networking sites are used to maintain existing
relationships and form new relationships.
 A latent tie a potential relationship that is structurally
enabled but not yet activated.
 Example: friends of friends on Facebook.
 The architecture of social network sites facilitates the
conversion of latent ties into acquaintanceships.

OnlineDating
 Stigmatized at first, now normalized
 Motivated by ideologies of romanticism (true love
arises from unpredictable moments of fate)
 Described by ideologies of social exchange (finding love
is a business exchange resulting from a list of
attributions)
 In 2015, about 5 % of relationships and marriages
started online, and
 38% of single American adults have used online dating
sites
 Socioemotional communication is easier face-to-face,
but it is successful in digital media.

SocialInformation
ProcessingTheory
(SIP)
 Theorized by Walther, 1992
 The model explains relational development online
 Key concept: People are motivated to reduce
uncertainty and find affinity
 The Internet lowers the social risk of communicating
 In online forums, we meet people who share our
interest, not our geography
 Anonymity online makes people more willing to
disclose, and fosters new relationship formation

Mediated
Meeting
 Encounters not based on a shared location
 Challenges our understanding of relationship building
 Cannot be based on observation of the person’s
nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, touch,
physical closeness, physical attractiveness, behavior, or
social class cues
 Is based on expressions of immediacy and affection,
similarity, trust, and composure
 Uses new text-based expression of emotion such as
emoticons, capitalizations, punctuation, phonetic
spelling
 Uses shared video and real-time video chat

Whydistrust
online
relationships?
 Relationships form between people who would not
relate offline
 Some relationships blur social boundaries between
groups
 Some challenge norms of of appropriateness
 Cross-sex friendships are more common online
 Relationships that transcend age barriers are more
common online
 Disembodied identity is disturbing

Futureof
Blogging
 Participation in media will likely continue, though the
form may change
 Blogging may not continue as a separate genre
 Implicit participation is somewhat unregulated and
threatens privacy
 Implicit participation is increasing through smart
appliances and smartphones added to computers
 Implicit participation can be used by authorities or
groups to threaten citizens

Implicit
Participation
 User-generated content created by actions, such as
purchases, searches, and expressions of communication
and preferences, of the user online
 Is collected using tracking data
 Patterns are created by online actions, and these are
amassed and sold to interested parties without
approval or knowledge of the user
 There is little to no privacy online
 Data are used for microtargeting: personalized services
targeting an individual based on that individual’s
previous actions and preferences

Brand
Journalism
 So called when career journalists work for corporations
to produce content similar to the work of a journalist in
a media organization
 A new name for the old name of public relations
 Adopts journalism’s core values: honesty, integrity,
accountability, accountability.
 Brand journalism is public relations work on behalf of
a company to:
 generate brand awareness
 produce industry news
 create and sponsor
 generate leads

Responsible
Journalism
 Tell truth and post news that is truly news
 Reveal connections to sponsors and conflicts of interest
 Give credit to sources
 Acknowledge biases
 Limit or avoid anonymous sources
 Check facts
 Know how to conduct an interview

ContentMoments
forBrand
Journalists
 When a company piggybacks its content on events
already in the news cycle
 Connects to influencers by asking for their comments
and giving them a platform to comment
 Newsjacking is injecting the company into a breaking
news story to get attention fro a brand or product
 Using news cycles to be a part of a trend to increase
visibility for the company or brand

References
 Baym, N. (2015). Personal connections in the digital
age (2nd ed). Malden, MA: Polity Press.
 Handley, A. (2014). Everybody writes: Your go-to guide
to creating ridicoulsly good content (2nd ed.). Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley.
 Rettberg. J.W., (2013). Blogging (2nd ed). Malden,
MA: Polity Press.

Week 10 lecture notes_com325

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Week 10 lecture notes_com325