What a neat article! When I read through this the first time, I felt like there were some relevant things for the class to learn.
As we move towards more and more media, issues about the quality of online relationships will always be talked about. This article is no exception! I will give a brief wrap-up of this article, posing some questions for you all to think about.
Page 2: "The evidence is clear that interpersonal communication is an important use of the Internet, if not its most important use." Is this still the case? This article was written in the year 2000, so take that into consideration when making your decision if interpersonal communication is the MOST important use. How does this idea relate to Facebook? How interpersonal is FB?
Page 3: "However, when asked to compare their online friends with others from their offline life, respondents felt less close to those they met online." Wow - interesting! With the advent of online dating websites, online gaming (which the article does address a bit), I wonder what folks who participate in those things would say?
Page 3: "The impact of the Internet is likely to be very different if it supplements communication with already established friends and family or if, instead, it substitutes for more traditional communication and traditional social ties." I think this sentence is key to our class, and the analysis of FB. Would you agree?
Page 9 - the section titled, "Comparing Internet versus non-Internet social partners" was highly interesting. You should read through that section pretty carefully to get the full affect of what that section is getting at. How does this relate to our current use of social networking websites?
Page 12: "In either case, by using email they are not getting as much social benefit as they could from their communication activity." This is important to remember as we move forward with different types of media. Do you think that engaging in media, as a supplement to F2F (face-to-face) relationships can go too far? If so, what is too far? Is it different for every person?
Page 13: This section refers mainly to online groups (listservs), but can apply to a number of other applications when we really look at the function of the medium. A quote directly from this page states, "Are active, tightly knit electronic groups, in which people from personal relationships and develop a sense of belonging, the norm or are the cases reported in the literature interesting exceptions?" Read through this section to get a clear picture of what the authors are referring to.
Page 14 points out that listservs are not like traditional small groups. For those that have taken small group communication, I'm sure you can figure out why.
Page 19 - Conclusions: This section obviously summarizes the findings the paper has covered. Try not to skip directly to the conclusion section to save time. This article has some relevant information that we can use, even in our media advances today with social networking websites, such as FB.
As you can see from this article, social interaction online or F2F is quite complex. There are many things to consider when trying to assess the quality of online social relationships in different types of online settings. Could one argue that Facebook has made social interactions more fulfilling to some? Perhaps. What do you think?
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