This document provides an overview of a research project studying college students' use of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook for networking and communication. It defines blogs and the most popular social networking sites. Previous research on related topics like self-presentation, relationship formation, and virtual communities is summarized. Issues around free speech and privacy are discussed. The goal is to research whether social networking sites are effective means of interpersonal communication for college students and address a gap in previous research.

1. Blah, Blah, Blog!
Sophia R. Gallegos
Overview: Social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have become popular
amongst college students throughout the nation. “Blogging” is a new method of interpersonal
communication that allows college students to network. I hope to research college students’
interaction through this new method of communication.
Research problem: Are social-networking sites an effective means of networking for college
students and an effective form of interpersonal communication?
Definition:
♦ Blog: Originally referred to as “web logs”,
blogs are a sort of on-line journal that allows the
user, or blogger, to maintain entries about their
day to day lives. A typical blog consists of
images, text, links and other media (Wikipedia
contributers, 2006).
Most popular social-networking sites for college
students:
♦ MySpace.com
o Launched in 2003 by Tom Anderson and
Mark DeWolfe.
o Over 43 million users thus far, with
150,000 new users every day (“MySpace: Design”, 2006).
o Has become one of the fastest-growing sites on the internet with more hits per
day than America Online (AOL) and Google (Stone, 2005), making it one of the 20
most popular internet sites (Green, 2005).
o News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for the July
2005 purchase of MySpace parent company Intermix Media.
♦ Facebook.com
o Launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout.
o Among the college-aged crowd, ages 18 to 24, Comscore Media
Metrix reports that Facebook has a strong relative advantage over MySpace.com.
o More than 7 million college students have profiles (Levy &
Stone, 2006), accounting for more than 65% of undergrads at more that 2,100 four-
year colleges and universities (Kornblum & Marklein, 2006).
Previous research: While research has been done on blogs and other forms of on-line
communication, there hasn’t been significant research conducted on college students’ use of
social-networking sites. Previous research has been done on the following areas:
♦ Personal home pages: Brings numerous elements together, acting as an
autobiographical scene. Zalis (2003) describes these autobiographical scenes in
cyberspace as “accommodating personal storytellers” (p. 85). Personal home pages
thrust the creator not only into the eyes of friends and family, but also into an audience
of potential strangers (Killoran, 2003).
♦ Self-presentation: As defined by Tice, Butler, Muraven and Stillwell (1995), “Self-
presentation is one of the fundamental and important processes by which people

2. negotiate identities for themselves in their social worlds” (p. 1120). While it may be
assumed that the need to make a positive impression is a key motive, the level of
impression does vary depending on whether an individual is interacting with a stranger
or friend.
o With friends and family: modesty is the level of impression normally enacted
because there has been interaction with the presenter previously, so they have
some knowledge of the presenter’s behaviors, past successes and achievements
(Bortree, 2005; Tice et. al., 1995).
o With strangers: boastfulness will most likely be the level of impression that is
enacted since strangers will not know as much about the presenter’s previous
behaviors, so self-disclosure will be high (Tice et. al., 1995).
♦ Relationship formation: A common
occurrence since the debut of chat
rooms and e-mail, relationship formation
through social-networking sites continue.
Expressing intimacy, sharing feelings and
self-disclosure have been examined in
relationship formation via the web
(Bortree, 2005; McKenna, Green &
Gleason, 2002). By joining group blogs
where interests are shared, opposed to
physical attractiveness alone,
relationships are more likely to become
intimate quickly and remain stable
(McKenna, et. al., 2002).
♦ Virtual communities: By joining
blogs where interests are shared, the
formation of virtual communities can
occur. Unlike traditional, “real” communities, virtual communities don’t require face-to-
face interaction, but virtual interaction through blogging and the other methods of
online social interaction (Hartelius, 2005).
Issues: While social-networking sites have become popular amongst college students, new
issues are arising at campuses across the nation, such as:
♦ First Amendment protections & free speech concerns: Students at private schools
or universities are bound by the rules and guidelines of the university (such as HPU),
while students at public schools and universities (such as UH) have more freedom to
express themselves (Kornblum & Marklein, 2006; Zelezny, 2004).
Goals: As stated earlier, sufficient research on college students’ use of social-networking sites
hasn’t been conducted. I hope to address this new area of research to broaden the knowledge
base of these sites to determine whether they are an effective means of interpersonal
communication for college students.

3. Bibliography
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