The document discusses various topics related to online relationships and social media, including how relationships form online, the role of social networking sites, online dating, and theories of relationship development online. It also addresses implicit participation online, brand journalism, and content strategies for brand journalists. The key topics covered are how anonymity online can foster relationship formation but also raise privacy and trust issues, and how social media both enables the maintenance of existing ties and the formation of new connections between potentially disparate groups.

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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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.