Relationship Between the Level of Intimacy and Lurking in Online Social Network

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Relationship between the level of intimacy and lurkingin online social network services

Pei-Luen Patrick Rau, Qin Gao

, Yinan Ding

Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Available online 15 May 2008

Keywords:

Computer mediated communication (CMC)Social networkingInterpersonal relationshipIntimacy

a b s t r a c t

The rapid growth of online social network services (SNSs) leads tonew research questions. Unlike in other online communities, peo-ple in SNSs expect to gratify social-emotional needs rather thaninformational needs, and they are connected in a person-to-personmanner which is more direct and interpersonal. The author arguedthat the factors influencing members’ public posting in SNSs differfrom those in traditional online communities. Interpersonal inti-macy was postulated to influence lurking behaviors in SNSs. Toinvestigate the relationship between intimacy level and postingfrequency in SNSs, an online survey was conducted in Wallop, aSNS provided by Microsoft. Responses (102) were collected, inwhich the first 40 posters and the first 40 lurkers were selectedfor statistical analysis. The result shows significant differencesexist in both verbal and affective intimacy level between lurkersand posters. The level of verbal intimacy and the level of affectiveintimacy are positively correlated with posting frequency. Theresult of discriminant analysis shows that verbal intimacy andaffective intimacy are useful for discriminating posting/lurkinggroups of users. In addition, significant gender differences in per-ceived intimacy and posting behaviors were found. The resultimplies that people lurk in SNSs because they believe that theirsocial-emotional needs may not be satisfied even if they post.

0747-5632/$ - see front matter

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 1062788750; fax: +86 1062794399.

E-mail addresses:

rpl@tsinghua.edu.cn(P.-L.P. Rau),gaoqin@tsinghua.edu.cn,gaotsin@msn.com(Q. Gao). Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2757–2770

Contents lists available atScienceDirect

Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage:www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

1. Introduction

Online communities exist not only for task-orientated communications, but also for personal rel-evant information sharing, trust and intimacy creation, and social relationships building. During thepast five years, explicit social networking sites (SNSs) have mushroomed together with the wave of Web 2.0 technologies. These systems are designed specifically to help people build online presencesand building social networks. Users’ active and public participance is critical to the success of such ser-vices. Active posting is desired. However, the motivation and behavior of people using such environ-ments are supposed to differ from that in traditional online communities, and reasons why they postor lurk may also differ. Previous studies found that people do not post in online communities sincetheir informational needs can be satisfied without posting. However, people rarely use online socialnetwork services solely to seek information. Contrarily, social-emotional supports, friendship and inti-mate interactions are sought out in SNSs. In addition, people in SNSs are connected in a person-to-per-son manner, which is more direct and interpersonal than in other online communities. Therefore, thesocial ties and interpersonal relationships among members of SNSs are supposed to influence postingbehavior of user in SNSs. Intimacy is an essential aspect of the social network tie and interpersonalrelationship. It motivates people to seek warm, close, and validating experiences.This study is to understand the reasons behind lurking behaviors in SNSs with the aim to help thedeveloper improve the design of such services and ultimately enhance user experience with such ser-vices. The author examined the relationship between the intimacy level in SNSs and the postingbehavior in SNSs, with a hope to facilitate further exploration of user behavior in SNSs.

2. Literature review

2.1. Computer mediated communication and online community

Considerable variability exists in the assumptions about the influences of computer mediated com-munication (CMC) on social interaction processes and interpersonal relationship developments. Onthe one hand, some researchers suggested that CMC was improper for complex, emotional, and equiv-ocal communications, due to its lack of social-emotional cues (Barua, Chellappa, & Whinston, 1997),reduced social presence (Connell, Mendelsohn, Robins, & Canny, 2001; Short, Williams, & Christie,1976) and lower media richness (Daft & Lengel, 1986; Daft, Lengel, & Trevino, 1987). Only illusions of real communities can be created in such an environment (Beniger, 1987). Other researchers, how-ever, argued that some early findings depreciating CMC were based on inadequate field observation(Walther, 1992). The social information processing theory, proposed byWalther (1992),emphasized that people need to develop relationships even in the absence of visual and oral cues, and this needmotivates people to adapt the textual cues for complex tasks such as forming interpersonal impres-sions and attainting psychological-level knowledge. People may even find experiences in CMC com-munication more desirable than face-to-face interactions because of selective self-presentation andthe resulting idealized-perception of partners within CMC (so-called hyper-interaction). Some otherresearchers adopted the uses and gratifications approach (Blumer & Katz, 1974; Rosengren, Wenner,& Palmgreen, 1985) to analyze the use of new media and the impact of CMC. The uses and gratifica-tions approach arose out of the functionalist perspective on media (Herzog, 1944). Essentially, it as-sumes that audience members of a medium actively use the medium to fulfill specific needs, andthe gratification opportunities provided by the medium influence the usage of the medium. They sug-gested that CMC provides disparate gratification opportunities compared with traditional media, andcould be a superior to richer media in the case that richer does not fit the needs or the constraints(Dimmick, Kline, & Stafford, 2000).

2.2. Online social network services

The notion of social network, coined byBarnes (1954), denotes a description of the underlying pat-terns of social structures. Social network theory models persons as nodes of a graph and their relation-

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ships as ‘ties’ connecting the nodes (Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Watts & Strogatz, 1998). Two friendswho are directly connected are one link away from one another; a friend of a friend is two links away.In this way, all relationships of individuals can be modeled as paths on the graph. It has been found byexperiment that anyone can be connected to another one on the planet through a short chain of acquaintances, typically consisting of no more than five intermediaries (Dodds, Muhamad, & Watts,2003; Milgram, 1967).Researchers have found that the Internet complements traditional communications and enhancestraditional social ties (Birnie & Horvath, 2002; Katz & Aspden, 1997; Pew Internet and American LifeProject, 2000; Green & Pearson, 2005). Although all communication applications have social networksembedded in their design, SNSs is the first application in which people explicitly articulate their socialnetworks. Commercialized SNSs sites, like orkut, facebook, friendster, have incorporated numerousconcepts in social network theory into their design, such as the rule of 150 and six degrees of separation.SNSs differ from other online communities in three major aspects. First, they are designed specifi-cally to help people establish online presence and build social networks (Ahn, Han, Kwak, Moon, & Jeong, 2007), while the majority of traditional online forums or communities are built to ‘‘improveone’s understanding of the topic” (Preece, Nonnecke, & Andrews, 2004). Though some online commu-nities are designed to exchange emotional supports, such exchange mainly occurs between strangersrather than acquaintance in real life. Consequently, the motivations of users for visiting and postingsare different. Secondly, users in SNSs are connected in networks rather than in hierarchical groups asin traditional online communities. Each user is represented by a public profile which contains linkstoselectedmembers.Theselinkstootherusersmakeupthenetworkthroughwhichinformationisdis-tributed, while each user can define his/her community egocentrically.Wellman (1992)argued thathuman communities are developed in networks, not groups. Therefore SNSs are believed to reflectreal-life relationships of people more accurately than traditional online communities and more innateto human cultural experience (Kiehne, 2004).Mayfield (2005)compared the structure of online communities and that of online SNSs, stating that online SNSs are bottom-up developed, people-centric,user-controlled, context-driven, decentralized, and self-organizing, whereas online communities aretop-down developed, place-centric, moderator-controlled, topic-driven, centralized and architected.Thirdly, SNSs users are connected in a person-to-person manner and they must explicitly state theirrelationship with other people. These make the relationships among members in a SNS more visible,direct and interpersonal than the relationships among members in other online communities. In SNSs,connections come before contents, whereas in traditional online communities, content comes beforeconnections(Mayfield,2005).Itisoftenassumedthatpeoplewillmoreauthenticallydefinetheiriden-tity on SNSs sites compared with on other online communities to ensure meaningful connections(Boyd, 2004). Moreover, most SNSs sites facilitate relationships creating and maintaining by providingtoolsforself-presentation(e.g.,avatarsandblog),formanagingconnections(e.g.,buddylists),forkeep-ing updated with acquaintances and for initiating new connections (e.g., self profile and introduction).

2.3. Lurking in online communities

ThevalueofonlineSNSsliesinthattheyhelppeopletocapitalizetheirsocialnetworks(Boyd,2004).The form and the level of user participation is critical to the survival of SNSs. Users can participate inonlinecommunitieseitherinapublicmanner(i.e.,postingandcommenting)orinanon-publicmanner(regularly reading but not posting, also called

lurking

). Public participation is often desired.Preece(2001)proposed that the number of posted messages per member or per active member indicateshow engaged people are with the community and should be taken as a determinant to the successofonlinesocialsoftware.However,alargeportionofmembersinonlinecommunitiesarelurkersratherthanactive posters(Nonnecke&Preece, 2001). It was reportedover90% membersof some large onlinegroups such as MSN and AOL were lurkers (Katz, 1998). Understanding the reasons why people do notpost publicly is important to the survival and the success to SNSs as to other online communities.Researchers often deﬁne the concept of lurking operationally, such as ‘‘no messages sent during athree month period” (Nonnecke & Preece, 2001), and ‘‘regular visits to the community but reticence orvery seldom posting” (Rafaeli, Ravid, & Soroka, 2004). While Smith and Kollock criticized that lurkers

P.-L.P. Rau et al./Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2757–2770

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