Will you be my Facebook friend?

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Authors
Haspels, Melanie
Advisors
Issue Date
2008-04-25
Type
Conference paper
Keywords
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Citation
Haspels, Melanie (2008). Will you be my Facebook friend? In Proceedings: 4th Annual Symposium: Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects. Wichita, KS: Wichita State University, p.47-48
Abstract

Launched in February 2004 by students at Harvard University, Facebook is an online social networking site initially designed to replace the University’s paper student directory. Following its launch, it quickly spread to college campuses across the nation, quickly becoming a popular way for college students to maintain ties. However, does the fact that students are spending more and more time on their computers “facebooking” one another affect face-to-face communication, specifically on small, residential college campuses? Through focus group research at a small, residential college in Kansas, three themes emerged as to the effect of Facebook on a small, residential college campus: Facebook assists in maintaining long-distance relationships, Facebook helps to keep a person updated on the lives of those around them, and Facebook builds face-to-face relationships. These themes, supported by Charles Berger and Richard Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory, demonstrate that Facebook can assist in building face-to-face communication on small, residential college campuses.

Table of Contents
Description
Fifth Place winner of oral presentations at the 4th Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Hughes Metropolitan Complex, Wichita State University, April 25, 2008.
Research completed at the Elliott School of Communication, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Publisher
Wichita State University. Graduate School.
Journal
Book Title
Series
GRASP
v.4
PubMed ID
DOI
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