1. The 5 people I interacted with the most often were Jenna, Alex, my mother, a tie between Max and Don and then my dad. Jenna is my girlfriend of a little over a year and we have a very close relationship. We often use new media to communicate with each other and talk to each other throughout the day every day. Thus it’s not surprising that I used new media to communicate with her nearly 4 times as much as I did anyone else. I would consider her my best friend and I give and receive many types of services from her (from companionship to emotional support to small services etc.). Alex is the programming vice president at University Television (an organization which I am the president of). We’ve been working in this voluntary organization for over 2 years now and have developed a fairly close and trusting relationship (though one that’s mainly limited to organizations affairs). I usually speak to him every day either by phone or e-mail. Thirdly, my mom and I have a very close relationship and typically communicate on the phone once or twice a day. We rarely use online media and rarely spoke via cell phone when I lived at home but over the past three years we’ve kept up a pretty steady pattern. She’s a very caring mother who can help me out with almost anything (especially small/medium services and support). Max is the Operations Director at the television station and someone I talk to a lot to deal with technical issues at the station. I typically talk to him via e-mail but also use the phone for more pressing matters. Finally my dad and I also have a very close relationship and typically talk on the phone once a day. Often I don’t get to talk with him as much as my mom because of the nature of our schedules, but many of our conversations are of fairly long length and I tend to discuss a lot of important matters with him. He’s very insightful and gives me a lot of advice and emotional support. I also spoke with Don a lot over the phone that week who is the business director at the television station. Typically, I don’t communicate with him as much but this week in particular there were some pressing issues that needed to be dealt with. In regard to specific media I talked most on my cell phone to Jenna, Mom, Dad, Max, and then Alex in that order. As far as SMS I only sent two messages. One was to Jon who is one of my best friends and lives right down the hall from me (which is why he didn’t show up too much in this diary). He’s a fraternity brother of mine and a very strong tie. The other was to Will who is a producer of a show at the television station. With e-mail the people I contacted most were Diana, Don, Seth, Xiaoxia, and Alex in that order. Diana is my boss at work and we typically correspond about work related matter over e-mail. Seth and Xiaoxia are co-workers of mine under Diana and hence we also correspond a lot on e-mail over work related matters. With instant messaging my I talked most to Jenna, Elise, and Rachel K. in that order. Elise is my sister who attends Penn. I typically talk to her over IM and once in a while on the phone if we’re making plans. We’re not super close but we’re close and we keep in contact every week (although some weeks more than others). Rachel K. is a good friend of mine from a Jewish organization we’re both a part of and typically we talk online and give each other companionship. Finally, I included facebook message as one of the media I used because while I rarely use these messages I did message one person this particular week. Her name was Sheri and she is also a friend of mine from the name Jewish organization as Rachel. We’re not as close but I messaged her in response to a message she had sent me.
2. My data seemed to show many patterns in how I use new media. Most noticeable is the fact that I only corresponded with one of my strongest ties via e-mail. This e-mail was in fact a one liner that could have easily been a text message or instant message if I felt like it. This seems to show that I mainly use e-mail as an organizational/class tool and rarely (if ever) use it for support or personal reasons. This hypothesis seems to go against some of the data in the literature. For example, in Hampton’s “Sociability and Social Structure in the Age of the Internet” article, we see that 79% of internet users use the internet to e-mail family and that a large proportion do so for advice and emotional support. While I may not use e-mail for this support, I clearly do seem to get this support from my strong ties (most notably my parents and my girlfriend). This is completely consistent with Smith-Lovin’s findings that important matters are discussed most typically with a spouse/partner (in this case I exchanged the most emotional support with my girlfriend). Also it seems to fit with Wellman’s “Different Strokes for Different Folks” in which he claims that the parent/child relationship seems to be the most broadly supportive of all types. This is further shown in my data by the fact that my parents offered three different kinds of support over this period (emotional aid, companionship, and financial aid) and although it is a bit rare to report high companionship ratings with parents, all of the other data seem to support existing hypotheses.
I feel that in my case I generally prefer the phone to online communication when discussing important matters and/or when contacting my strong ties. Perhaps my e-mail data are inconsistent due to the fact that I am part of many organizations and I often see e-mail more as a burden or a way to get things done, rather than something used for personal issues. Considering the data in the Hampton paper is from 2001 I wonder if now that e-mail has become the standard in organizations and schools, it will be used less and less as a means of obtaining support and advice from strong ties. Perhaps we’re just too overflowed with it that once we get all of our work done we just want to get away from it. In any case I think this is something that needs to be examined closely considering how rapidly e-mail has been adapted (even if my data is a mere anomaly). Furthermore, I think the fact that I spoke with my parents solely via mobile phone is an interesting finding. Considering they are the two people I talk to the most, who are farthest away from me, my data seem to show that I’m more likely to use a mobile phone than any other medium when communicating with those who are far away. A possible explanation for this is that I’m very close with my parents and find a conversation more personal and endearing when I can hear a voice on the other end. Perhaps by actually speaking with them it makes it seem that they’re “closer” and not just somewhere off in the distance. I wonder if this factors into many college students’ media use choices when talking to their parents (considering that many students have little physical interaction with family while actually at college).
Despite this intriguing possibility I tend to think that in my personal experience I just seem to prefer the phone when speaking with close ties regardless of distance. This is evident in the fact that the phone was my most preferred medium for my most frequent contact (Jenna) who lives only .25 miles away and who I see everyday. Also the fact that I preferred e-mail for weak ties who lived moderately far away from me seems to suggest that there’s no direct tie between medium use and physical distance, and instead this relationship is moderated by strength of tie. This is another interesting topic that needs further exploration because I hypothesize that with the rise of cell phones it has become much easier to talk with our strong ties that live further away. Whereas, a few years ago e-mail was the easiest and cheapest way to stay in touch, the rise of “free long-distance” cell phones has seemed to give us another easy way to contact distant close ties and a more personal one at that.
At the same time I found that while many of my close ties were maintained via the phone, instant messaging and e-mail tended to reinforce some of the stronger ties I already had. After all I only used IM with ties rated moderate or stronger and I supplemented some of my stronger ties with e-mail as well. This all seems to go along with the findings from Baym that strong online communications often supplement telephone and face-to-face interactions (which tend to be slightly higher rated in quality). Also in accordance with those findings I seemed to use instant messenger far less than e-mail. Although I used both media for significant interactions involving advice and emotional support, it’s hard to say overall which one contained more “significant” interactions as this is very hard to define. In my case, IM was used much more (proportionally) for personal support and enjoyment, whereas e-mail was usually more organization or school-oriented (in terms of type of support). As that study pointed out though, these patterns may be based on the fact that I’m a college student and they might not generalize to the real world. For instance, when I was younger I used IM much more frequently and for much more socially significant interactions than e-mail. Again, we see here that context seems to play a major role in determining these specific interactions.
Another interesting finding in my data is that I only spoke on instant messenger to females and that they are all close to myself in age (within 2-3 years). In fact, while I rarely use IM, I seem to use it most to talk to females and very rarely talk to male friends (unless I need some quick information). When this is combined with the fact that all of the people I spoke with online were strong ties and provided much emotional support in general, this seems to show that at least in my case, I often turn to females for support through this medium. The fact that I use females for support is quite consistent with Wellman’s data that women are much more likely to provide emotional support than men in the sense that “women express, males repress” (pg. 576). I think it’s interesting to consider that in my relationships with females online I’m much more likely to receive emotional support than with males (where the conversation is often very bland). In this particular week I did tend to also give and receive a lot of emotional support among males (though this was typically over phone or e-mail). However, other than my dad I rarely receive emotional support from any other males through new media. This week just happened to be an exception because there were some tough issues I needed to deal with at the television station. In general though these discussions about the station are more political than emotional, which is consistent with McPherson’s observation that males tend to discuss political issues with other males and that voluntary organizations are very often gender segregated.
As far as my interactions with those more than a few years older than me, I found that besides my parents I tended to prefer e-mail as a medium. In fact, I only found 2 other instances in which I interacted with people over 30 in my sample and these were both because I needed quick information on something (and hence chose the phone over e-mail). I think this reflects the fact that most people I know over 30 have jobs and check their e-mail quite regularly at work. Furthermore, I think that when speaking with older adults who are not strong ties, it’s much more comfortable to use e-mail, where you are able think through your responses and edit as you go. While this remains to be studied, I’m curious as to whether or not this trend is apparent among many college students, who presumably are less comfortable with adults and want to make a good impression while avoiding embarrassment. This would seem to be consistent with the idea that age homophily is very likely outside of confiding relationships (in which the embarrassment factor would likely no longer matter). However, this is still speculation and needs to be legitimately studied.
Finally, I saw very little distinction between duration of relationship and communication media chosen. My raw data might seem to indicate this, but when you exclude my parents from the mix, it’s very difficult to find any relationship. Instead, I feel that other variables such as tie strength, age, and gender were much more important in determining the medium I used. Also, I found it interesting that I rarely used facebook to communicate with anyone. I messaged one person about club related info but other than that I didn’t use the site to communicate with anyone. I wonder if this is normal, considering what an impact it has had on the college-age market. Considering the results of the Ellison article on facebook, my guess would be that typical college kids would communicate through facebook (via message, wall posting etc.) more than once a week, especially with old high school friends. The fact that I don’t keep in very good touch with my high school friends may be a major reason that this number was so low, as well as the fact that I relatively rarely use facebook (no more than 5 min/day on average).
3. As far as where most of these interactions took place, I had trouble distinguishing characteristics of ties that I was more likely to speak to at home vs. public places. For most of my strong ties, there seemed to be a fairly even split between the two locales. One pretty large difference that I did notice was that I spoke with Jenna 26 times at home vs. 14 times when not at home. This may result from the fact that I often talk to her for short periods of time online (using instant messenger) and this is typically always from home. At first, I predicted that I would be more likely to discuss important matters/receive emotional support at home (where I would have more privacy) but this turned out not to be the case. In fact, my I received pretty much the same types of support from Jenna no matter where I was or what medium I was using. As far as my parents are concerned, I spoke with my mom 5 times at home and 5 times elsewhere and with my dad 3 times at home and 5 times elsewhere. As far as the other people I talked to most over this period there were a few differences apparent but not many (Alex: 8 at home, 4 elsewhere, Max: 5 at home, 4 elsewhere, Don: 6 at home, 3 elsewhere). These results seem to show that I talk most to the same people regardless of my physical location. I did trend towards talking to the members of my organization more at home, but that could very well stem from the fact that I’m more likely to communicate with them later at night and on the weekends (considering it’s easier to reach college students at these times). This would be consistent with the fact that I spoke with Jenna more at home as well.
Another possibility as to why I seemed to have communicated more with these people from home is because as Wellman points out in “Physical Place and Cyber Space”, the rise of technologies and shift to place-to-place communities, have made men’s community ties become “tucked away in the home” (pg. 235). While this is a possibility, I have a hard time believing this explanation and in my own case and feel that my position as a college student really influences my results. My schedule is very erratic and there are some days that I’m home for a while and some days that I’m barely home at all. Also, considering that I can always communicate with others (via cell phone, e-mail, etc.) almost anywhere on campus, it’s not surprising that the characteristics of the people I talked to at home vs. in public spaces were pretty randomly distributed. If I were older and had a normal schedule of work and then home, I feel that I might see some big differences in my diary. In any case, the point seems pretty clear that the portability of new media means that we can maintain our contacts/ties anywhere at almost anytime. This may make it much easier to maintain weak ties/contacts considering that in many cases all of your ties can be reached virtually instantaneously. It is quite consistent with Hampton’s observation that new media give us ways to overcome the barriers of local tie formation. Thus, as a substitute for interacting solely in public places, new media give us a chance to reach people all over the world no matter where we are. We can be much more selective in who we talk to and how we get our social needs, and as my data show we can even be fairly selective in public places (e.g. by talking on a cell phone while walking down the street or doing e-mail in the Annenberg library). Thus, certain types of contacts are no longer reserved for just the home or just public spaces. Our social networks can be large and flowing with weak ties and we can decide who we want to talk to anywhere and at anytime.