The title of this post refers to the statements of Burke and company about the nature of relationships and bridging social capital, the value of which cannot be measured by outgoing messages. Rather, it can only be seen to increase bridging through the responses the original message generates. Almost by definition, communication must be (at least) two-way to facilitate a relationship. Though I am always charming, amusing and informative company, I build little social capital by talking to myself.
The most important thought (for me) from the readings came from what I initially viewed as indepth research into the obvious. It seems obvious that people with lively and active social and communication habits in the physical world are also the most likely to have lively and active social and communication habits online, and that the converse would also be true. However, discussions of new media and technology generally too often come from “best of times” or “worst of times” perspectives. We are either damned of saved through its use. I appreciated that the tone of the conclusions in these studies seems to be that while we may be influenced and changed in some ways by this technology, we are not defined by it and that our basic nature as humans remains fundamentally one of social animals just trying to find our place in the herd.
I just want to add: Just because Mark Zuckerberg call it a “Friends” list, doesn’t mean you should read too much into what it says about who is on it or how my relationship to them.
While I agree that a lot of this stuff seems like it should be obvious, I can also attest that the media discourse of “we are doomed” is very powerful. I present similar stuff to my undergrads regarding social capital, and they still insist on saying things like “nobody communicates anymore.” So sometimes in-depth research into the obvious is needed to counter technological deterministic discourses.
in my point of view, the communication within social media is nearly identical to our daily conversations. All we can get from the conversation with others is bit of responses and reactions except when we actually engage in interactive conversations. In the social media sphere, we may not think that we get a lot of responses. Still, others see the contents, but without actually leaving something (=bit of responses and reactions). On the other hand, we sometimes engage in interactive virtual conversations (=streams of back and forth responses).
I think Dr.Markman’s undergrads mean that they do not communicate through social media interpersonally anymore. I don’t agree with their broad statement that no one communicates, but I do agree that the type of communicating that I do via SNS is radically different now than it was six years ago. In the beginning, Facebook in particular seemed like the world’s best address book. I could be in touch with pretty much anyone, and took advantage of that at first, with back and forth exchange pretty frequently. Now I think Facebook is being used more as a push platform for content for most people. More status updates and photo sharing, and less private messaging and wall posts. I think the possibilities Facebook gave us in the beginning were new and exciting and a lot of us took full advantage. Now that the shine has worn off, we are using it for more practical purposes, to spread information quickly. We have kept the low cost of sharing widely that Facebook offers, but I think we have in most was “normalized” and gone back to communicating with our small friend groups via text messaging and in person dialogue.