Networked Maintenance: The Effect of Facebook Relational Maintenance on Network Centrality

ABSTRACT

Communicating relational maintenance through social network sites such can be an important strategy for first-year students to build university-affiliated social networks. In this longitudinal network analysis, ninety-four beginning first-year students completed the Facebook Relational Maintenance Measure (FRMM). Emerging network data collected over a nine-month period examined the effect of students’ propensity to use FRMM strategies on network centrality variables. Analyses indicated the FRMM social contact strategy correlated with increases in degree centrality over the nine-month period and the relational assurances strategy correlated with increases in betweenness centrality over the nine-month period.

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KEYWORDS:

• Friendship
• social network sites
• social networks
• social network analysis
• emerging adults
• college students
• social integration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Open Materials

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/58bkm. To obtain the author's disclosure form, please contact the Editor.

Notes

1. The survey materials and supplemental tables can be found at https://osf.io/58bkm.

2. Stochastic actor-oriented models have been developed to model changes in networks such that tie formations can be predicted over time using endogenous network variables and exogenous actor variables (Snijders, 2017). But these models do not attempt to predict individual changes in network centrality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bree McEwan

Bree McEwan is an Associate Professor in the College of Communication at DePaul University. Her research interests include communication between friends, relational maintenance, social media, and online information diffusion.

Christopher J. Carpenter

Christopher J. Carpenter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Western Illinois University. His research interests include opinion leadership, motivated reasoning, and social network sites.