Interconnection of Multiple Communication Modes in Long-Distance Dating Relationships

Abstract

Employing the communicative interdependence perspective (CIP), the current study examined the interconnection and transition between technologically mediated communication (TMC) and face-to-face (FtF) communication in long-distance dating relationships (LDDRs). College students in LDDRs (N = 200) completed an online survey. Results showed that segmentation to TMC was negatively associated with relational closeness and relationship satisfaction. Difficulty transitioning between TMC and FtF communication was negatively associated with relationship satisfaction. Further, LDDR partners’ FtF communication frequency moderated the associations between segmentation to TMC and the two relational markers. Findings’ implications for relational maintenance in LDDRs and CIP are discussed.

Keywords:

• Communicative Interdependence Perspective
• Long-Distance Dating Relationships
• Relational Maintenance
• Technologically Mediated Communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although a number of social media applications, such as Instagram and Twitter, have gained popularity among young adult users (Vaterlaus, Barnett, Roche, & Young, 2016), recent research showed that young adults aged 18 to 29 continued to use Facebook at the highest rate among all age groups (Greenwood, Perrin, & Duggan, 2016). Therefore, we measured Facebook communication (both private and public), in addition to mobile messaging applications such as Snapchat.

2. Public Internet messaging, such as Facebook wall posts, has been referred to as “masspersonal communication” because it allows users to share content with people in their social network (Bazarova, Taft, Choi, & Cosley, 2013). Whereas such “masspersonal” feature makes it efficient to communicate and maintain relationships with one’s social circle, users tend to post content that is acceptable or concerns multiple audiences on social network (Hogan, 2010). Based on this reasoning, we believe that it would be unusual for LDDR partners to communicate using public Internet messaging while referring to content that they have exchanged via other more private channels. Our integration scale did include items about integration from other channels to public Internet messaging (e.g., One item read, “When you’re talking with your partner over the phone, do you refer to things you’ve publicly posted on Facebook or some other social network site?”).

3. As in Caughlin and Sharabi (2013), the frequency measure of this study was an index rather than a scale. Items in an index are causal indicators of a latent construct and may not be strongly correlated (Bollen & Lennox, 1991). Thus, we did not report the Cronbach’s alpha of this frequency index.