A Descriptive Study of Computer-Mediated Interpersonal Communication in Social Network Sites among College Students in Manila

Abstract

Social network sites (SNSs) are one of the social media in the internet which have taken the world by storm in just a short span of time. Currently, millions of people are now estimated to own accounts in different SNSs such as Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, etc. However, as a computer-mediated communication (CMC) media, SNSs have communication limitations or affordances, such as its asynchronism and purely linguistic nature, which have been subjected to debates and criticisms. This study sought to describe this type of communication (CMC) in SNSs among users with the use of a descriptive research design. Quantitative and qualitative methods were employed using survey questionnaires and key-informant interviews, respectively. A total of three hundred (300) male and female college SNSs users from the Philippine Normal University (PNU), Adamson University (AdU), Technological University of the Philippines (TUP), and Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM) were purposively selected to participate in this study. Ten (10) of them were pooled to be participants in the qualitative key-informant interviews. Results showed that SNSs* affordances as a CMC media indeed affect communication among users. Between the two, modality (linguistic nature) emerged as the affordance with more effect on users' communication than interactivity. Moreover, under modality, the lack of nonverbal cues affects communication more than the form and content of a message or post in a SNS. Interactivity or the time it takes one to reply to a message was also found to be important but because users exercise social decentering, or taking the other user's perspective, a late reply to a message is not immediately thought of negatively. It was also found out that females tend to use SNSs and exercise social decentering more than males, although the differences in percentages in both of these are small. Facebook emerged as the most popular and favorite SNS because of its bandwagon effect on the public and its features and applications. Finally, face-to-face communication (FtF) was still preferred over SNSs by the respondents mainly because of the latter's affordances as a CMC media.