From Family to Friend: Family Communication Patterns and the Impact on Young Adults' Family Interaction via Facebook

<p>In recent years there has been a marked shift from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication. This shift has also led to changes in the way families communicate as, more often than ever, social media sites are becoming a primary means of communication for a number of groups. The relationship between family communication patterns and offline interaction has long been studied. However, there is a marked scarcity in research examining the relationship between family communication patterns and online interaction. Data collected from a group-administered survey of 246 undergraduate students was used to examine eleven hypotheses related to family communication patterns, self-esteem, social media use, and online/offline family interaction. Family communication patterns were labeled as either high conversation-orientation or high conformity-orientation. Existing research suggests that these communication patterns are inversely related and a correlation analysis in this study supports this notion. The results indicate that there is a positive correlation between high conversation-orientation families and both online and offline family interaction as well as measures of self-esteem. Additionally, the results indicate that there is a negative correlation between high conformity-orientation families and offline family interaction. No significant correlations were found between high conformity-orientation families and either self-esteem or online family interaction. Future research should consider motivations behind actions as this may significantly impact how respondents view and evaluate their interaction patterns.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Mann, Supreet

Contributors dc:contributor

• Qingwen Dong

• Communication
• Mass communications
• Communication and the arts
• Conformity orientation
• Conversation orientation
• Facebook
• Family interaction
• Online interaction
• Social media

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Identifier

9781339784458

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarlycommons.pacific.edu:uop_etds-1195