Altruistic and selfish communication on social media: the moderating effects of tie strength and interpersonal trust

Spiliotopoulos, Tasos and Oakley, Ian 2021. Altruistic and selfish communication on social media: the moderating effects of tie strength and interpersonal trust. Behaviour and Information Technology 40 (3) , pp. 320-336. 10.1080/0144929X.2019.1688392

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Abstract

Individuals share a diversity of content on social media for a variety of reasons. Research has often described and explained disclosure via the application of a subjective cost–benefit analysis framed around reciprocity, suggesting that people communicate selfishly motivated by the expectation of receiving something in return. This paper investigates the moderating effects of tie strength and interpersonal trust on the relationship between expected reciprocity and intensity of communication between two social media connections. A Facebook application presented participants with a random set of their friends and asked them to rate their friendships in terms of these values. Overall, 90 participants rated 1728 friendships, while the application collected 11 activity variables depicting the actual communication that has taken place in each pair of connections. A principal component analysis was used to distinguish between text- and photograph-related communication, and two moderated multiple regressions were conducted to establish the moderating effects. The results show significant moderating effects of tie strength and trust on the communication around photographs, but not around text. This study contributes to communication research by explicating the ways that tie strength and trust affect patterns of communication on social media. Implications for social media researchers and designers are discussed.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
ISSN:	0144-929X
Date of Acceptance:	26 October 2019
Last Modified:	30 Oct 2021 01:06
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/129676

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