98 Who Are Our Friends?
behaviors exhibited positive associations with measures of friendship quality.
Previously, McEwan (2013) referred to these behaviors as caring and sharing respec-
tively, alongside surveilling, or passively observing another’s social media profile.
Dyadic data analysis revealed positive relational outcomes associated with caring
(i.e., social contact) and surveilling, but negative outcomes associated with sharing
(i.e., response seeking); although much interpersonal literature has identified posi-
tive associations between self- disclosure and relational outcomes, perhaps people
perceive broadcast- style self- disclosures as self- promoting, narcissistic, or annoying
(McEwan, 2013).
In a separate yet related line of work, Vitak (2012) identified four dimensions
of Facebook relational maintenance: (1) supportive communication (e.g., “When
I see [person’s name] sharing good news on Facebook, I’ll like his/ her update”),
(2) shared interests (e.g., “[Person’s name] and I use Facebook to talk about a shared
interest, sport, and/ or hobby”), (3) passive browsing (e.g., “I browse photo albums
posted in [person’s name]’s profile”), and (4) social information seeking (e.g., “I
keep up to date on [person’s name]’s day- to- day activities through Facebook”). All
dimensions positively predicted friendship satisfaction except for the social infor-
mation seeking dimension, which served as a negative predictor. Taken together
with McEwan’s (2013) results, it appears that communication specifically directed
toward friends may produce positive relational consequences, whereas more pub-
lic forms of interaction may predict negative outcomes. Although these studies
represent theoretically grounded and methodologically sophisticated attempts to
understand maintenance processes, understanding of social media relational main-
tenance remains in its infancy. Only future work can ascertain the proper number of
dimensions necessary to assess social media relational maintenance, as well as the
theoretical contours differentiating among factors and between maintenance con-
ducted via other media. Although the work of Vitak (2012) and McEwan (2013)
differ somewhat on these points, both commend level of intimacy and degree of
publicness as potential contours for future typological development.
An alternate but complementary approach has considered the extent to which
social media itself functions as a means of friendship maintenance alongside other
communication media. Much of this research has employed media multiplexity the-
ory (Haythornthwaite, 2005) as a theoretical framework. Originally developed in
studies of organizational and educational relationships, the theory recognizes that
relational characteristics drive media use choices (Haythornthwaite, 2002), such
that more interdependent friends (i.e., strong ties) employ more communication
media to maintain their friendship than do less interdependent friends (i.e., weak
ties); Haythornthwaite (2005) referred to this positive association between interde-
pendence and media use as media multiplexity. A number of studies have confirmed
this association regarding social media communication, including on Facebook
(Ledbetter et al., 2011), the music- based site Last.fm (Baym & Ledbetter, 2009),
and the Xbox LIVE gaming service (Ledbetter & Kuznekoff, 2012). Although such