Friendship and Social Media 103private balance, (2) styles of self- presentation and face management, (3) inclusion
and exclusion based on shared interests, and (4) level of formality regarding social
norms. Of course, this list of factors is not the only theoretical vocabulary for com-
paring social media, and the typology may benefit from an update (e.g., having been
published early in the smartphone era, the list does not include mobility). Whether
using Papacharissi’s criteria or another categorization scheme for technological affor-
dances, only deliberately theoretical comparisons can ensure reliability, validity, and
comparability of findings across social media platforms (Williams, 2010).
In addition to technological context, future studies should broaden the context
of friendship under investigation. As per usual for the social sciences, most initial
research has focused on adolescents and young adults. However, previous research
has indicated, for instance, significant differences in the meaning and experience
of friendship across the life course (Erdley & Day; Wrzus, Zimmerman, Mund, &
Neyer; Adams, Hahmann, & Blieszner, this volume), the sexes (Monsour, this vol-
ume), and cultural groups (Rose & Hospital, this volume). Again, such work will
proceed most effectively if scholars theoretically connect knowledge of friendship
processes across groups to the specific technological affordances of social media.
Research on social media and friendship also would benefit from greater meth-
odological breadth and sophistication. The research to date has generally employed
quantitative methods; however, rigorous qualitative scholarship may be necessary
to inductively derive the theoretical insights necessary to meaningfully expand
understanding along the lines noted previously. Within the quantitative research
published thus far, most studies rely on cross- sectional data collected from only one
member of the friendship dyad. Although researchers often malign cross- sectional
studies— perhaps unfairly, as such scholarship may in some cases represent the
most efficient or ethical way to address causation, however weakly (Hayes, 2013)—
friendship is inherently dyadic, and thus the object of inquiry itself encourages
analysis of dyadic data (Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006). Toward this end, McEwan
(2013) serves as an exemplar, as her dyadic data collection permitted identification
of actor and partner effects associated with different dimensions of friendship main-
tenance. Given that social media call attention to the network structure containing
dyads, social network analyses also hold much promise for extending theory and
practice (Brooks et al., 2014).
Scholars researching social media friendship must avoid the old trap of treating
online communication as a sphere of relating separate from other communication
media (Baym, 2009). Caughlin and Sharabi (2013) are to be commended for resist-
ing that temptation, instead calling attention to the multimodal nature of relation-
ships by examining difficulty transitioning between media. As I have contended
elsewhere, elaborating this line of thought requires more explicitly theorizing the
association between communication medium and relational messages (Ledbetter,
2014b). Specifically, medium and message may be associated in at least three
ways: (1) a medium may modify the meaning of the message, (2) use of a medium