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Doing family on Facebook: connecting communicative affordances of mobile media, parental practices, and social capital

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Doing family on Facebook: connecting communicative affordances of mobile media, parental practices, and social capital

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Content Running head: CONNECTING COMMUNICATIVE AFFORDANCES
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Doing Family on Facebook:
Connecting Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media, Parental Practices, and Social
Capital

by
Andrew Richard Schrock
University of Southern California

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Ph.D in Communication
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

May 2015
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Abstract
This dissertation examines how mobile media augment practices with predominantly
“offline” ties maintained through mobile social media. Specifically, it considers how practices of
parents of young children accrue bridging and bonding social capital differently on Facebook’s
ego-centric network. To connect communicative processes with social outcomes I draw on
ecological psychology, sociology and communication to conceptualize “communicative
affordances.” This framework charts a middle ground between technological determinism and
social constructivism. A literature review of social capital as process and outcome and tie
conversion follows. Parents of young children were selected as a population of interest because
they are at an important life stage, are in need of social support, and are frequent users of mobile
media. In-depth interviews (N = 10) were used to illuminate family practices on mobile
Facebook — particularly taking, curating, and uploading images and videos of friends and
family — and develop survey measures reflecting communicative affordances. An online survey
was then deployed to adults with children under five years old (N = 262) and who were users of
Facebook and mobile media. As expected, family satisfaction predicted bonding, as did
multimediality and mobile availability. Intensity of tie conversion was significantly predicted by
scope of unfriending, privacy concerns, multimediality and mobile availability. However, only
multimediality and desktop availability significantly predicted bridging capital. Practices were
also not universal and varied by gender and race.
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Table of Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................2

List of Tables ...................................................................................................................................5

List of Figures..................................................................................................................................6

Acknowledgements .........................................................................................................................7

1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................9

Mobile Social Network Platforms (MSNPs).............................................................................10

Mobile Social Media and Sociality ...........................................................................................15

Summary....................................................................................................................................18

2. Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media.........................................................................21

Introduction ...............................................................................................................................21

An Affordance Perspective........................................................................................................23

Comparing Affordances with Previous Theories of Technology Use.......................................25

Defining Communicative Affordances......................................................................................27

Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media.........................................................................31

Portability ..............................................................................................................................32

Availability ............................................................................................................................34

Locatability............................................................................................................................35

Multimediality .......................................................................................................................37

Constraints of Mobile Media.....................................................................................................38

Serial Tasking ........................................................................................................................42

Saving and Sharing................................................................................................................43

Media Processing...................................................................................................................43

Conceptualizing and Operationalizing Perception and Outcomes of Affordances ...................45

Summary....................................................................................................................................50

3. Social Capital.............................................................................................................................53

Introduction ...............................................................................................................................53

Conceptualizing Social Capital .................................................................................................55

Bridging and Bonding ...........................................................................................................60

Technology and Social Capital..................................................................................................62

Ego-centric networks.............................................................................................................64

Bridging and Bonding on Mobile Media...................................................................................67

Affordances and Social Capital .................................................................................................70

4. Tie Conversion ..........................................................................................................................75

Introduction ...............................................................................................................................75

Latent Ties .................................................................................................................................78

Tie Conversion ..........................................................................................................................79

Tie Conversion and Mobile Media........................................................................................82

Similarity Matching and Privacy Concerns...............................................................................83

Similarity Attraction ..............................................................................................................83

Privacy Concerns...................................................................................................................85

5. Families .....................................................................................................................................87

Introduction ...............................................................................................................................87

Parenthood as Transition ...........................................................................................................89

Practices as Family Rituals........................................................................................................92

Young Parents and Social Network Sites ..................................................................................93

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Young Parents and Mobile Media .............................................................................................95

Young Parents and Photography ...............................................................................................97

6. Summary of Hypotheses..........................................................................................................100

7. Interviews ................................................................................................................................108

Sampling and Participants .......................................................................................................109

Content Analysis......................................................................................................................110

Recruitment .............................................................................................................................116

Interviewee Demographics ......................................................................................................116

Doing Family on Facebook .....................................................................................................117

Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media.......................................................................121

Portability ................................................................................................................................121

Availability ..............................................................................................................................123

Locationality............................................................................................................................124

Multimediality .........................................................................................................................125

Sharing.................................................................................................................................130

Curation ...............................................................................................................................130

Uploading ............................................................................................................................131

Tie Re-activation .....................................................................................................................132

8. Surveys ....................................................................................................................................135

Survey Instrumentation........................................................................................................138

Recruitment .........................................................................................................................139

Survey Construction ............................................................................................................140

Demographics......................................................................................................................145

Communicative Affordances and Bonding Social Capital..................................................149

Communicative Affordances and Bridging Social Capital .................................................152

Outcomes of Social Capital .................................................................................................153

Tie Conversion ....................................................................................................................154

9. Conclusion, Limitations, and Discussion ................................................................................157

Conclusion...............................................................................................................................157

Limitations...............................................................................................................................161

Discussion................................................................................................................................163

Appendix A: Survey Instrumentation..........................................................................................208

Appendix B: Interview Protocol..................................................................................................231

Appendix C: Survey Protocol......................................................................................................233

Appendix D: Interview Protocol..................................................................................................234

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List of Tables
Table 1: Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media..............................................................32

Table 2. Interviewee Demographics............................................................................................117

Table 3. Hierarchical Regression Predicting Facebook Bonding Capital. ..................................151

Table 4. Hierarchical Regression Predicting Facebook Bridging Capital...................................152

Table 5. Outcomes correlated with bridging and bonding capital on general Facebook (H3A) and
mobile Facebook (H3B – D). ..............................................................................................154

Table 6. Hierarchical Regression Predicting Intensity of Tie Conversion. .................................155

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List of Figures
Figure 1. General Model of Communicative Affordances. ...........................................................45

Figure 2. Relationship Between Demographics, Family variables, Communicative Affordances
and Bonding Capital ............................................................................................................101

Figure 3. Relationship Between Demographics, Facebook variables, Communicative
Affordances and Bridging Capital.......................................................................................103

Figure 4. Relationship Between Demographics, Facebook variables, Communicative
Affordances and Tie Conversion.........................................................................................106

Figure 5. Multimedia Practices with Mobile Media: Uploading, Curating and Sharing.............129

Figure 6. Family Photography as Micro-Ritual...........................................................................132

Figure 7. Survey Participants’ Education Compared with 2014 Census Data of Parents with their
own Children aged 5 or under (United States Census Bureau, 2015). ................................146

Figure 8. Survey Participants’ Age Compared with 2014 Census Data of Parents with their own
Children aged 5 or under (United States Census Bureau, 2015). ........................................146

Figure 9. Survey Participants’ Race / Ethnicity ..........................................................................147

Figure 10. Frequency of Specific Activities on Mobile Facebook..............................................148

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Acknowledgements
This dissertation is, like most pieces of academic writing, the product of years of
generous support and communication. I am indebted to the many mentors and peers I have been
lucky enough to work with over the years. Thanks foremost to François for guidance and
support. I am not quite sure where I would be if I didn’t have a fellow geek, closet hacker and
mobile enthusiast as an advisor. You gave me the right pushes and nudges at the right times. You
also let me get away with some of your best ideas, which I can only assume was intentional. If it
was not, I regret to tell you that it may be too late by the time you read this!
Andrea Hollingshead, you were my first mentor in the department and a stalwart
supporter. I truly appreciated your advice and chairing my quals committee; thanks to you I
didn’t make a wrong step. Dmitri, you are a tough cookie and I thank you for that. Jeff Boase,
you’ve been a generous friend, collaborator and mobile communication guru. Henry, you have
been my unofficial advisor and a vision of a public intellectual. Annenberg students too
numerous to mention have been inspirational and generous over the last six years, contributing
ideas both large and small that have positively influenced my own writing. It’s impossible to list
all of them, so I’ll simply say: let’s meet again and soon! This dissertation also owes a debt to the
Mobile ICA Pre-conference and the Oxford Internet Institute summer doctoral program (OII-
SDP), where many of these chapters and ideas were first aired. Finally, being an Annenberg
fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism provided the exact
combination of support and freedom to explore. It was only through this significant investment
in my intellectual development that I was able to excel.
I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my own family in a dissertation so focused on family
life. Completing this dissertation is the end of a journey started a decade ago and my family has
been there for every step. Thank you to my mother and father for their constant support.
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Rebecca, you always understood the importance of academic work to me. You were there to lend
a sympathetic ear, give me huge swaths of time to write, and help me through the ups and downs
of grad school life, all the while excelling in your own career and being a wonderful mother.
You’re an inspiration to me for all these reasons and many more.
Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to Nora. You were only four months old when I
started the Ph.D program. In the time it’s taken me to finish coursework and write this you’ve
grown to become a smart, curious and talented child. You’re the most special girl in the whole
wide world to me and I love you dearly.
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1. Introduction
Over the last decade mobile devices have become part of daily communication
repertoires for the majority of residents of the United States (Brenner, 2012). Rich Ling proposes
(2012) that this phase of mainstream adoption has led mobile media facilitating “the smooth
functioning of everyday life” (p. 3) in everyday practices rather than leading to immediate
“effects.” During periods of mass adoption technologies are less imbued with utopian or
dystopian visions (Baym, 2010). Rather, technologies are integrated with daily routines and
become “domesticated” (Haddon, 2006). That is, uses for mobile media become dictated by
everyday communication goals. Individuals have come to view mobile media as more
intrinsically related to everyday communication than desktops, which they view as more for
computation (Humphreys, Von Pape, & Karnowski, 2013). Non-adopters of mobile media exist
because media adoption is cyclical and technologies have a significant afterlife (Portwood-
Stacer, 2012). However, the focus of this dissertation is on the practices of mobile social media
adopters and how it is integrated in their everyday lives. For the above reasons this dissertation
draws attention to practices afforded by mobile media. The theoretical base of what I term
“communicative affordances” is the topic of chapter two. One goal of this dissertation is to
justify a communicative affordances approach and collect empirical data to support the validity
of this perspective for social science research.
This dissertation conducts research that targets communication on mobile media. In the
context of this dissertation “mobile media” refers to “smart phones” and tablets running mobile
software (or “apps”) that converges multiple technical features (e.g. a camera and GPS) and
provides multiple synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication. Broadly considered,
socio-technical infrastructures, institutions, and networks enable the potential for immediate and
constant communication between individuals and their social networks. These infrastructures are
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not the focus of this dissertation, but undergird the communication possible on mobile media,
leading to qualitatively different forms of communication than in previous eras. Notably, mobile
media enable connections between individuals rather than mediated by households or
neighborhoods. In other words, mobile media “allow for simultaneity of social practices without
territorial contiguity” (Castells, 2013). Castells’ concept of the “space of flows” describes “the
location through which media infrastructure allows for social life from different locations to
proceed as if the locations are present and proximate” (Howard, 2011, p. 80). Rainie and
Wellman’s (2012) notion of the “triple revolution” refers to a combination of internet access,
social networking, and mobile media that bring about networked individualism (Wellman, 2002).
Hogan’s (2009) perspective comes closes to my own when he states that “social life is moving
from a focus on space-time social constraints to affordance-based social access” (Hogan, 2009,
p. 15). This notion that the affordances of media enable new forms of access to social ties is
central to this dissertation. However, before I discuss communicative affordances, I will
delineate more clearly the particular combination of technologies that this dissertation expounds
upon.

Mobile Social Network Platforms (MSNPs)
This dissertation collects empirical data on how practices are altered in a move of social
network sites (SNSs) (boyd & Ellison, 2007; N. Ellison & boyd, 2013) to being accessed on
mobile media. The most emblematic of this shift is Facebook’s move to being predominately
used on mobile devices. Facebook is the most popular SNS (across most demographics in the
United States) accessed through as a set of mobile websites, applications (e.g. “Facebook
Messenger”), and related services. Facebook as a company has aggressively incorporated mobile
functionality, recognizing that mobile was a key factor to growth and worldwide expansion (G.
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Goggin, 2014). Various mobile front-ends and features build on Facebook’s network backbone,
built from early days (boyd & Ellison, 2007) to being the most popular social network site (SNS)
worldwide (G. Goggin, 2014). In 2008 it started to produce a mobile app starting with
Blackberry “smart phones” and growing to 63 million mobile users by 2009 (Gerard Goggin,
2011a). In the United States in particular it is the most popular SNS (Duggan & Smith, 2013)
and has made strides in mobile adoption. As of June 2013, 819 million people, or well over half
the 1.15 billion user base, accessed Facebook through a mobile device (Tam, 2013 July 24).
Thus, mobile Facebook is a sensible test site for how communicative affordances of mobile
media augment individual’s practices with their mobile-mediated social networks.
However, the above description of Facebook of an SNS accessed through mobile media
is not quite accurate, as it implies a similarity that might not exist. Many features of mobile
Facebook — locative tagging, seamless image uploading, mobile advertising — have been
absorbed from corporate acquisitions of mobile companies, or reflect Facebook’s massive
internal innovation of mobile features. That is, “mobile Facebook” is a cluster of interfaces,
algorithms, and features oriented around mobility, not simply a “mobile SNS.” Therefore, this
dissertation will employ the term MSNP (Schrock, in press-b) to refer to “Mobile Social
Network Platforms.” MSNPs are 1) platforms for communicating with ego-centric social
networks that are 2) accessed in part or fully on mobile devices; 3) with qualitatively different
communicative affordances from desktop-based versions
1
. Thus, I situate Facebook as an
example of a larger class of media, MSNPs, that in different modes and configurations combine
“mobile” with “social” through weak or strong communication patterns. Despite my reluctance

1
For the purposes of this dissertation this brief overview should suffice to orient the reader. For more detail, a
chapter I authored in an edited volume to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in May 2015 further discusses MSNPs
as a co-evolution of SNSs and mobile media. Additionally, an area of future research is what I term “mobile
collectives,” or how affordances of MSNPs more broadly cohere different types of social ties.
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to add to the alphabet soup of acronyms, I coined this term to provide clarity. Calling SNSs
“sites” is a misnomer as they are now predominantly used on mobile devices (G. Goggin, 2014).
Yet, neither are they “Locative and Mobile Social Networks” (LMSNs), a term that largely
emerged in response to predictions that location would be a boon for corporate speculation in
mobile expansion (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2010). In large part, LMSNs made claims that
communication would be altered with the addition of location, which would enable new types of
practices. Yet, as Humphreys noted, the line between “locative” and “non-locative” has been
blurred (Humphreys et al., 2013) because practices with mobile social networks can have little to
do with location per se (Humphreys, 2012). That is, individuals using mobile Facebook can use
locative services such as geo-tagging and check-ins, but it isn’t clear many do (Brenner, 2012) or
attach significant meaning to the practice (Frith, 2014). Lee Humphreys referred nearly a decade
ago to a “mobile social network system” (Humphreys, 2007); it is in this mold that I situate
MSNPs as sites of many potential forms of communication (Marvin, 2013). Echoing decades of
research in adoption literature, mobile media will not be adopted if it does not allow users to
achieve a desired goal (Ling & Helmersen, 2000). In the parlance of this dissertation, just
because a potential form of communication exists doesn’t mean that it will resonate with their
practices. As will be discussed in chapter two, communicative affordances can unearth why
mobile social media come to matter for quotidian communication that acts on social structure in
new ways.
This dissertation is about how mobile media, particularly the MSNP Facebook, alter
social cohesion with predominately offline social groups. Social cohesion — the relationships
developed between individuals and larger groups — defines the discipline of sociology
(Durkheim, 1947; Simmel, 1898). Because I am a communication scholar foremost, I consider
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communication to be the mechanism behind change in social structure. This is hardly a radical
position; since Gabriel Tarde (1898) communication has been considered an agent of change
through particular social processes. This dissertation, too, focuses on particular processes that are
both eminently social and communicative. Accordingly, I here describe how communication has
long been understood to have an intimate relationship with social cohesion.
Cooley famously defined communication as, “the mechanism through which human
relations exist and develop — all the symbols of the mind, together with the means of conveying
them through space and preserving them in time” (Cooley, 1909, p. 61). Moving from
interactionist to mediated perspectives, John Durham Peters (2001) describes communication, far
from idealized notions, as interaction that “will never be a meeting of cogitos but at its best may
be a dance in which we sometimes touch” (p. 268). By this definition everyday communication
is more ephemeral and constantly negotiated. In this dissertation I suggest Mobile Facebook is a
way to maintain offline social ties through mobile media, which enables a constant stream of
phatic (Malinowski, 1923) messages that re-affirm or alter relationships rather than radically
creating new ones. I draw on Rich Ling’s (2008) theory of “bounded solidarity” where mobile
media serve to re-affirm social ties. Drawing on Durkheim, Ling suggests that everyday rituals
serve to develop norms of use among close friends and family, the mobile equivalent of a dinner-
table conversation. In this way he argues that “the mobile phone tips the balance in the favor of
the intimate sphere of friends and family” (p. 159). The question then becomes if and how
mobile social media — e.g. Facebook — still has this character, despite that it also connects
individuals with a wider network of weak ties, many of whom are more casual friends than
intimate interlocutors. The benefit of weak ties has long been noted in network sociology
(Granovetter, 1973, 1983) and computer-mediated communication (Nicole B. Ellison, Gray,
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Vitak, Lampe, & Fiore, 2013; Nicole B. Ellison, Vitak, Gray, & Lampe, 2014; J. Vitak &
Ellison, 2012). As I will discuss, despite interest among mobile communication scholars, the
impact of weak ties on mobile communication has been more elusive.
This empirical portion of this dissertation collects and interprets data on the ways young
parents draw on the communicative affordances of mobile media to maintain and escalate
relationships preeminently created offline but maintained through online social networks. Young
parents were selected as a group because they are of a group that has largely adopted mobile
media (Brenner, 2012), are going through a difficult life transition (Dyer, 1963; LeMasters,
1957), and are in need of social and emotional support (Doty & Dworkin, 2014). The everyday
practices of parents documenting family life, solving child-related problems, and maintaining
social contact with friends and family during a time of lessened physical mobility make them a
compelling test case for the questions posed here. Further, compared with the abundance of
research on how college-aged students use social media, new parents remain an under-researched
group (Bartholomew, Schoppe-Sullivan, Glassman, Kamp Dush, & Sullivan, 2012). Social
capital perspectives discussed in chapter 3 provide an inroad to discussing social and emotional
support they need (Doty & Dworkin, 2014). Tie conversion refers to the strengthening of latent
or weak ties (Haythornthwaite, 2002). Re-activated ties are thought to provide benefits of both
“weak” and “strong” ties (Levin, Walter, & Murnighan, 2011). This topic is discussed in greater
depth in chapter four. Chapter five brings these ideas together and describes the challenges new
parents negotiate during this stage of life and connects both mobile media and social media to
social capital and tie conversion outcomes.

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Mobile Social Media and Sociality
This dissertation addresses a key disagreement in communication. Mobile media has been
alternately argued to facilitate sociability between individuals and their offline networks, or sap
it. Echoing the facilitation argument, Howard Rheingold (2002) proposed that mobile media
might lead to rapid congregation where social ties are reflected in offline space. He argues that
weak ties can be powerful, drawn on and strengthened in times of need. Wellman and Rainie
(2012) revived this notion, positioning “just in time” informational uses of mobile media as
particularly important to obtaining social support during a shift from offline to online meso-level
social groups (Wellman, 2002). Negative predictions are that mobile media sapping our ability to
maintain intimate social connections with our strong ties (Turkle, 2012), even preferring bonding
over bridging (Crawford, 2008). Sherry Turkle countered that mobile devices are a net negative
for close relationships. To Turkle, we are compelled to check devices at the expense of face-to-
face interactions with our friends and family (Turkle, 2012). Mobile media thus sap the strength
of family relationships, resulting in what she terms the “death of conversation.” Several points
can be made about Turkle’s framing. First, she operates under what Nathan Jurgenson terms
“digital dualism” (Jurgenson, 2012) where mediated communication is assumed to be less
important than in-person ties. The perceived rudeness of youth as they fervently text is
transformed into an omen for the demise of our social groups. I believe quite the opposite, that
mobile social media is an increasingly vital lifeline for our social ties rather than a disrupter of
them. Turkle also mirrors early fears about the internet, which was initially thought to encourage
communication but encourage social groups to atrophy (R. Kraut et al., 1998). These effects
largely dissipated in subsequent research but still supported a “rich get richer” approach to online
support (S. Kraut & Crawford, 2002).
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In this dissertation I employ a ritualistic notion of communication. Rich Ling’s notion of
“bounded solidarity” (Richard Ling, 2008) provides a framework for testing these predictions.
Through bounded solidarity, social ties predominantly created “offline” are reinforced through
rituals mediated by mobile media, increasingly intimacy and mutual trust (Rich Ling, 2008a,
2008b). A ritual perspective on communication has been well-established (Carey, 1989) and is
the appropriate perspective through which to consider Ling’s thesis. In this dissertation I bring
bounded solidarity together with social capital (James S. Coleman, 1988; Lin, 2001). The
relationship of mobile media to social capital is still ambiguous (Rowan Wilken, 2009), but
appears related to strategic and social uses of mobile media. For example, social uses of mobile
media result in bonding capital accrual while more informational uses do not (Chan, 2013).
Recently scholars in mobile communication have moved towards considering how qualities of
technology align with pre-existing practices (Couldry, 2012). For example, Roderic Crooks
(2013) argues that Grindr, an app for gay men (and other men-seeking-men), aligns with cultural
norms of anonymity and signaling. In this dissertation I test practices as particular processes for
social capital accrual and connect these practices with particular outcomes through
communicative affordances.
Predictions about sociality on mobile social media partly echo predictions about whether
the Internet can foster community ties (Baym, 1995). To briefly revisit these debates, in the
offline context, “community” is a normative concept linked to vitality of society (Tönnies, 2001)
and communicates conviviality and warmth (R. Williams, 1985). Early examinations proposed
that online communication can foster similarly strong and supportive relationships as offline,
facilitating support and in-person meetings (Rheingold, 2001). Successive work has drawn more
on how community has been considered as a sense of belonging (Abfalter, Zaglia, & Mueller,
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2012; McMillan, 1996) that is symbolically constructed (Cohen, 1992). For example, Calhoun
proposes that the key facet of community is solidarity rather than locality (Calhoun, 1998).
However, by the mid to late 90s the online-offline debate became increasingly contentious
(Baym, 1995). Kendall (2011) pointed out that this debate between real communities and
pesudocommunities has “led to a certain degree of wheel-spinning as researchers over and over
feel it necessary to assert that online communities are indeed possible” (p. 314). Different
factions largely settled on different notions of community that best fit their discipline and
inquiry. One qualitative difference with Facebook is that it fosters an ego-centric network that
can be drawn on for a variety of goals. I take this “toolkit” perspective (Smock, Ellison, Lampe,
& Wohn, 2011) where Facebook is the site of practices that foster connections between
individuals and a variety of social ties (boyd, 2010; Papacharissi & Networked, 2011). These ties
can offer a range of social and instrumental support through bridging and bonding (Nicole B.
Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007).
Services like Facebook, because they rely on a singular identity and offline friendships
accumulated over time, tend to facilitate connections between individuals and offline ties
(Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010) rather than online-only. Communication in an ego-
centric network reaches both weak and strong ties. This has been termed “context collapse”
(Marwick & boyd, 2010) because it exposes communication to parties that are often separated
offline. While Marwick and boyd generally focus on how youth navigate potentially negative
effects of context collapse, Vitak (2012) focuses more overtly on how broadcast messages can be
beneficial to maintaining relationships. The “strength of weak ties” (Granovetter, 1973, 1983) is
amplified, given that ego-centric networks provide a way to store more social ties than would
otherwise easily be accessed. As I will review shortly, weak ties are more likely to connect
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18
individuals to beneficial repositories of information (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2013; J. Vitak &
Ellison, 2012). Strong ties are more likely to be useful for bonding, characterized by frequent
contact and emotional support (Jessica Vitak, Ellison, & Steinfeld, 2011).
This dissertation tests whether mobile social media are the site of bridging or bonding for
young parents. The movement of SNSs to mobile is notable because mobile devices historically
have primarily been used to sustain strong ties (particularly family) more than weak ones
(Richard Ling, 2008; Rowan Wilken, 2009). That is, mobile phones have rarely been considered
to be sites of communication with weak ties, as they have been restricted until recently to SMS
texting and voice calling. Wilken concluded that “mobile telephony use can be seen to permit a
restricted or jaundiced form of social capital by denying a core ingredient: access to ‘weaker
links’ via bridging forms of social interaction” (Rowan Wilken, 2009, p. 138). Humphreys
suggests that mobile media enable “the potential for slightly broader, more diffuse
communication” (Humphreys, 2012, p. 502). This is of interest to computer-mediated
communication scholars, who have tended to focus on information variety that bridging capital
provides access to (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2013; J. Vitak & Ellison, 2012), with bonding as a
secondary concern (Jessica Vitak et al., 2011).

Summary
This dissertation takes an affordances approach on connecting practices with particular
outcomes for social capital accrual and tie conversion. This effort fills several gaps in the
academic literature. First, it draws from a theoretical lineage of affordances in ecological
psychology, sociology and communication to conceptualize “communicative affordances.”
Communicative affordances form the base of what Nicole Ellison terms “activity-centric
analyses,” or high-level socio-technical shaping of practices (N. Ellison & boyd, 2013, p. 165;
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19
Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2013; J. Vitak & Ellison, 2012). These analyses tend to be normative
social science framings of the practices of a particular group of interest. While my focus is on
mobile social media, a communicative affordances framework more broadly informs the
application of affordances within communication (Majchrzak, Faraj, Kane, & Azad, 2013; Neff,
Jordan, McVeigh-Schultz, & Gillespie, 2012; Treem & Leonardi, 2012).
Second, little work has focused on the move from SNSs to MSNPs as a particular
technology of interest. With few exceptions (S. W. Campbell & N. Kwak, 2010; Chayko, 2008;
Humphreys, 2010, 2012, 2013; S. Quinn & Oldmeadow, 2013) scholars have focused on either a
broader category of mobile media or LMSNs as a specific site of inquiry. This dissertation
employs mixed methodologies to connect communicative affordances with effects on offline
social groups through mobile media. This dissertation updates mobile communication’s focus on
strong ties, which has typically focused on bonding over bridging (Rowan Wilken, 2009). It also
responds to trends in computer-mediated communication that pays equal attention to patterns of
individual and technological agency.
Finally, despite a groundswell of research on college students’ use of social media and
social capital, scant research has been performed on individuals in other stages of life, such as
young parents (Bartholomew et al., 2012; Doty & Dworkin, 2014). Parenthood is just one of
many critical junctures communication researchers might consider when thinking through how
technology might positively impact individuals’ lives. To accomplish these three goals I use
interviews (N = 10) to examine practices, and an online survey (N = 262) to connect these
practices with outcomes. In-person interviews with new parents in the Los Angeles area provide
detailed contextual data about how affordances are drawn on by new parents, a group for whom
social support is particularly needed (Dyer, 1963; LeMasters, 1957). Mobile social media, as
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20
with SNSs, may be a vital link to obtain informational assistance and social support by drawing
on social capital (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2007). Despite a wealth of research in mobile
communication, computer-mediated communication scholars employing social capital
perspectives generally have not considered how SNSs are accessed differently “when a user is
out and about with a mobile device” (Steinfeld, Ellison, Lampe, & Vitak, 2012, p. 11). User
practices are mechanisms for accruing social capital and tie conversion, which are then measured
using questions on outcomes.
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2. Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media
Mobile technologies such as “smart phones” and tablets have been rapidly adopted
worldwide. Mobile media are now the primary online connection for most individuals. Despite
this rapid rise, theories of how mobile media relate to communication patterns and outcomes
remain scarce. An affordances approach promises a high-level framework for researching how
technologies such as mobile media are integrated into routines, affecting subsequent patterns of
communication. In this chapter I first consider the theoretical lineage of affordances and how this
perspective demonstrates advantages from related theories. Second, I draw on affordances to
define “communicative affordances,” a perspective that takes communication as a central
concern. Finally, I synthesize literature from mobile communication to formulate a typology of
communicative affordances of mobile media: portability, availability, locatability, and
multimediality. Suggestions are then made for future research employing a communicative
affordances framework.

Introduction
Mobile devices have become part of daily communication repertoires, having passed the
point of mainstream adoption in many countries (Brenner, 2012). Early research on cell phones
found dyadic communication with close ties through voice and SMS texting (Ling, 2004b).
These evolved into “smartphones” and tablets that provide a wider variety of options for online
communication. Most recently, interest focused on location, enabling individuals to connect the
physical and digital social spheres (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012; Farman, 2012; Gordon & de
Souza e Silva, 2011) through features such as “geo-tagging" (Humphreys & Liao, 2011). It has
become clear that mobile media afford forms of communication not otherwise possible. Yet,
which technological features impact communicative outcomes and why? How do users recognize
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22
and take advantage of actions that mobile media make possible? Why do possibilities for mobile
communication differ from those of face-to-face or computer-mediated communication?
In this chapter I argue these questions can be addressed by considering the affordances of
mobile media. An affordance refers to the “mutuality of actor intentions and technology
capabilities that provide the potential for a particular action” (Majchrzak et al., 2013, p. 39). That
it, an affordance is an interaction between an individual’s subjective perception of utility and
objective qualities of an technology (Gibson, 1986). This perspectives negotiates between poles
of technological determinism (Peter, 2011) and social constructivism (MacKenzie, 1985). A
single technology can result in multiple action possibilities because individuals have agency in
how they use it (Oudshoorn & Pinch, 2003). These possibilities are finite and relatively stable
(Hogan, 2009, p. 28), “framing” possibilities for communication (Hutchby, 2001).
A communicative affordances perspective builds on recent work that has applied
affordances theory to describe how technologies such as social media (Majchrzak et al., 2013;
Treem & Leonardi, 2012) and social network sites (boyd, 2010) alter communicative practices.
This chapter promotes a communicative affordances perspective on mobile media in three
movements. First, I draw on ecological psychology (Gibson, 1982, 1986) and communication
(Majchrzak et al., 2013; Treem & Leonardi, 2012), demonstrating the advantages of a
communicative affordances perspective as compared with other theories. Affordances has been a
topic of interest in the last decade of mobile communication (Boase, 2008; Helles, 2013; Katz,
2007; Ruston, 2012), which presents a rich set of literature to draw on. This literature is
consolidated to propose a set of four communicative affordances of mobile media: portability,
availability, locationality, and multimediality. Future directions of research involving
communicative affordances are suggested.
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23

An Affordance Perspective
James Gibson (Gibson, 1986) defined affordances as related to perceptions of the utility of an
object drawn from environmental cues. To Gibson, an affordance is relational, depending on “the
particular ways in which an actor, or set of actors, perceives and uses [an] object” (Gibson, 1986,
p. 145). A single object can be interpreted to afford various different uses. A round inflated
sphere the size of a ball has an innate quality of “ball-ness.” Kicking or dribbling the ball would
each be an equally correct use of the affordances of a ball. Affordances in ecological psychology
are created not by perception but in interaction between subjective interpretation and objective
qualities of an object (Schmidt, 2007). That is, they exist separately from perception but are
activated by it (Hutchby, 2001).
Gibson proposed perception was unique to species and derived from observing an object in
its environment (Gibson, 1979, p. 129). Perception of utility was immediate – a lizard did not
“see” a rock on a sunny day with no predators around but rather “place to sun myself.” The rock
would be said to “afford basking.” A Gibsonian lineage considers seeing in one’s environment to
be automatically linked with perception of utility. By contrast, Gaver suggests there exist
“hidden affordances” that are not perceived but alter utility (Gaver, 1991, p. 80). Norman (1999)
similarly distinguished between “affordances” and “perceived affordances,” stressing that
designers should maximized the latter. I will return to these points later, as they inform how
affordances translate to communication. For now, it is important to note that Gibson’s theoretical
base in ecological psychology rejected positivist stances on cognitive processes (Michaels,
2003). Social scientists have since applied the general concept of affordances to empirical
research on mediated communication.
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Sociology and communication scholars were initially driven by an interest in delineating how
particular technologies extend or alter communication, without taking a deterministic perspective
that technologies have immediate and uniform effects (Peter, 2011; Sturken, Thomas, & Ball-
Rokeach, 2004). Barry Wellman et al. (2003) suggested that “social affordances” were the result
of technological shifts that emphasized networked individualism, particularly direct to person
contact. Jeff Boase (2008), who like Bernie Hogan came out of Wellman’s group, defined
affordances as “intrinsic properties of communication technologies” (p. 4). His take on
affordances implies a cognitive process where individuals seek a “congruency between
opportunities that [particular communication media] provide and the characteristics of ties with
whom they are used to communicate” (p. 4). In Boase’s formulation individuals are aware of
relative benefits of technologies and how they augment communication patterns. boyd (2010)
similarly defined “structural affordances” as “properties of bits… [that] introduce new
possibilities for interaction” (p. 39). Her interests were primarily on how meso-level interactions
were altered and negotiated in these environments, particularly by youth (boyd, 2014). These
scholars productively drew attention to how technology use is a negotiation between
technological determinism and social constructivism (Oudshoorn & Pinch, 2003), even as they
stress that affordances reside in the technologies.
Communication scholars emphasized a more relational perspective on affordances (Fulk
& Yuan, 2013; Leonardi, 2013; Majchrzak et al., 2013; Treem & Leonardi, 2012). That is,
affordances are thought to exist in the interaction between an individual’s subjective perception
of utility and objective qualities of a technology. Majchrzak, Faraj, Kane and Azad (Majchrzak
et al., 2013) define affordances as existing “not as latent capability innate to the technology, but
as a potentiality” (p. 39) activated by certain groups. Scholars from design emphasized the
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25
importance of cultural context in affordances (Sun, 2012). Caution here should be noted about
succumbing to a perspective of contextual specificity where action only emerges in situ
(Suchman, 1987). The utility of affordances for communication scholarship lies in their
intersubjectivity. According to Jessica Vitak and Nicole Ellison, affordances are high-level
frameworks to describe how technology alters communicative practices (J. Vitak & Ellison,
2012). Context is thus one factor that affects individuals’ interpretation of technological utility,
but it is not from context alone that actions (or communicative affordances) emerge. According
to Vitak & Ellison, an affordances perspective is instrumental and relatively normative, where
technologies frame potential actions.

Comparing Affordances with Previous Theories of Technology Use
An affordance perspective highlights relationships between individuals and technologies in
ways distinct from other theories. Medium specificity proposes that uses of technology use stem
from a medium’s intrinsic qualities. That is, technology alters the reach and quality of our senses,
as a medium alters “patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance” (McLuhan &
Lapham, 1994, p. 18). Effects of technology are immediate and uniform, affecting perception
rather than vice-versa, leaving little room for discussing how individuals interpret technology for
various purposes. The perspective of social constructivism or “social shaping” (MacKenzie,
1985) focuses on the inverse question: how do social and cultural forces influence technology’s
development (however, see: Oudshoorn & Pinch, 2003)? Generally this work shies away from
positivism, considering history as being too complex to be predictive. While this perspective has
been useful for considering the dynamics of technological change, social constructivism has been
criticized for having an “almost total disregard for the social consequences of technical choice”
(Winner, 1993, p. 368).
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While several quantitative social-scientific theories might be relevant, in the interest of space
I primarily consider the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis, 1989, 1993). Perceived
usefulness and perceived ease of use are factors developed in TAM that may inform an
affordances framework. However, in crucial ways, affordances theory addresses several
shortcomings of TAM. TAM has been criticized for simplicity and lack of a mechanism, relying
on behavioral theories such as the theory of planned action (Bagozzi, 2007). Outcomes of
interest are adoption of innovations (leading to acceptance or rejection), whereas affordances
accepts that a single technology can be employed by individuals towards different goals. TAM
tends to focus on cognitive processes resulting in adoption of a technology in particular ways
such as job-office applications and e-commerce (King & He, 2006). In other words, the primary
outcome of interest with TAM is how to get a particular population to use technology in a certain
way. The question with affordances is how a particular technology leads to, or affords, actions
that align with practices, resulting in altered communication (Treem & Leonardi, 2012).
In summary, medium specificity, social constructivism, and the technology acceptance model
are not sufficient to explain the ways mobile media alter patterns of communication (Hutchby,
2001). Individual agency is downplayed in medium specificity theory, which suggests that
effects of technologies are both widespread and immediate. Typically social constructivism
follows the social contexts through which technologies arise rather than how technologies alter
practices. The technology acceptance model focuses exhaustively on factors that affect
perception of utility, but lacks a theoretical mechanism and is “unable to account for the rich
scenarios of local uses that unfolded in the field” (Sun, 2012, p. 96). By contrast, a
communicative affordances approach pays equal attention to how possibilities for
communication are perceived and interpreted as it does to qualities of technology.
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Defining Communicative Affordances
Communicative affordances are defined as an interaction between subjective perceptions
of utility and objective qualities of the technology that alters communicative practices or habits.
Extending Hutchy (2001), they are “functional and relational aspects which frame, while not
determining, the possibilities for agentic action in relation to an object” (p. 444). Similar to other
scholars (Hutchby, 2001; Ruston, 2012; Treem & Leonardi, 2012), I focus on a domain of
communication. Communication has been implicit in definitions of social affordances that
describe how “perceptual cues” (Hogan, 2009, p. 22) enable individuals to interpret and act on
their social network differently. Hsieh (2012) suggests that technologies “posses different
capabilities for communication.” Extending this line of thought, communicative affordances
involve communication in two ways: they are evaluated through communication and alter
communication. It should be noted that my perspective on communication tends to be symbolic
rather than informational. That is, I highlight the practices that technologies afford rather than
focusing on effects of particular modalities (Daft & Lengel, 1986). Communicative affordances
are thus aligned with a relational perspective of affordances focused on actions – “coordinated
movements, guided by information, in the service of some goal” (2003, p. 138).
Helles (2013) used the phrase “communicative affordances” in the context of mobile
media. While Helles focused on synchronicity and audience characteristics, the formulation
developed here considers the symbolic nature of communication as expressed in practices or
habits. It should also be noted that this typology resembles many of Ruston’s “critical
affordances” of mobile media (2012), although his formulation is theoretically distinct; Ruston
proposes affordances “exist in the cultural imaginary” (p. 26) and should be used as “tools to
critique and analyze” (p. 25). By comparison, of the concept of communicative affordances
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28
employed here is oriented towards empirical communication research. In other words, while the
typology is similar to Ruston, my formulation of affordances is quite different.
A communicative affordances perspective offers several advantages to discussing the
relationship between individual and technological agency from the previous literature. First, it
does not privilege either technological determinism or social constructivism (Baym, 2010),
instead highlighting micro-level interactions between social and technical actors (Neff et al.,
2012). Affordances navigate a middle ground between perspectives that posit actions result from
technology (Winner, 1989) or social forces alone shape technology’s development (MacKenzie,
1985). A communicative affordances approach also focuses on the impact of technology for
communication beyond purely technological classification schemes. An “affordance” is broader
than the buttons, screens, and operating systems of mobile devices. In other words,
communicative affordances are high level, affecting classes of practices (J. Vitak & Ellison,
2012) and not simply “bundles of features” (Faraj & Azad, 2012, p. 255). While a focus on
features may have advantages (Fulk & Gould, 2009), single features may produce only minor
meaningful differences in practices and subsequent effects. A communicative affordances
approach also invites historical comparisons. For example, Woodruff and Aoki (2004) argue that
the rapid adoption of “push to talk” cellular radios is due to similar affordances to instant
messaging on personal computers. By tracing practices or habits across periods and technologies
we can follow
Communicative affordances provide an inroad to considering habitual use of technologies
for certain goals. Gibson linked perception to intrinsic animalistic needs such as hunger and
survival (Gibson, 1986), which he referred to as being “directly perceived” (Gibson, 1979). A
communicative affordances perspective deviates from a purely Gibsonian notion of
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automatically perceived “needs” and opens up discussion to factors affecting perception.
Perception of utility is developed in relation to goals rather than animalistic needs (Ball-
Rokeach, 1985). Communicative affordances likely do not create the goal an individual is trying
to achieve – a determinist perspective – but enable a new way to accomplish it. For example, the
practice of sending notices to announce the birth of a child used to be accomplished by mail or
congregation. In the current day the broadcast affordances of social network sites (boyd, 2010)
provide a new way to achieve this goal (J. Vitak & Ellison, 2012). Social network sites surely did
not create the practice of introducing one’s child to a community. However, it is a more efficient
way to accomplish that introduction, even as it elicits concerns of visibility and appropriateness
that were less present in the example of mail, which was not a broadcast medium.
Evaluating the utility of digital media for goals is not solely achievable by visual
inspection alone. Communicative affordances can be uncovered by users (Hutchby, 2001;
Norman, 1999) through learning and tinkering. This differs from Gibson’s affordances, as he
“rejected… external-physical and internal-mental processes” as explanatory mechanisms for
perception (Greeno, 1994, p. 336). Opening up the question of what influences perception, we
can conclude that cues denoting utility for particular goals can be observed, learned or
discovered (Hutchby, 2001, p. 449), affecting successive usage in an ongoing cycle of norms and
usage that occurs around affordances. Bernie Hogan (2009) similarly suggests that social
affordances are derived from “cues that connote social structure in such a way that individuals
can act on this social structure differently” (p. 27). Trial-and-error has long been observed by
users in mobile communication (Palen, Salzman, & Youngs, 2000). This cycle of use leads to the
altering of technological practices as additional utility is uncovered. Sun (2012) similarly notes
that affordances develop partly through ongoing use. Hsieh (2012) suggests that skills are related
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to perception of utility and technology selection from multiple possible modes of
communication. Quite contrary to ecological psychology’s lack of concern for cognitive factors
influencing perception (Michaels, 2003), perception of fit for a task (Davis, 1989) has been
found to be composed of a number of sub-factors such as perceived ease of use, perceived
usefulness, and symbolic value (Negahban & Chung, 2014).
Finally, a communicative affordances approach tends to focus on active rather than passive
technology usage. Users might be said to maximize affordances by appropriating technology
through creative uses (Dourish, 2003; Eglash, 2004). However, this creativity has limits;
everyday users are not able to create affordances (Hutchby, 2001). Altering communicative
affordances requires, beyond novel interpretation of a particular feature, radically altering the
technology enough to afford new ways to achieve goals that would be difficult or impossible to
accomplish otherwise. While a complete consideration of how affordances change over time is
outside of the scope of this chapter, a brief discussion follows for purposes of clarifying a
definition of communicative affordances. Communicative affordances generally change through
a relatively long-term process related to political economy (Goggin, 2011). Macro entities (such
as device manufacturers) tend to control the mainstream adoption of technology and manage
applications developed for their platforms (Gerard Goggin, 2011b). The communicative
possibilities of a technology may change in response to market demands, technical advances, and
feedback from consumers (Gerard Goggin, 2011a).
Generally speaking, individuals are not capable of creating affordances. Two exceptions
include how affordances can be created by the designer (Murray, 2011) and altered by the hacker
(Jordan, 2008). Improving the responsiveness and effectiveness of technologies to better address
individual needs has long been an interest among designers (Norman, 2002). While designers
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create technology from the ground up, hackers are an extreme example of technology
appropriation (Elgash, Croissant, Di Chiro, & Fouché, 2002). They are able to structurally alter
technologies – what Elgash et al. (2002) terms “reinvention” – rather than just interpret their uses
in more or less creative ways. Tim Jordan describes hackers as “warriors of technological
determinism” (Jordan, 2008) because their expertise enables them to alter material properties of
technologies, which in turn affect individual agency.

Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media
Mobile media are a class of mobile devices including cell phones, smartphones and
tablets that integrate multimedia (typically a microphone and camera), an always-on network
connection, and often, the running of mobile software or “apps.” The following typology of
communicative affordances was synthesized from the previous decade of literature in mobile
communication, a sub-discipline of communication that has addressed how mobile media
augment communication (Table 1). In the process I demonstrate how communicative affordances
can be conceptualized. This is appropriate, as affordances has been suggested as an area of
expansion in CMC (Bradner, 2001) and mobile communication (Helles, 2013). This typology is
complementary to those proposed for social network sites (boyd, 2010), social media (Majchrzak
et al., 2013; Treem & Leonardi, 2012), and new media (Hogan, 2009). A communicative
affordance “frames the practices through which technologies come to be involved in the weave
of ordinary conduct” (Hutchby, 2001, p. 450). Because technology may afford multiple uses,
examples of practices are provisional and are intended to be exemplary rather than exhaustive.
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Table 1: Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media
Affordance Communicative Uses Examples from Literature
Portability
• During commute or
waiting
(Bayer & Campbell, 2012; Ito, Okabe, &
Matsuda, 2005; Rheingold, 2002)
• Domestic (Haddon, 2006)
• Workplace (Judy Wajcman, Bittman, & Brown, 2009)

Availability • Multiplexity (Boase, 2008)
• Increased frequency (Katz & Aakhus, 2002; Licoppe, 2004)
• Directness
(Scott W. Campbell & Park, 2008; Rainie &
Wellman, 2012)

Locatability • Coordination
(Ling, 2004a; Ling & Yttri, 2002; Rheingold,
2002)
• Surveillance (Humphreys, 2007, 2011, 2012)
• Locational identity
(de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012; Schwartz &
Halegoua, 2014)

Multimediality • Screen sharing (Brown, Green, & Harper, 2002)
• Image production (Rich Ling, 2008b)

• Synchronous video
streaming
(Couldry, 2004; Thorson et al., 2013)

Portability
Mark Weiser (1994) famously wrote that “the world is not a desktop.” In the early 2000s
Howard Rheingold (2002) marveled at a spectacle that was quite unusual for the period: youth
texting on the subway, while walking, and throughout the urban spaces of Japan. Portability is
the most archetypically Gibsonian of the four mobile affordances because it is often evaluated
through visual observation. Portability is defined as perception of physical characteristics of size
and weight, as well as those evaluated through use, such as battery life. These factors lead to use
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in different places and contexts, as mobile devices are easily transported and carried on the body
(Ito et al., 2005). Smartphones may now have processing power on part with computers, but
portability is what fundamentally differentiates mobile media from desktops. As Arnold (2003)
puts it, “the very point of the mobile phone’s affordances is that the user is able to move in the
world” (p. 243).
Communicative affordances can range from high to low (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). A
devices’ affordance of portability similarly ranges from high (smartphone) to low (laptop),
qualities that lead to their integration in a variety of social contexts. Tablets are carried and
brought out to take a picture, much as smartphones are. However, it’s likely that their size keeps
them stored in a bag rather than on the body during the day and on the bedside table every night.
Similarly, one might bring a laptop out to the post office, but using a trackpad, keyboard, and
large screen while standing in line would certainly be awkward. “Wearable” technologies have
been designed to be even more portable than mobile phones, fitting on the finger, around the
neck or on the wrist. Laptops, mobile phones, and wearable technologies can be considered to
have low, medium and high degrees of portability, respectively. Portability is most evident in the
diverse contexts in which mobile media are used, such as in the car (Bayer & Campbell, 2012).
Mobile media also lead to a dialectical need for “balance” as family communications enter the
workplace and work communications intrude on home life (Judy Wajcman et al., 2009).
Here a connection can be drawn with other genres of media that afford portability. For
example, the book permitted the written word to travel, and also to be used as objects to divide
space and attention during transit (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012). However, previous media
genres to cellular phones have not generally allowed for bidirectional communication. Portability
is thus a necessary condition for mobile media to enable other communicative affordances.
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Hogan (2009) notes that affordances can drawn on in combination, and it might be rare for
mobile media users to draw on just one at any given time. Mobile media afford constant
availability for being contacted and contacting others. For example, a teenager might receive a
push notification from Facebook’s mobile messaging app as he is out at dinner and take a
moment to reply, perhaps sharing his reply with a friend. He is drawing on communicative
affordances of portability and availability.

Availability
Mobile phones were initially thought initial to enable the potential for “perpetual contact”
(Katz & Aakhus, 2002) between individuals and their social networks. Yet, this notion is
arguably deterministic, as the negotiation of availability is more subtle. Strategies of
disconnection or partial connection (Light & Cassidy, 2014) on mobile media become necessary
to navigate the difficulties of being constantly connected. In other words, individuals navigate
the affordance of availability for specific purposes. Availability is, like a radio, “tuned” (Coyne,
2010) within a user’s comfort zone. For example, many do not find it necessary to have push
notifications turned on, which notify users through a sound or vibration that they have received a
message. Affordances can make communication possible, but it is up to individuals to use these
affordances in more or less strategic ways. For example, it’s common for users to turn off push
notifications from mobile Facebook while leaving voice calling on. In a more subtle example,
Quan-Haase and Collins (2008) refer to the technical affordance of availability to describe
students’ careful negotiation of instant messaging where an away message can be a form of
communication (Hogan, 2009, p. 45). Individuals strategically draw on the affordance of
availability to produce variations in how they might be reached. Rather than being an “on
switch” to constant social interaction, availability is often negotiated and filtered in response to
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35
changing social contexts. This is Licoppe’s point when he states that “we cannot equate
(technical) accessibility and (social) availability” (Licoppe, 2004, p. 137).
Mobile media’s communicative affordances of availability can be thought of as a
combination of multiplexity, direct contact, and increased frequency. Boase (2008) discusses the
multiplexity of communication on mobile media, where texting, voice calls, and social media are
all available simultaneously. Individuals maintain an awareness of their connections to different
people and tend to be connected with individuals they are close to using multiple modes
(Haythornthwaite, 2005). Individuals they are not close with they may only be connected with
through Facebook. Others have noted the directness of communication to individuals. That is,
individual contact ability through mobile devices is a departure from calling a household, as with
“land line” phones that connect households. Finally, mobile media offer increased frequency of
communication across different physical locations. Licoppe’s notion of “connected presence”
(Licoppe, 2004) captures how mobile media alter the character of communication, which unfolds
through frequent short bursts rather than longer immersive interactions.

Locatability
Business interest in location started in earnest after restrictions on GPS accuracy were lifted
in 2000 (Gerard Goggin, 2011a). GPS-enabled mobile phones enabled new classes of location-
based services (LBSs) (Wilson, 2012) such as locative and mobile social networks (LMSNs) (de
Souza e Silva & Frith, 2010). These services were often positioned as enabling fundamentally
different from previous forms of communication. As Howard Rheingold observed, "knowing our
exact geographic location is one form of context awareness in which machines are better than
humans” (Rheingold, 2002, p. 97). This triggered a wave of interest from scholars curious how
location is dynamic, delivers useful information, and constitutes relationships (de Souza e Silva
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36
& Frith, 2012). De Souza e Silva and Frith defined location as “still defined by fixed
geographical coordinates, but they now acquire dynamic meaning as a consequence of the
constantly changing location-based information that is attached to them” (de Souza e Silva &
Frith, 2012, p. 9). Eric Gordon made an ontological argument that location was able to give
greater visibility to “local knowledge produced within the context of located information”
(Gordon, 2008, p. 4). Finally, Jason Farman (Farman, 2012) used location to enable “site-
specific storytelling” — narratives produced by small groups to encourage reflection.
Location were thought to enable new practices that drew on a layer of digital information that
existed on top of the offline world. Some scholars were interested in how location enabled
impromptu meetings (Rowan Wilken, 2010) that could scale up to groups or communities. For
example, Lee Humphreys (Humphreys, 2007) suggests check-ins on Dodgeball were a mode of
“social molecularization” where individuals come together to commune with those around them
without previously being close friends. Yet, as Goggin observes, “many of the enterprises and
applications spearheading mobile social software in its first decade simply have not survived”
(Gerard Goggin, 2011a, p. 122). They were absorbed by larger companies and their locative
functionalities incorporated into larger social network platforms and apps that leveraged locative
features but were not exclusively oriented around the thrill of locative discovery or socialization
in new groups.
Individuals were interpreting the affordance of locationality quite differnetly than an
industry-sponsored vision, often aligning with pre-existing practices more so than entirely new
ones. Jordan Frith’s work on Foursquare (2014) revealed a diverse set of meanings that
individuals attach to location. We might conclude that individuals maintain a more
heterogeneous set of practices with location than previously anticipated because the affordance
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37
of locatability can be leveraged in a wide variety of ways. Further, location is not defined
exclusively defined by one technical feature – GPS coordinates. For example, individuals can
and do say where they through SMS texting and phone calls (Laurier, 2000) to coordinate
meetings (Ling & Yttri, 2002). A variety of uses is germane to communicative affordances,
which stipulates that a single affordance can lead to multiple uses. Using a locative service to
signal desire for informal socialization may be technically possible but cumbersome if location
can be easily communicated through a statement like “Meet me at 7th and Spring.” Indeed,
surveys of everyday practices with mobile media indicate that people prefer to coordinate with
others through voice or text (Laursen & Szymanski, 2013) combined with mapping services
(Zickuhr, 2013). To be used, a technology must afford functionality that serves individuals’
goals. As Nir Eyal argued on the industry blog Techcrunch, mobile companies should become
experts in matching their products to user habits, rather than vice-versa (Eyal, 2012).

Multimediality
Taking pictures and videos through mobile devices are now a commonplace activity
(Lenhart, 2010). People judge smartphones on the quality of their cameras, which were first
noted in early study on Keitai in Japan (Ito et al., 2005). Initially, Nick Couldry proposed that
mobile media lead to synchronous communication. This “liveness” (Couldry, 2004) where visual
media provide a connection to unfolding events. Again, the impact of mobile media was not
immediate and uniform. The affordance of multimediality was perceived as useful in specific
instances by certain groups. During the Occupy encampment phase (Castells, 2012) Twitter was
employed to stream and upload videos taken on mobile devices through Twitter (Thorson et al.,
2013). Interestingly, production practices with mobile media, broadcast asynchronously to ego-
centric social networks, worked alongside desktop practices where remote users retweeted,
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remixed and recontextualized videos. Communicative affordances do not exist in a vacuum but
relay messages into a larger ecosystem (Donner & Walton, 2013).
Practices with multimedia shifted from primarily voice-based mobile phones to smartphones.
Van Dijck (2008) notes how the “increased deployment of digital cameras — including cameras
integrated in other communication devices — favours [sic] the functions of communication” (p.
58). Okabe and Ito (2006) describe three types of images produced: those for personal
enjoyment, everyday reporting, and intimate pictures between couples. Even though one might
have the potential to communicate an image immediately, many prefer to accumulate a larger set
of images to select from before posting. The integration of cameras with connected devices
corresponds with a rise in emotive (Hjorth, 2007) and communicative (Koskinen, 2007) visual
communication that supplements and extend existing practices. With few exceptions (Koskinen,
2007; Okabe & Ito, 2006), interest from social scientists on visual communication practices has
been on either its interpretation (Bakhshi, Shamma, & Gilbert, 2014) or its dark side. Rich Ling
found that sharing illicit pictures “had an important role in maintaining bonds and relationship
ties” through trust established through secret rituals (Rich Ling, 2008b, p. 16). Anna Tonks
(2012) found three photographic discourses among University students’ drinking habits: the
everyday, fun, and appropriate. Tonks considers the latter discourse to be reflect norms guided
by local peer groups, similar to Ling’s suggestion that such uses reflect a “local ideology”
(Richard Ling, 2008, p. 177). An open area of discussion for affordances scholarship is how a
single affordance can lead to both negative and positive outcomes (Majchrzak et al., 2013).

Constraints of Mobile Media
Affordances as “potential action” tends to focus on agency rather than constraining
relationships. They are broad classifications of how technologies facilitate social interactions.
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39
Yet, no technology can provide perfect communication. If only viewed in the positive mobile
media risk being positioned as simply enabling without considering factors that inhibit
communication and the flow of media through devices. This threatens to ignore restrictions
placed on mobile media by device manufacturers, “app stores,” and the physical nature of the
devices themselves (Gerard Goggin, 2011b). Constraints are often invoked alongside or bundled
with affordances to describe limitations to technologies for communication. For example, Nancy
Baym, in Personal Connections in the Digital Age, describes how mobile phones offer “unique
affordances, or packages of potentials and constraints, for communication” (Baym, 2010, p. 17).
Baym’s bundling echoes Hutchby’s statement that affordances “set limits on what it is possible
to do with, around, or via the artefact [sic]” (Hutchby, 2001, p. 453). Hogan (2009) confirms
affordances are generally considered to be thought of in the positive rather than negative.
Leonardi (2011) defines both affordances and constraints as perceived, but constraints can be
worked around by changing the environment or problem in an organizational setting. Donald
Norman describes a bicycle with holes for fingers (Norman, 1988, p. 12). The holes are an
affordance for gripping, while the size of the holes is a constraint. A bike designed for toddlers
would therefore be difficult to use by adults. Norman later expanded on different classifications
of constraints: physical, logical, and cultural (Norman, 1999). This scheme is sensible enough
from a designerly perspective, although he still differs from Gibson’s approach based in
perception. From a communication perspective it considerably muddies the water, as it expands
to include shared culture and cognitive factors.
My definition of constraints refers to material qualities of technology that shape social action.
Constraints are restrictions on user agency imposed by software and hardware. Unlike
affordances, which are high-level classifications of technologies, constraints have a smaller
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40
impact on usage. In many cases, constraints can be worked around. As Leonardi observes, to
achieve their goals in the face of constraints imposed by an obdurate piece of hardware or
software, people must change some other aspect of their environment” (Leonardi, 2011, p. 148).
In the case of mobile media, phones can be “jailbroken” to allow users to install software from
locations other than the app store (Burgess, 2012). These acts certainly require some
combination of education, creativity, and resources, but these tasks are not impossible. One
interview subject reported using google translate in combination with a mobile chat application
to have a conversation with her mother-in-law. The constraints of having to run single programs
on the screen at once and difficulty of cutting & pasting did not keep her from chatting with her
mother-in-law. This mode of communication was certainly cumbersome and likely frustrating,
although not impossible.
Not all uses of mobile media are negotiable. Jonathan Zittrain (2008) claimed that mobile
devices’ software and hardware restrictions is a significant difference from personal computers.
Individuals cannot hack a SIM card, which contains information to connect with cellular
networks through a carrier. The restriction of needing a SIM card is an objective condition that
cannot be worked around or hacked. Similarly, mobile operating systems might restrict what
files are able to be saved to an external memory card. Some software that requires significant
processing power, such as nonlinear video editing, cannot be run on mobile devices. The
political economy of mobile media permits certain uses to be sanctioned by device
manufacturers, while other uses remain impossible (Gerard Goggin, 2011a). My intention here is
to use constraints as a way to describe the former — how mobile media make certain uses
challenging — rather than the latter — objective conditions.
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I generally come to the same conclusion as others (Gerard Goggin, 2011a; Ling & Campbell,
2012), that mobile media is generally more conducive to uses and practices than it is constraining
to them. Constraints have not, as Zittrain initially thought, caused mobile media to be less useful
for practices. For example, Neha Kumar’s research on mobile users in India reveals an
underground economy around music (Kumar & Parikh, 2013). From a birds-eye view, one might
conclude, much as Zittrain did, that mobile media negative impact communication and flow of
media. However, Kumar found that users were found to rely on a complex array of
predominantly offline storefronts, device manufacturers, and social norms to obtain and enjoy
music. This is an illustration of Gerard Goggin’s contention that mobile media is a “platform for
culture” (Gerard Goggin, 2011a) where workarounds to constraints exist. According to Goggin,
there is a significant political economy of mobile media in western life that “locks down” certain
features, even as communities and cultures maneuver around these restrictions.
I define constraints are related to technical factors that impinge on the communicative utility
of mobile devices in ways that users would prefer. Constraints are therefore greater in number
than affordances, which are larger classification schemes for technologies. This definition differs
from Hogan’s “social constraints” (Hogan, 2009) and Norman’s taxonomy of constraints
(Norman, 1999), which I feel conflates material and cultural or social factors. Similar to how I
parse out affordances, I focus on the material qualities of technology for communication in my
definition of constraints. “Constraints” provides vocabulary to describe bumps in the road of
mobile communication that may restrict use, but can be overcome with effort. Scholars
employing concepts of technology appropriation (Bar, Pisani, & Weber, 2007a) and social
shaping (Oudshoorn & Pinch, 2003) demonstrate that there is an imperfect alignment between
endorsed and actual uses. Here I differ from scholars who view affordances and constraints as
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42
simply being mirror images of each other (Hutchby, 2001). The maneuvering and creative
appropriation noted by Kumar show that constraints, even in less affluent areas, can be overcome
through a marketplace teeming with vendors and entrepreneurs engaged in gray-area transactions
that are tacitly endorsed by the authorities. My participants are from the Los Angeles area, they
are more aligned with western infrastructures for mobile consumption, and I don’t take an actor-
network theory (ANT) approach to an entire system. Yet the same questions exist on a more
individualized scale: how might constraints of mobile media be pushed to accomplish specific
actions? As will become apparent, constraints can be overcome by, for example, sequencing
features to draw on different affordances in combination or asking technically-adept friends for
advice.
The constraints listed below emerged from interviews and serve as examples of distinctions
between “mobile” and “desktop” environments.

Serial Tasking
The limited interface of mobile devices generally mean that programs, although they may
technically be run in parallel by the operating system, are used in a serialized fashion. Generally
speaking, an app is started and then one must go to a new screen to run a different one.
Multitasking functions that are quite easy on desktops, tend to be difficult on mobile devices.
Interviewees report the most prominent advantage of using a desktop, after having a keyboard, is
the presence of a screen where programs are run in separate windows that can be arranged on the
screen. In a basic sense this allows for more information to be perceived on a screen. However,
this is not simply the extent of the utility of desktops. As anyone who has taught a classroom in
higher education in the last several years can tell you, students are quite adept at disguising
where their attention is directed. A student might keep a list of notes in Microsoft Word can be
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43
kept in the background to bring up over one’s Facebook feed when a professor happens to walk
behind her. She can be, from the front, get away with being perceived as “doing work.”

Saving and Sharing
Mobile devices are often used for media production. However, relaying and sharing media
can be more difficult. For example, copy & pasting — features missing entirely from the first
versions of the iPhone — still tends to be arduous. The highlight and then hold down to
cut/copy/paste on iPhones can be used for text but is useless for other media. On desktops users
can easily save files to the computer, whereas on mobile media this functionality tends to be
tightly controlled. This is because even if expansion for extra memory (such as in a micro-SD
card) is provided, such as in the case of a Samsung G4, this space may only be used for storing
media taken on the device itself. That is, one cannot simply load it up with MP3s and load them
up on the media playing software, as is common on general-purpose computers. Similarly, one
often cannot simply download videos from the internet using a torrent and add them to one’s
playlist on an iPhone, without (at minimum) jailbreaking the iPhone to remove these restrictions.

Media Processing
While applications are routinely made available for a wide range of image, video, and audio
editing features, they still tend to be less powerful and restricted than desktop versions. This is
partly a result of mobile processors being less powerful, and partly a result of enterprise
computing not yet viewing mobile media as suitable for “serious work.” One interview subject
reported only still needing to use his laptop for editing, encoding, and uploading files for his
podcast, functionality impossible on his mobile. He used his iPhone for every conceivable task
related to communication, with the exception of uploading audio to his podcast.
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The relationship between affordances and constraints can be illustrated by a single interview.
A female respondent used her mobile device to text chat with her Mexican mother-in-law, who
spoke spanish as a first language. The respondent didn’t speak spanish, so while she was able to
use google translate to chat with her, it was a cumbersome process that required copying and
pasting each line of the chat to a mobile web browser directed to google translate, then writing a
response in the first window. She was confined by tedious cut & paste functionality and serial
tasking. While translation through this method was technically possible, it was certainly difficult.
Why did she perform this action? Because it was the only way she could communicate with her
mother-in-law; she was a young mother living in a family with brothers, sisters and cousins who
occupied their sole computer every night with homework. Mobile media provided a vehicle for
the practice of maintaining a relationship with one’s mother-in-law, even though its constraints
didn’t particularly lend itself to this practice. In an often-observed phenomena, individuals often
maximize the affordances of mobile media in ways that are surprising, despite the difficulties of
doing so. In Japan, novels started to be written on cell phones, particularly on romantic themes
by young women (Nishimura, 2011). Chapters in these Keitai novels were limited to under 200
characters and delivered to readers through SMS texting and mobile email. The novels became
of mainstream interest, sparking websites that now host millions of novels, and production of
movies derived from them. The affordances and constraints of mobile media both impacted the
practice. Portability and availability made the practice possible, as writers used the constantly-
available communication to both write and deliver chapters. The minimalism of the genre —
characterized by limited chapter length as enforced by SMS texting — contributed to its
character as a particular genre. Constraints might contribute to the character of practices but
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45
don’t keep them from happening. Within reason, individuals have autonomy in pushing mobile
devices to do things they may not have been intended for.

Figure 1. General Model of Communicative Affordances.

Conceptualizing and Operationalizing Perception and Outcomes of Affordances
Communicative affordances do not so much create practices so much as amplify or augment
them. That is, they make a difference in patterning of communicative practices. For example,
Katie Day Good (2012) draws a connection between scrapbooks and Facebook as personal
media assemblages, archives, and sites of social ritual. Communicative affordances do not create
the impulse or desire, as is often the assumption about technology in social psychological
research. Similarly, I don’t so much propose that mobile social media create new practices, but
provide new ways for old practices to play out. There are several reasons why new parents are a
logical place to look for empirical support for an affordances perspective. New parents are a
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46
demographic generally with a stock of Facebook friends and frequent users of mobile media.
They also require social support and instrumental assistance. Finally, practices with visual and
mobile media figure prominently in online family life. Mobile Facebook, combining the
broadcast affordances to social supernets of Facebook with the communicative affordances of
mobile media, provides a distinctly useful environment for these practices to play out.
Empirical research on communication requires operationalizing key concepts. A
communicative affordances perspective is no different. In this section I drawn on chapter two to
consider how affordances can be researched and operationalized. A communicative affordances
approach can be employed in one of three ways (Figure 1).
The first way is through communicative affordances as latent constructs that exist in
interaction between perception of utility and objective qualities of technologies. Recalling
chapter two, in the 2000s sociology and communication scholars interested in affordances
generally took a “technical affordances” approach whereby the reach and character of
communication was altered by technology (Boase, 2008; boyd, 2010; Wellman et al., 2003).
These sociologists were clear that affordances resided in the technology, even as individuals had
a certain range of sense-making capacities around particular uses and interpretations. danah
boyd’s (2010) claims about “properties of bits” was drawn from years of ethnographic
observation. She observed altered practices that she argued stemmed from affordances of social
network sites. That is, she saw youth negotiate and struggle with integrating social network sites
into their everyday lives, but did not directly observe affordances. To boyd, affordances are
“properties or characteristics of an environment… [that] make possible… certain types of
practices, even if they do not determine what practices will unfold” (boyd, 2014, p. 10). Several
typologies of affordances have been formulated (Majchrzak et al., 2013; Treem & Leonardi,
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47
2012), including the one in this dissertation (Chapter 2). Generally these typologies have been
conceptually useful for empirical research on how affordances “frame” (Hutchby, 2001)
practices or habits.
These typologies, however conceptually useful, describe latent variables. That is, we cannot
see, hear, smell or touch communicative affordances, even those organized into tidy lists. The
issue of conceptualizing and operationalizing latent variables is common enough in
communication. Drawing on one example, Bandura (1977) conceptualized self-efficacy as the
degree to which individuals envision their actions having a positive outcome. The most
important factor related to perception of self-efficacy, an individual-level variable. To
operationalize self-efficacy researchers developed scales with questions reflecting different
dimensions of self-efficacy, which were then employed, refined, and tested (Bandura, 1999). We
might also look at outcomes and argue that individuals better able to motivate themselves to
accomplish certain actions successfully “have” self-efficacy. Much in the same way there is not a
single way we can research affordances. Rather, we send out tracers in research to examine
either the ways communicative affordances are perceived or pattern outcomes, which I will
discuss in turn.
The second way to employ a communicative affordances framework (referring back to
Figure 1 and Chapter 2) is to focus on perception of utility of a technology for particular
practices. A Gibsonian definition of “affordance” explicitly allows for multiple different uses
from a single object (Gibson, 1986; Greeno, 1994). Individuals might not perceive particular
technology useful for a particular goal because they are not aware of the capability, none of their
friends use it that way, it doesn’t serve a particular goal to begin with, or it is against their
religious views. Practices constantly change in response to affordances, as individuals learn
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about mobile media, tinker with their phones, and see how friends use mobile media. I
previously suggest that practices of young parents with mobile social media will be somewhat
bounded, as they have common needs of obtaining social support and desires to communicate
their family life to others in more or less public ways. To further quantify practices we might
connect with particular outcomes, I use interviews to research how utility is perceived and
connected with particular practices. This is the most exploratory portion of the dissertation, given
the lack of research on social media use by parents of young children (Bartholomew et al., 2012;
Doty & Dworkin, 2014) outside of a limited studies considering the relationship between cell
phones and work-life balance (J. Wajcman, Bittman, & Brown, 2008) and message boards
(Pedersen & Smithson, 2013). This lack of previous research makes it difficult to research
outcomes in an affordances perspective without first talking with new parents about how they
find mobile media helpful in their everyday lives.
The final way we might adopt an “affordances perspective” is to research how practices or
habits are shaped through technology. Recalling chapter two, an affordances perspective focuses
on particular groups’ “media and social activity coupling” (Hogan, 2009, p. 88). Individuals will
always have widely-varying practices with any particular medium that are difficult to capture
and predict — for every person who uses a smartphones to text, another will find it the right
shape to skip across a pond. The fuzzy edges to practices shouldn’t dissuade us from remaining
focused on identifying classes of uses that are amplified or augmented by mobile media
affordances, resulting in altered outcomes. The phone pond-skipper is likely an outlier that, while
perhaps interesting or novel, doesn’t describe the ways most users draw on affordances, nor is it
particularly important from a communication standpoint. Communicative affordances, as I use
them here, are inherently relatively high-level conceptual groupings of technologies.
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An affordances approach is gaining recognition in communication research. Its advantages
include being able to takes researchers away from purely psychological measures that focus only
on the individual, or research that takes technological features to be innate. In results of these
studies we get both insight into the nuance of practices and connecting these practices to
particular outcomes. For example, a group of scholars at University of Michigan (of which
Nicole Ellison is the most widely-known, but also includes Cliff Lampe and then-Ph.D student
Jessica Vitak) have long researched how the broadcast affordance (boyd, 2010) of social network
sites is drawn on by individual for purposes of information-seeking (Nicole B. Ellison et al.,
2013; J. Vitak & Ellison, 2012) and relationship maintenance (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2014).
While they use the term “affordances” sparingly in each article often without a strong theoretical
background, in aggregate an approach starts to become clear. Their approach fits, similar to
Boase (2006), within a rational choice perspective where individuals are aware of the benefits of
Facebook’s affordances and consciously draw on them for particular goals. Not surprisingly,
there appears no singular “use” that defines Facebook (Smock et al., 2011). Although these
scholars differ in the terminology they use, generally they conceive of it as “collection of tools
utilized in different ways to meet different needs” (Smock et al., 2011, p. 2323). Nicole Ellison
terms these investigations that are essentially in-depth analyses of practices that are known to
have certain outcomes “activity-centric analyses.” This line of scholarship is more concerned
with classifications of particular practices correlated with particular outcomes. Outcomes of
interest to this dissertation are social capital (bridging/bonding) (D. Williams, 2006) and tie
conversion (Haythornthwaite, 2002). Scales particular to parents will be included, such as
parental stress (Haskett, Ahern, Ward, & Allaire, 2006), relationship satisfaction (Hendrick,
1988), and familial satisfaction (Carver & Jones, 1992). Not all these are outcomes; familial
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satisfaction is likely a factor in whether individuals seek out family to connect with online, for
example.

Summary
This chapter outlines a theoretical lineage of affordances and suggests a typology of
communicative affordances of mobile media. Communicative affordances are defined as an
interaction between subjective perceptions of utility and objective qualities of the technology that
alters communicative practices. That is, communicative affordances are framings for action
activated by individuals in pursuit of goals. Over time these may develop into long-term
practices. A communicative affordances perspective balances subjective interpretation or
objective qualities of technology. Perceptions of the utility of particular technologies are affected
by social norms and learned understandings. Communicative affordances also permit discussion
of distinctions between mobile media and other forms, as well as continuities with historical
precedents. Mobile media have relatively stable communicative affordances of portability,
availability, locatability and multimediality. As devices become smaller and services
increasingly seamless, connecting mobile media to communicative practices and subsequent
outcomes while taking into account social and historical contexts gains critical importance.
Communicative affordances describe the relationship between subjective perception of
utility and objective qualities of a technology that results in altered communication and
subsequent patterns of behavior. Affordances help address a theoretical shortcoming in
computer-mediated communication (CMC) as a whole; as Bradner observed, “empirical studies
of CMC use which explicitly associate social behavior with design features are largely absent”
(Bradner, 2001, p. 67). By comparison, social psychology is most concerned with individual
psychological characteristics that predict behavior, while mass communication seeks out
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51
“effects.” Interest in connecting affordances to particular outcomes is gaining traction in mobile
communication and computer-mediated communication (CMC). For example, a communicative
affordances framework forms the base of “activity-centered analyses” (N. Ellison & boyd, 2013)
that describe the relationship between affordances, practices, and outcomes involving social
structure.
Communication scholars should be judicious with their theory-building to apply
affordances to situations involving mediated communication not easily addressed with other
theories. That is, affordances describe a particular cyclical relationship between perception,
properties of technologies, and uses. One cautionary tale is the uses and gratification approach,
which has become a catch-all mass communication approach to “active use” of technology
(Ruggiero, 2000). An affordances approach should retain an emphasis on intersubjectivity, rather
than descend into contextual specificity where we insist that lessons from one study cannot be
applied to a different situation (Suchman, 1987). Neither should affordances just relate to
qualities of technologies. As Treem and Leonardi (2012) warn us, affordances can become
conflated with “feature.”
A communicative affordances approach suggests several areas for future research. Little
work has been performed on factors affecting perception of technological utility explicitly
defined as affordances. The ample work on the connection between affordances and subsequent
habits or practices tends to focus on affordances as leading to anticipated outcomes. Yet, a single
affordances can be “simultaneously hindering and helping” (Majchrzak et al., 2013, p. 47).
Future research might address this paradoxical nature of affordances (Hutchby, 2001) or why
they are rejected entirely (J. Vitak & Ellison, 2012). A third area of research might take a
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52
historical methodology to consider how affordances emerge, are recognized, decline, and even
re-emerge in different forms (Woodruff & Aoki, 2004).
Finally, it bears mention that my examples tend to draw on the significant lineage of
social cohesion in mobile communication (Katz & Aakhus, 2002; Licoppe, 2004; Richard Ling,
2008). That is, I tend to focus on how communicative affordances relate to the creation,
maintenance and dissolution of relationships. This is not intended to overshadow mobile
communication’s interdisciplinarity that includes mobilities, humanist geographies, and
infrastructure studies. The typology I suggest might very well extend to these areas. Mobile
communication in particular can benefit from affordances approach because of its worldwide
scope and rapid evolution in form. The migration towards “wearable” technologies such as
watches and armbands should draw attention to what affordances they extend from previous
forms of mobile media. An affordances can provide a productive bridges so we can cease
treating each shift in form as a radical break from previous technologies (C. Anderson & De
Maeyer, 2014).

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3. Social Capital
The current chapter examines theory undergirding social capital from perspectives of
process and outcome. Next, I elaborate on bridging and bonding as two forms of capital leading
to particular outcomes. A brief history of mediated social capital accrual through technology
follows, particularly looking at egocentric networks as a reflection of networked individualism.
Finally I specifically consider mechanisms affecting bridging and bonding on mobile media,
particularly from an affordances perspective. It should be noted that my interest here is on
connecting affordances to dependent variables on MSNPs that relate to cohesion in social
groups. Therefore, I do not cover several large areas of interest, such as the relationship between
bridging capital and democratic engagement or other forms of meso-level social groups such as
neighborhoods.

Introduction
Social cohesion — what keeps society together — is the defining question in sociology.
In communication, we owe our concern with ritual (Carey, 1989) largely to Durkheim. He
suggested that high moments of collective effervescence, such as religious ceremonies
(Durkheim, 1947), serve to unite society around shared concerns and impart a sense of moral
values. Social capital is a particular form of social cohesion that describes the reciprocal
relationship between individuals through social networks. At its core, social capital takes the
perspective that “the goodwill that others have toward us is a valuable resource” (Adler & Kwon,
2002, p. 18). However, significant disputes exist around whether social capital should be
conceptualized as a property of a network, particular processes, or outcomes. Robert Putnam was
most concerned with process, particularly involvement with local organizations and groups,
hence the wistful title “Bowling Alone” (Putnam, 2001). Lin (2001) viewed individuals as
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strategic actors and social ties as fungible, meaning an “investment in social relations with
expected returns in the marketplace” (p. 19). This “resource” perspective of social capital has
been particularly influential in computer-mediated communication (Nicole B. Ellison et al.,
2007; D. Williams, 2006). Other scholars coming from sociology, particularly those interested in
network analysis, conceptualize capital as a property of networks (Ronald Burt, 1995). In sum,
social capital is variously considered as a process, norms and outcomes, connected with
particular individuals, groups and networks (Field, 2008).
This chapter clarifies a definition of social capital. I define social capital as determined
by an individual’s process and outcome with their social networks, which act as sites of
quotidian rituals. Keeping with the communicative affordances framework of this dissertation,
mobile social media afford communication with social networks. The processes involved are the
rituals and micro-rituals with friends and family that can be accomplished through mobile media.
Rettie observed that “mobile phones increase the value of social networks because they increase
opportunities for sociality” (Rettie, 2008, p. 307). Rettie suggests that mobile social media
amplify access to social ties, a view echoed elsewhere (Chayko, 2008; Richard Ling, 2008). The
reason I don’t consider social capital as network capital is because a network of ties created on
Facebook is the same as accessed on “mobile Facebook.” That is, there is no difference in
network structure. Significant support exists for a positive relationship between use of mobile
social media to social capital as outcomes (D. Williams, 2006) that are correlated with further
positive social outcomes such as belongingness (S. Quinn & Oldmeadow, 2013), well-being
(Chan, 2013), and civic engagement (Xie, 2014).
The current dissertation connects particular processes involving mobile media —
practices among young parents — with positive outcomes. Qualitative data on practices on
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55
mobile media are collected through interviews, resulting in a set of survey items for scope of
multimediality and availability. Interviews are valuable to capture processes and how a particular
demographic, in need of social and instrumental support, recognizes and acts on multiple
networks connected through mobile devices. These processes are then connected with social
capital outcomes (D. Williams, 2006) through a survey. Several additional measures connect
bridging and bonding capital with specific outcomes of interest to young parents, such as trusting
other parents in one’s Facebook network to watch their child for an hour. This dissertation
therefore considers not just whether social capital can operate through mobile media, but
advances our understanding of what processes with mobile media might be generative of social
capital.

Conceptualizing Social Capital
Social capital is a concept that connects macro phenomena with micro-level processes
and mechanisms for accruing and drawing on social capital (Adler & Kwon, 2002). Beyond this
commonality, discussions surround how social capital is conceived, stored, activated and
measured. Because social capital involves activation of social networks, it can be said to be both
a property of individuals, groups, and processes. Williams (2006) notes how scholars often
define it as cyclical — both a cause and effect (Newton, 1997; Putnam, 2001). Coleman (1988),
who synthesizes sociological and economic perspectives to conceptualize social capital as
obligations and expectations, information channels, and social norms. Putnam (Putnam, 2001)
described social capital as a combination of networks, norms and related processes, as the
“features of social organizations, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate action and
cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam, 1993, p. 35).
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Network sociologists tend take a “network perspective” on social capital. Portes (1998)
notes that “social capital inheres in the structure of… relationships” (p. 7). Individuals can get
benefits from being in structurally advantageous positions in networks, or moving to occupy
“structural holes” (Ronald Burt, 1995). Burt (2007) later describes social capital as “the
advantage created by a person’s location in a structure of relationships” (p. 5). Barry Wellman
and his students at the University of Toronto advanced a research agenda that promotes “network
capital” — social capital accrued through network ties (Wellman & Frank, 2001). Similar recent
studies in this mold return to network analysis as an alternative to outcome based-explanations
(Brooks, Hogan, Ellison, Lampe, & Vitak, in press; Shen, Monge, & Williams, 2012). While I
acknowledge the networked perspective of social capital, it has little to say about how
individuals might act on their networks differently on mobile media. A network perspective
simply may not be as appropriate for considering the relationship between mobile
communication and social structure.
Where social ties are formed has previously been thought to define whether a network is
online or offline. Generally this research conceptualizes online and offline as separate realms to
be contrasted (Papacharissi, 2005). This was of particular interest in early days of the internet
when debates occurred around whether effects such as whether the internet supplements offline
relationships (Wellman, Boase, & Chen, 2002) or are isolating (N. H. Nie & Erbing, 2002).
Others theorize that SNSs such as Facebook relate primarily to capital in offline networks,
focusing on a relatively confined community, such as college students (Nicole B. Ellison et al.,
2007). In a general sense, I conceive of social capital as relating to offline networks and
relationships rather than online (D. Williams, 2006). I follow in this mode because ego-centric
Facebook networks, which my survey methodology analyzes, reflect relationships mostly created
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“offline.” While mobile media’s “always-on” network connection enables constant opportunities
to communicate with those ties, they are generally drawn from in-person meetings. Thus, it is
most accurate is to say that mobile social networks enable new ways to communicate with and
act on “offline” social ties.
This dissertation follows in a resource perspective of social capital as advocated by
Putnam (2001). This differs from Lin’s (2001) conceptualizes social capital as a resource drawn
on by individuals that “must be distinguished from collective assets and goods” (p. 26). That is, I
am mostly concerned with a resources or public good perspective rather than a fungible property
of individual relationships. Social capital has the advantage of being convertible to other forms
of capital (Resnick et al., 2000). Here I am interested in connecting specific processes —
practices with mobile media — on mobile Facebook to social capital outcomes. Functionally,
mobile media enable new types of practices. For example, mobile media are used out in the
world and provide easy access to camera and locative functionalities. These social affordances
connect individuals in qualitatively different ways to their ego-centric networks than desktop
counterparts.
Ellison et al. (2007) describe social capital as allowing “a person to draw on resources
from other members of the networks to which he or she belongs” (p. 1145). Much work on
online social capital follows in a utility-driven model where actions lead to social capital
outcomes (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2013). Coleman describes how social capital is functional,
“making possible the achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible”
(James Samuel Coleman, 1990, p. 98). These functions occur, as Vitak notes, through
“interactions with one’s network” (2012, p. 12). This largely follows in a rational choice
perspective where social capital is a resource that is activated by choice. While much of the
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interest in a resource perspective stems from viewing a network as a source of information (J.
Vitak & Ellison, 2012), emotional support is also present (Jessica Vitak et al., 2011). Outcomes
of interest here are higher-quality information and social support, which as will be discussed,
relate to bridging and bonding, respectively.
In addition to outcomes, I consider mobile-mediated mechanisms for converting social
capital and maintaining social networks. This focus returns to social capital processes, or “the
way in which people activate their social capital” (Field, 2008, p. 165), and intersects with
previous sociological debates on the interplay of structure and agency (Giddens, 1986). Bankston
and Zhou (2002) conceptualize social capital as “processes of social interaction leading to
constructive outcomes” (p. 286). They propose that networks, relationship and norms are
confused because they are stages that are sequenced differently depending on the social process.
According to their examples, in a neighborhood structure comes first, followed by norms of
reciprocity. Because ego-centric networks are created by users and are abstractions of social
relationships, they are ego-centric networks are networks of choice. That is, they are more likely
than networks of proximity (neighborhoods) or occupation (organizations) to be modifiable by
individuals. Rather than treat a network alone as resulting in effects (Ronald Burt, 1995; Norris,
2002; Shen et al., 2012), I argue that individuals have agency in how they act on their networks.
This extends Wellman’s perspective of “network individualism” and echoes Field’s (2008)
concern of how people are “ever more likely to think in terms of the communities to which they
choose to belong, or even have helped to create” (p. 166). Lin ( 2001) similarly suggests that
people who benefit from social capital use their networks strategically.
Computer-mediated communication scholarship on SNSs has recently moved from
outcomes towards processes that connect with positive social capital outcomes. Facebook social
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capital effects have been found to be causal in nature, flowing from online SNSs to offline
groups (college students) (Steinfield, Ellison, & Lampe, 2008) often using social capital
outcomes focused on frequency of use or “intensity” (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2007). Attention
turned to “activity-centered analyses” (N. Ellison & boyd, 2013, p. 165) — specific practices that
draw on or accrue social capital. Nicole Ellison and Jessica Vitak have promoted terms such as
“social provisions” (Jessica Vitak et al., 2011), “relationship maintenance practices” (Nicole B.
Ellison et al., 2013), and “connection strategies” (N. B. Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2011).
While each of these terms — activity-centered analyses, relationship maintenance practices, and
so on — are nuanced towards specific social goals, they share an interest in teasing out “whether
there are particular uses of Facebook that are more likely to result in positive social capital
outcomes” (N. B. Ellison et al., 2011, p. 874). They have investigated bridging and bonding
capital through these mechanisms rather than frequency or “intensity” of use (Nicole B. Ellison
et al., 2007; Valenzuela, Park, & Kee, 2009). For example, Ellison et al. (2013) focused on
question-asking techniques, as they are “mechanisms through which Facebook is used for social
capital conversion,” specifically bridging capital in weak tie networks (p. 1). Vitak et al. (2011)
noted that bonding activities with closer friends and family still occur on SNSs but may simply
not be visible using previous time-based measures. A focus on practices as the mechanism for
drawing on social capital focuses on active rather than passive usage. Small actions such as
pressing a “like” button have not been found to be correlated with social capital effects.
However, more costly active uses such as wall posts and other semi-public broadcasts reach
multiple parties of an ego-centric network simultaneously. Active practices are therefore the
appropriate concept both theoretically and methodologically for the current study. Specifically, I
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posit that mobile and locative practices accrue or employ social capital with one’s network in
different ways than desktops.
Considering social capital as both outcomes and processes has both theoretical and
methodological motivations. Specific mechanisms for social capital conversion and accrual
provide a more descriptive and nuanced understanding of how people integrate Facebook into
their everyday lives. The network on mobile Facebook changes slowly, has strong connections
with offline ties, and is the same as on the desktop version of Facebook. Therefore, I argue we
should not look to the network as a significant difference between mobile and desktop versions
of SNSs. Rather, the question becomes how individuals act on their networks as resources
through mobile media in different ways. My focus is therefore on how individuals draw on
resources in their ego-centric network, specifically, others that can help them in informational
requests or emotional support. Researchers should indeed focus on the mechanisms that are
learned or otherwise acquired by individuals. Briefly, several such processes that are beneficial
to offline social capital accrual and network health include norms of engagement with local
organizations (Putnam, 2001), spatial dynamics that encourage interaction (Sampson, Morenoff,
& Earls, 1999), and reciprocity (Morenoff, 2003). We might also observe that a wealth of
research connecting psychological variables to social capital effects has not resulted in much
theoretical progress. The question is not about connecting psychological characteristics to
preferences for “where” interactions occur (online or offline), but the symbolic meaning of these
actions.

Bridging and Bonding
Two types of social capital are thought to be present in social capital: bridging and
bonding (Putnam, 2001). Norris (2002) elaborating on Putnam, associating bonding with ties of
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similar backgrounds and beliefs, and bridging with social and ideological heterogeneity.
Bridging social capital is most often associated with weak ties — infrequently accessed and more
temporary social relationships — while bonding favors closer and more long-lasting
relationships in strong ties (Granovetter, 1973, 1983). Bridging and bonding are associated with
different types of effects and outcomes. Bridging capital is most strongly associated online with
informational support while bonding is more suitable for emotional support.
Ego-centric networks found on SNSs are “supernets” of social ties that enable both
bridging and bonding. Although networks can serve both purposes, they “can be classified as
falling closer to one end of this spectrum or the other” (Norris, 2002, p. 3). Bridging on SNSs has
been more frequently noted than bonding (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2007). In a longitudinal study
Steinfield, Ellison and Lampe (2008) found that Facebook provided access to bridging social
capital. Theoretically, SNSs are thought to favor bridging for several reasons. Because SNSs
enable users to assemble large supernets of social ties (Donath, 2007). These weak ties are more
likely to be useful for bridging, whereas bonding behaviors may be more effectively and
privately conducted over other media. SNSs offer an effective mode of communication with
larger groups, but rarely do individuals find it an intimate environment. Methodologically, the
Facebook intensity scale (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2007) “no longer predicts bonding” (Jessica
Vitak et al., 2011, p. 1), driving a move towards analyses focused on specific activities (Nicole
B. Ellison et al., 2013; N. B. Ellison et al., 2011). Heterogeneous groups joining Facebook may
also contribute to its perception among users as less intimate, and thus unsuitable for bonding
(Yang, Brown, & Braun, 2013). Vitak also notes that the lack of bonding may be due to the
unreliability of earlier measures (Jessica Vitak et al., 2011).

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Technology and Social Capital
Sociologists initially asked if social capital increased (Quan-Haase, Wellman, Witte, &
Hampton, 2002), decreased (N. H. Nie, 2001), or supplemented (Wellman, Haase, Witte, &
Hampton, 2001) online and offline political engagement and socialization. This last perspective
tends to capture how the internet is capable of “serving in an additive role when combined with
other methods of communication” (Steinfeld et al., 2012, p. 4). Generally academic focus has
shifted towards this supplemental perspective, as different uses have different users and effects
that can confound quantitative research (Blank & Groselj, 2014). Attention was also paid to
forums based on shared recreational interests such as bulletin-board systems (BBSs) (Rheingold,
1993), multi-user dungeons (MUDs) (Kendall, 2002) and message boards. A debate ensued
comparing how these “online communities” might be as valuable as “offline communities for
connoting feelings of connectedness and providing social support. This debate, best covered
elsewhere (Kendall, 2011; Wellman, 1998), resulted in discipline-specific online or offline
definitions of community. For example, urban studies scholars and some sociologists felt that
communities should refer to geographically-proximate neighborhoods (Block, 1983; Grannis,
2009; Jeffres, 2002), while social scientists often view them as a large group assembled online
for further interaction (R. E. Kraut, Resnick, & Kiesler, 2012). Others attempt to reconcile the
disagreement by focusing on symbolic feeling of belongingness (B. Anderson, 2006; Cohen,
1992).
The rise of social network sites (d boyd, 2007) focused attention on how an online ego-
centric network constructed by users from available ties could be used to accrue and draw on
social capital (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2007). Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe focused on the
effects of this overlap within a particular community, that is, a “geographically-bound user base”
(p. 1162) of Michigan State University students. By applying a rational choice theory of social
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capital to online networks (Lin, 2001) they didn’t particularly need the rather weighty emotional
baggage of the term “community,” although their findings reinforced some findings of a
movement from offline to online ties. Terms such as “personal network” (Boase, 2008) or “ego-
centric network” (Brooks et al., in press; Hogan, 2009) more accurately described the
phenomena under investigation than “online community.” In one of the few longitudinal studies
on the topic, Steinfield, Ellison & Lampe (2008) found that low self-esteem students accrued
bridging capital, meaning it was a meaningful way for individuals to communicate with peer
group in a way that they may not have been comfortable with offline.
Mobile media have been thought to encourage new social forms by users drawing on
communicative affordances of mobility, locationality and accessibility. Lee Humphreys suggests
that the real-time sharing of information about locations in the LMSN Dodgeball encouraged
participants to “experience and move about through the city in a collective manner” (Humphreys,
2012, p. 353). Mimi Sheller suggested that mobile media encouraged a more fluid and ephemeral
“coupling and decoupling” of social ties (Sheller, 2004). Yet, these suggestions of ephemerality
do not encompass all forms of mobile social networks. The social networks of Facebook users
continues to be primarily drawn from offline ties. This is particularly true as Facebook has
slowly changed its internal structure and user settings to emphasize a user’s “primary identity”
rather than an imagined one. Lenhart and Madden (2007) found that 91% of friendships on
Facebook were created offline. Lampe (2006) found little support for use of Facebook to find
new people for dating. Rather, it was to make connections with old friends or research online
people met offline, a finding reinforced in a successive study focusing on longitudinal data to
demonstrate causation rather than simply correlation (Lampe, Ellison, & Steinfield, 2008).
Mayer and Puller (2008) found that only .4% of friend lists culled from students from over ten
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universities were exclusively online. The university setting likely contributes to this
exceptionally high degree of overlap. Yet, even in a representative survey of American adults,
89% reported meeting their Facebook friends at least once (Hampton, Goulet, Rainie, & Purcell,
2011).
We might conclude that while some mobile networks are indeed ephemeral, short-lived, and
composed of weak ties formed through mobile media, others reflect relationships drawn from a
user’s life-course. This is important to note because the survey component of this dissertation
concerns mobile Facebook specifically, while the other portion is based around in-depth
interviews. Thus, I follow in a lineage of considering Facebook as facilitating access to an ego-
centric or “personal” network (Boase, 2008; Brooks et al., in press; Hogan, 2009), rather than
privileging previous forms of social structure such as community or public.

Ego-centric networks
As previously mentioned, a key difference communication on Facebook is how it enables
access to an ego-centric network. While I am predominately researching social capital as process
and outcome, the access of individuals to larger, more diffuse social groups requires discussion,
as mobile social media mediate communication with these ties. Generally I follow in what Barry
Wellman terms networked individualism (Wellman, 2002), which describes how people draw on
overlapping ego-centric networks mediated through various technologies. Wellman argues that
networked individualism pre-dates the internet, but mobile media further “shifts the dynamics of
connectivity from places — typically households or worksites — to individuals” (Wellman,
2001, p. 238). This is a sociology that strips down community life to “ties” unbounded by
geography, implied by his successive re-definition of social capital to “network capital”
(Wellman & Frank, 2001). Significant objections have been raised to Wellman’s hypothesis.
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Gurstein (2008) argued that networked individualism strips people of agency. Postill, as a media
studies scholar, found the reliance on interaction downplayed “the invisible network of objective
relations” (Postill, 2008, p. 416). Further criticism came from his downplaying of how
neighborhoods and primary groups such as the family are still important for connectivity
(Fischer, 2011). Although I sympathize with these criticisms when networked individualism is
over-extended to describe all social relationships, the term accurately describes relationships
maintained through mobile media in several ways.
A perspective of networked individualism has several advantages for investigating the
intersection between mobile media and social networking. First, Wellman explicitly focuses on
how individuals can benefit from drawing on resources of personal networks (Rainie &
Wellman, 2012). Mobile communication scholars have long noted how mobile devices facilitate
direct to person, particularly for bonding (Ito et al., 2005), as well as various types of functions,
apps and mobile websites that, if not disaggregate people entirely from neighborhoods and local
groups, connect people to networks in a more direct way (Levinson, 2006). Second, while I
question networked individualism being deployed at the societal level, overlapping ego-centric
networks seems to be the appropriate way to think about mobile social networks. On mobile
devices one is not connected to one social group, but a multitude of ties often drawn from one’s
“offline” history. Disputes around locality are not as important because I do not privilege
neighborhood relations in my analysis. Third, quite contrary to Gurstein’s objections, I find
networked individualism to appropriately describe how individuals can craft and act on their
personal networks. That is, mine is a perspective that foregrounds individual agency in social
relations rather than networks.
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My agentic perspective on social relations takes the central question of how people act on
social networks, creating networks of choice. That is, they have heightened agency in crafting
their ego-centric networks but they often must have reciprocity. As Lin put it, “actions seem to
gain the upper hand in interactions with structures” (Lin, 2001, p. 236). Online networks allow
individuals to accrue more connections than could be comfortably maintained without
technology (Donath, 2007). People thus can construct ego-centric networks and are generally
aware of who they are connected to and how. This differs from communities as neighborhoods
— one cannot simply refuse to be a neighbor, unless they move away (although they can
certainly refuse to be neighborly). Individuals leverage this visibility to craft and act on their
online social networks than perhaps the offline networks they often reflect. For example, an
individual might construct his personal network to omit the side of a family that has been
stigmatized, or only include stronger ties rather than weak ones. This is a particular affordance of
ego-centric networks.
An ego-centric social network is thus not analytically the same object of inquiry as a
geographically-proximate community or family group. To unpack how Facebook networks are
created it’s helpful to think about how individuals aggregate social ties into Facebook, creating
an ego-centric network of choice that includes both strong and weak ties and is both dense and
broad (Donath, 2007). Facebook has existed for over a decade. Many users in their 20s are likely
to first have use it as a teenager for keeping in touch with friends during high school and for
dating in college. Problematic connections (say, a rude friend always posting inappropriate
messages) can be removed and new ones added. Ties from the local neighborhood may be added,
as might more remote cousins or friends made in other cities. Family figures may eventually be
included as youth enter adulthood.
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Bridging and Bonding on Mobile Media
Research on social capital has generally found that mobile media favor bonding rather
than bridging (Rowan Wilken, 2009) and strong over weak ties (Richard Ling, 2008). Early work
in mobile communication focused on countries such as Norway and Japan that had sufficiently
advanced infrastructure and device adoption (Ling & Yttri, 2002; Rheingold, 2002). The
majority of this work focused on phone calls and SMS texting, with mobile social media being a
relatively new development. One exception is the early advances in mobile social media in Japan
(Ito et al., 2005; Miyata & Kobayashi, 2008; Miyata, Wellman, & Boase, 2005).
Early work on mobile social media attributed bonding capital to communication among
family and close friends and small lists of contacts (Ito et al., 2005; Ling & Stald, 2010; Miyata
et al., 2005). In 2002 the Yamanashi Study compared users of web phones (internet-enabled cell
phones) and PCs (Miyata et al., 2005), concluding that web-enabled phones and PCs were used
in qualitatively different ways. Webphone-based email was employed when individuals were
near each other and was associated with socially supportive ties. Webphones were not found to
be used for communicating with weaker ties or develop more diverse networks, perhaps because
“web phones are not well suited to provide connections to internet sites where weak tie
relationships may be formed, such as chat rooms and issue-oriented sites” (p. 444). Ichiro
Nakajima, Keiichi Himeno, and Hiroaki Yoshii developed a concept of the “full-time intimate
community” of no more than ten close friends. A successive study of Norwegian adults showed
that social cohesion through mobile texting and phone calls primarily favored “the intimate
sphere” (Ling & Stald, 2010), referring to a close set of relationships. In part the reliance on
close ties was related to particular communicative affordances. For example, the portability and
availability of mobile media enabled it to be used for coordinating activities (Ling & Yttri,
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2002). Gergen concludes that the personal contact information of a phone number means that
cell phones tend to reinforce a “nuclear circle” at an expense of casual friendships (Gergen,
2002).
Successive work expanded on how broader networks might emerge focused on practices
and intensity of communication. For example, Licoppe stipulated that communication that occurs
in small bursts (Licoppe, 2004) where an “intensity of interaction… serves to weld the social
group together” (p. 184). Much in this vein, Rettie (2008) argued (similar to parlance of
“communicative affordances”) that mobile media facilitate access to capital in social networks.
While a variety of communication channels began to emerge on mobile media, communication
with strong ties remained a defining feature (Kim, Kim, Park, & Rice, 2007). Campbell (2015)
came to term this focus on strong over weak ties “networked privatism.”
Others focused on rituals occurring around and through mobile media, often through
weak tie networks. Through “bounded solidarity” (Richard Ling, 2008) Rich Ling described how
shared rituals through mobile media with a certain group serve to define how it is use in practice.
These networks were more of choice, of weak ties. For example, a network of youth sharing
quasi-illicit photos (racy, semi-nude images, aka “sexting”) came to develop trust in each other
that they wouldn’t spread images beyond their group (Rich Ling, 2008b), trust being a key
ingredient in social cohesion. Mobile-mediated interactions serve as an indicator of capital being
accrued and converted in intimate groups. Lee Humphreys (2012) described a set of practices
related to use of locative social networks: cataloguing, coordinating, and connecting. Early on
she conceptualized mobile social networking as encouraging “social molecularization”
(Humphreys, 2007), implying bridging through chance offline meetings. Later she revisited the
topic with more nuance, suggesting that location was not perhaps the defining feature for all
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users of mobile networks, suggesting that mixed-methods research employing affordances was a
way forward (Humphreys, 2013). These concepts of bounded solidarity and affordances on
social networks that are not solely “locative” (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2010; Farman, 2012) are
central to this dissertation.
Locative and mobile social networks (LMSNs) allowed for mediated encounters between
individuals and either unknown parties or loose ties in their general vicinity (de Souza e Silva,
2006). Location, particularly visualized through maps, was a variable that facilitated encounters
with individuals outside of the close ties and “intimate sphere” noted with SMS and phone calls.
The rise of MSNPs — and their broader, more diverse networks — further stimulated an interest
in how weak ties and bridging might be accessed over mobile media. The rapid adoption of
“smart phones,” particularly the iPhone in 2007, led to speculation about how a wider variety of
options for activities on mobile devices through mobile software (“apps”) could be connected
with social cohesion. Attention particularly shifted towards bridging once locative services
started to be experimented with and adopted in industry (Rowan Wilken, 2010).
In summary, stronger evidence for bonding than bridging has generally been found for
voice and SMS texting. Generally this work has focused on process through practices
(Humphreys, 2012; Rich Ling, 2008a) and particular outcomes (Chan, 2013; S. Quinn &
Oldmeadow, 2013; Xie, 2014). However, as previously discussed, bridging has been one of the
most noted differences in communication on social network sites (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2007;
Norris, 2002). Given that social network sites are in large part migrating to mobile usage, it is
logical that some increased bridging will be found on mobile media as well. There are also likely
relationships that cut across various forms of mobile-mediated communication. Mobile social
media act as layers of intimacy where Facebook is for more casual encounters (Yang et al.,
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2013). Thus it seems probable that mobile social media provides more opportunities for
communication with both weak and strong ties, and consequently, more bridging capital.
Additionally, as social affordances theory suggests, the character by which people communicate
has changed as a result of the adoption of mobile media.
Methodologically, survey measures have been found to be appropriate for researching
social capital outcomes on mobile media. Campbell and Kwak (2010) used two questions on
group membership and social leisure activity. Chan (2013) employed an 8-question scale
modified from Williams (2006), phrased in a general sense rather than geared specifically
towards ego-centric networks on mobile devices. Miyata and Kobayashi (2008) used network
size and use variables to similarly conclude that mobile networks were more useful for
reinforcing existing ties. Boase and Kobayashi (2008) measured relational outcomes with a nine-
question bonding, bridging and breaking scale. This scale was subsequently used in a Korean
study with one modification, changing “cell phone” to “smart phone” (Park & Lee, 2012).
Results of this study similarly showed bonding and a negative relationship with bridging. This
scholarship demonstrates how social capital has been found to relate to outcomes such as
political engagement (Scott W. Campbell & Nojin Kwak, 2010), self-esteem (Park & Lee, 2012),
and psychological well-being (Chan, 2013).

Affordances and Social Capital
In the next few paragraphs I’ll review how mobile media might be connected with
bridging and bonding processes through the affordances of mobile media. I primarily examine
availability and multimediality, the two most prevalent affordances drawn on by young parents
in mobile practices in this dissertation. Communicative affordances of mobile media guide
practices and subsequent outcomes. Yet, with few exceptions (Chan, 2013; S. Quinn &
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Oldmeadow, 2013), the question of how communicative affordances of mobile media relate to
bridging and bonding with social networks remains an open question. For reasons argued below,
it’s a strong possibility that availability and multimediality of mobile media relate to bridging
and bonding capital.
Affordances-based approaches to social capital on mobile media are generally interested
in practices, although some take a more media studies route, such as Ruston’s work on “critical
affordances” visible in media representations (Ruston, 2012). There is one key theoretical
distinction between previous uses of the concept of affordance and my own. Chan (2013) found
that communicative uses (voice and online communication) of mobile media were positively
related to social capital. However, the survey questions were fairly limited, asking how often
respondents use their mobile phone to “chat” with family members and friends, and a basic set of
functions for online communication (online messaging apps, “social media services” and
emails). Chan draws on Helles’ (2013) suggestion that an affordances perspective is appropriate
here, to which I agree. However, Chan stays close to Helles (2013) interpretation of mobile
media’s affordances as related to one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many modes of
synchronous and asynchronous communication, which he refers to as “practices.” By contrast,
my notion of communicative affordances doesn’t focus on diversity of modes of communication.
The reason for this is that mode diversity seems a general property of digital communication, not
mobile communication, per se.
I here discuss availability and multimediality, which guide practices most frequently
encountered in interviews and ones that appeared to hold the most emotional and symbolic
weight. Availability is thought to positively impact practices that are related to social capital
accrual. A body of work has found significant outcomes of feelings of closeness through
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increased availability. Closeness and intimacy are correlated with bonding social capital and
strong ties. This work largely relies on Licoppe’s notion of “connected presence” (Licoppe,
2004), which stipulates that relationships are symbolically maintained through shorter, frequently
communication patterns on mobile media. This changes both their character — omitting the need
for openings and closings — and overall site where relationships are maintained. This feeling of
“being there together” pervades mobile media, despite that it isn’t particularly immersive
(Schroder, 2006). In the only study thus far to apply connected presence to family life,
Christenson (2009) focused on outcomes of feelings of closeness. Quinn and Oldmeadow (2013)
found that feelings of connectedness were higher in youth mobile users (in school) as compared
with non-mobile users, and this effect was mediated by SNS use. They term this “the martini
effect” which refers to “offers the ability to share content with friends almost anytime, anyplace,
anywhere” (S. Quinn & Oldmeadow, 2013, p. 243).
The communicative affordances of multimediality have a resonance with visually-driven
practices. The specific practices of young parents will be discussed shortly — as Hjorth puts it,
the “mobile phone becomes a vehicle for reinforcing familial roles” (p. 236) — here I consider
multimedia practices on mobile media generally, and then consider how these practices might be
correlated with social capital outcomes. The relationship between visual production, curation,
and uploading and mobile media has been researched in media studies and anthropology (Gye,
2007; Hjorth, 2007; Koskinen, 2007; Okabe & Ito, 2006). Although photography has been of
interest in both sociology and visual communication (emerging in large part from anthropology)
(Becker, 1974; Worth, 1981), much less frequently have these practices been of interest in
communication. Koskinen (2007) notes that people use visual mobile media for both
immediately seeing and sending images, themes I come back to when reviewing interview data.
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Humphreys suggested that “Affordance theory suggest[s] that one of the reasons why mobile
social media is so compelling is because the means of media production, distribution, and
consumption are on the same device” (Humphreys, 2013, p. 23).
The relationship between visual media production and social capital — a theme of this
dissertation and one of my primary hypotheses — is particularly under-explored in
communication. Bourdieu (1996) famously noted the ritualistic nature of photographs, situating
them as “an object of regulated exchange” (p. 20). The camera phone extends the visibility of
photographs from the mantlepiece to promiscuous display with extended social networks.
Photography moved beyond uses as historical artifacts and status symbols, towards
communicative uses (van Dijck, 2008). Okabe (2006) notes practices among Japanese with
camera phones in 2003 included personal archiving, intimate sharing, and peer-to-peer sharing.
Thus, Gye (2007) argues that camera phones support existing practices while also extending
them towards communicative uses. The personal, networked nature of the camera phone served
as a qualitative difference in the way images were produced and enjoyed. Taylor (2002) found
that teenagers used camera phones to “participate in social practices that closely resemble forms
of ritualised gift-giving” (p. 1). These practices were everyday, quotidian and normative. Chow
(2013) suggests that images can act as Bourdiesian capital. My argument is less that images
themselves are more “valuable” than other forms of media (as might be a media richness
argument), or that images are a reflection of Boudieu’s concerns with aesthetics and “class.”
Rather, the ritual value of image production, curation, and uploading to ego-centric social
networks has a noticeable effect on social capital with these networks. While much of the ritual
quality of mobile mediated practices appear to favor intimate rituals, there is nothing prohibiting
weak tie networks from enjoying them. Image production on camera phones have been found to
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be correlated with weak tie communication (Rich Ling, 2008b; Taylor & Harper, 2002), for
example.
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4. Tie Conversion
This dissertation considers how individuals act on their social networks. In this chapter I
consider how these actions might result in changes in social structure. I accomplish this by
asking people how they convert ties from weak to strong, and conversely, “unfriending” people.
After reviewing the literature on tie conversion I describe specific mechanisms that may have an
effect on tie conversion. For example, because privacy concerns inhibit disclosure, they likely
negatively affect tie conversion.

Introduction
As previously discussed, weak and strong ties are useful in different ways to individuals’
goals. A strong tie entails more frequent communication, greater intimacy and emotional
closeness. A weak tie is characterized by weaker emotional closeness, less intimacy, and less
frequent communication (Granovetter, 1973, 1983). Weak ties connect individuals to a wider
variety of information, while strong ties are useful for emotional support. Social network sites
place individuals in contact with others they may not see in everyday life, forming “social
supernets” (Donath, 2007). Alice Marwick and danah boyd term this phenomenon “context
collapse” (Marwick & boyd, 2010) and generally focuses on how it prompts issues for youth
navigating publicity and privacy in online interactions. In It’s Complicated boyd defines context
collapse as when “people are forced to grapple simultaneously with otherwise unrelated social
contexts that are rooted in different norms and seemingly demand different social responses”
(boyd, 2014, p. 31). Jessica Vitak counters that exposure of information and messages to large,
often invisible audiences to potential positive outcomes, namely social capital (Jessica Vitak,
2012). Tie conversion is a different outcome, where a relationship moves from a weak to strong
tie, or a latent to weak tie (Haythornthwaite, 2002, 2005).
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In this chapter I describe how tie conversion operates, and similarity attraction as a
specific mechanism for tie conversion. This work develops from many of the same assumptions
above, namely that social network sites enable visibility of latent (or potential) ties and weak ties
(Haythornthwaite, 2002) not likely to be encountered in daily life, and mobile affordances serve
to expose individuals to more interactions with those like themselves. Parents are still, as will be
discussed, at a moment of transition when they are experience less ability to encounter others
outside of domestic spaces and are undergoing a shift in identity. Tie conversion is an alternate
hypothesis to social capital outcomes. By “tie conversion” I predominantly refer to the
strengthening of weak ties drawn from Facebook’s social supernets. A particular mechanism,
similarity attraction, serves to convert and escalate ties among new parents through mobile social
media. By “similarity” I am less concerned with demographic similarity, such as racial or ethnic,
and more interested in similarity in lifestyle and life course (Elder & Rockwell, 1979). One of
the unusual features of SNSs is that they connect people with friends they aren’t particularly
close with, and then become closer to later (K. Quinn, 2013).
This chapter makes two assumptions. First, a life course perspective draws attention away
from psychological characteristics and “relationship maintenance,” and towards a more
longitudinal sociological perspective. Relationships are symbolically encountered and embedded
in complex social situations we navigate. That is, relationships on Facebook are not static, but
wax and wane over time. They are broken or dissipate even at the same time others are being
created and escalated. Second, an interest in mechanisms of tie conversion moves beyond
interests in comparing relationships formed “online” with those created “offline” and maintained
through social media (Subrahmanyam, Reich, Waechter, & Espinoza, 2008; Wellman et al.,
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2002). Facebook networks are predominantly an ego-centric network drawn from an individual’s
personal history (Lenhart et al., 2010).
Tie conversion refers to increasing the strength of social ties, increasing interaction
frequency, emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocity (Granovetter, 1973; Peter V. Marsden
& Campbell, 1984). Tie conversion is theoretically distinct from social capital, although there is
overlap because social capital has a relationship with type of ties; weak ties are more applicable
for bridging capital and strong ties for bonding capital (Granovetter, 1973, 1983). Social capital
is a property of relationships that can act as a resource (Lin, 2001). By comparison, tie
conversion focuses on the relationships themselves. Tie conversion is therefore an abstraction to
describe how relationships change over time. My primary goal in this section is to propose a
specific mechanism for tie conversion stemming from similarity attraction, or recognition of
similarity in others’ life-course. That is, parents are likely to spend time with and become
emotionally closer with other parents. This effect is notable because tie conversion is generally
thought to be relatively difficult to perform online.
During long periods social interactions may occur primarily, even exclusively through
Facebook. However, these ties also tend to surface to relate to “offline” interactions and back
again, as demonstrated by the now utterly commonplace experience of a friend starting a
conversation by mentioning a Facebook post rather than asking what the other has been up to
lately. It is telling that one of my interview subjects described her friendship list as being similar
to a list of people she would like to run into at the supermarket. Facebook is not always about the
individualistic drive to accumulate huge networks of friends for the prestige value (Marwick,
2013). Rather, networks are carefully tuned to one’s comfort level — trimmed, added to, and
negotiated — using communicative affordances. As will be discussed, unlike other social
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formations such as family and neighborhood, mobile collectives are voluntaristic (Thomas,
2011). As Hogan (2010) suggests, Goffman-esque metaphors of “front stage” and “back stage”
present in boyd’s formulation of “networked publics” (danah boyd, 2007) may not be as
applicable. Rather than relying on notions of identity and performance, we might think about
exhibition and curation as strategic activities to accomplish specific goals.

Latent Ties
Haythornthwaite (2002) uses the term latent tie to refer to “a tie for which a connection is
available technically but that has not yet been activated by social interaction.” (p. 389). By
“available technically” she means potential ties that are made available through digital
technologies. Lists of potential ties can be found in email correspondences, profiles browsed
through social network sites, and comments on news stories. These potential ties are properties
of mediated or un-mediated groups and communities that can be converted into weak ties
through communication. Recognizing latent ties requires an awareness of others, while
converting them requires richer bidirectional communication. Haythornthwaite suggests that
mediated technologies can facilitate, “group-wide means of contact are needed to create latent tie
connectivity from which stronger ties can grow” (Haythornthwaite, 2005, p. 139). Latent ties,
then, imply a structure that permits observation before being converted to weak ties through
communication. The obvious example of this structure in the context of mobile Facebook is
surveillance by browsing profiles (Zeffiro, 2006). Weak ties can become latent ties again when
they are “un-friended.” They may still be encountered in online situations — say, on a friend’s
Facebook wall — but individuals do not communicate directly with them. They may be
technically visible but remain inactive.
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Concepts of latent ties have analogues in offline concepts in sociology, such as Simmel’s
concept of “the other” (Simmel, 1971) or Milgram’s notion of the “familiar stranger” (Milgram
& Blass, 2010). To Milgram, familiar strangers were faces in urban environments that are
recognized in particular places such as bus stops. Familiar strangers are potential connections in
urban space, much as latent ties are potential connections in virtual space. Interactions with new
parties are a way to consider the conversion of important latent ties within a diverse, pluralistic
urban ecosystem (Rogers, 1999), where the city itself is the “group-wide means of contact
(Haythornthwaite, 2005, p. 139). However, I align more with Castells and Wellman in that I am
mostly focused on how forms of mobile-mediated social contact alter mobile collectives. While
there are doubtless intersections with urban space on mobile media (Farman, 2012; Humphreys,
2010; Rowan Wilken, 2010), many scholars tend to romanticize the urban environment. By
comparison, I believe locative and mobile social networks (LMSNs) have sprung up in urban
locales mainly because there is a dense enough population and enough interesting venues to visit.
Further, as Sutko and de Silva e Silva (2011) suggest that “common assumptions made about
location-aware mobile media, namely their ability to… encourage one to meet more people in
public spaces, might be fallacious due to pre-existing practices of sociability in the city” (p. 807).
In other words, there is a conflation of whether urban environments or mobile media encourage
people to be more sociable.

Tie Conversion
This dissertation takes the stance that social ties can be escalated through communication.
Tie conversion from weak to strong generally involves an increase in interaction frequency,
emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocity (Granovetter, 1973; Peter V. Marsden &
Campbell, 1984). They become quite different relationships, engendering greater trust and
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support. This isn’t to say that weak ties aren’t useful. As previously discussed, weak ties tend to
be heterogeneous and connect different networks, resulting in the spread of non-redundant
information (Granovetter, 1983). Strong ties are more intimate and useful for social support.
Although weak ties are associated with looser friendship and strong ties with kinship, as
Marsden and Campbell later point out, “a good deal of variation in tie strength exists within
types” (P. V. Marsden & Campbell, 2012, p. 21). Ties are also not static. Because they are
abstractions of relationships between individuals, they are capable of change, resulting in
equivalent changes in overall network structure.
Haythornwaite (2002) proposes that passively-maintained weak ties can be maintained and
escalate over social media. Tie conversion from weak to strong takes effort to change behavior
and negotiate norms, in addition to “technical know-how” (Haythornthwaite, 2002, p. 395). The
conversion process is contingent on the social affordances of the technical system, user practices,
and needs of individuals in their particular life situation. This combination of factors does not
universally lead to a tie being converted simply because it is visible. Baym concludes in her
work on music appreciation communities that “shared interests may foster the creation of weak
ties, but the conversion of these connections to strong ties is relatively rare” (Baym & Ledbetter,
2009, p. 408). Shared tastes were not enough for individuals to add people to their network of
closer friends. The relative ease of tie conversion reported by new parents stands in contrast to
the significant effort that tie conversion is thought to demand.
Converted ties are likely to be particularly useful relationships for new parents. Those who
connect over Facebook often know each other from offline, and weak ties often reflect
relationships that were closer at a previous point. In an experiment 50% of dormant ties were
able to be “restored to the level before the ties became dormant” (Lim, Correa, Lo, Finegold, &
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Zhu, 2013). The concept of dormant ties is similar to a weak ties that have returned to latency
and are then re-activated (Haythornthwaite, 2002). Levin, Walter and Murnighan (Levin et al.)
propose that re-connecting may be relatively low-effort, provide a valuable source of information
gathered through the other individual’s life-course, and, as Granovetter suggests, could reactivate
a residue of “previously attained common understandings and feelings.” Levin et al. propose that
re-activated ties are particularly powerful because they “combine some of the best aspects of
both weak and strong current ties, i.e., efficiency, novelty, trust and shared perspective” (Levin et
al., 2011, p. 936). Reviving dormant ties is likely easier than creating new ones. This is not
particularly surprising, given that these friendships were once active. Dormant ties thus share a
relationship history, some similarity, and shared understandings of modes of contact.
MSNPs are a valid vehicle for escalating or re-activating ties because they can make weak
and latent ties visible (Haythornthwaite, 2002). Weak ties are more likely to be the sole location
these contacts are stored, whereas strong ties tend to involve multiple media (Haythornthwaite,
2005). While mobile media have a different set of communicative affordances than desktop
environments, we might also consider how individuals interpret the utility of Facebook itself.
Facebook users tend to view the platform as useful for somewhat impersonal rather than intimate
communication (Sosik & Bazarova, 2014). I focus on how SNSs and mobile affordances
influence a mechanism of similarity attraction. This effect is dialectical, in that relationships may
reduce in strength as others increase in strength. A focus on the mechanism is necessary because
“demographic attributes and network size only affect the amount of available social capital, but
not the effectiveness of its conversion” (Leiner, Hohlfelt, & Quiring, 2009, p. 1). That is,
individuals can act on ties in a variety of ways, but structural characteristics of networks appear
to have little to say about the effectiveness of its conversion.
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Tie Conversion and Mobile Media
Mobile media add yet another level of complexity to social networking. Boase (2008)
describes mobile media as a “personal communication system” that facilitates interactions with a
set of social ties. Boase positions individuals as strategic actors that seek to maximize
affordances, that is, find a “congruency between opportunities that [affordances] provide and the
characteristics of the ties with whom they are used to communicate.” Boase here is mainly
concerned with using quantitative methodologies to discuss what particular features are useful
for. I align with Boase in that I am interested in how mobile media enable communication for
specific purposes with multiple personal or “ego-centric” networks (Hogan, Carrasco, &
Wellman, 2007) connected through multiple applications. As previously discussed, there is an
argument here for generalizability, as affordances span different technologies (Boase, 2013, p.
59).
While the majority of these findings will be relegated to the results section, here I’ll
provide an example of how the communicative affordances of accessibility were drawn on by
one interviewee in combination with a need for control and privacy concerns. Despite cautionary
tales of SNSs thrusting us into situations outside of our control, on a mobile device we are “with”
our friends only so much as we wish. Tuning is about negotiating accessibility (Licoppe, 2004).
A general sense of tuning occurs when individuals respond to their physical surroundings. We
set the ringer to vibrate, only receive notifications we deem necessary, and limit who has our
phone number. The interaction between mobile affordances of accessibility and different social
networks can be demonstrated with a story about a single mother interviewee. She was starting to
date on Tindr, which has strong restrictions on what information is visible and allows viewing of
proximate parties interested in romantic relationships. If the discussion seemed promising she
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moved the conversation to an anonymous chat app, then SMS texting, and finally Facebook.
Much of the reluctance to immediately connect with the potential date on Facebook revolves
around child safety, with nervousness emerging around the convergence of the adult dating
sphere and the family sphere. Part of this negotiation is about a desire for privacy. This is partly
the inverse of the concept that we have more means to contact closer relationships, with more
modes of contact denoting a more intimate tie. However, it does demonstrate how decisions to
add people to even a very public network like Facebook can be fraught with concern. In the case
of this interviewee, the conversion from latent to weak to (potentially, if everything goes well, a
lover or partner) strong tie involved a progression through various mobile apps, each with its
own functional differences and ideologies. Far from being helpless, she was astutely guiding her
new friend into a increasingly more intimate conversations and accessing more information
about her personal life. In much this way we might “wall off” applications from other mobile
experiences, negotiating accessibility even as we escalate the strength of social ties.

Similarity Matching and Privacy Concerns
The following two short sections consider two factors in tie conversion: similarity in life-
course and interests, which is a positive influence on tie conversion, and privacy, which
negatively impacts tie conversion.

Similarity Attraction
Similarity attraction refers to people being drawn to qualities of others that most reflect their
own (D. Byrne & Rhamey, 1965). Berger (1975) described similarity attraction as “one of the
most robust relationships in all of the behavioral sciences” (p. 281). Reinforcement-affect and
“smooth interaction” models of similarity attraction view the effect as primarily related to a
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positive response (Berscheid & Walster, 1978; Donn Byrne & Clore, 1970). Successive research
has validated the strength of the robustness of the effect, although scholars differ on whether the
effect stems from reciprocal liking (Condon & Crano, 1988) or ego-centric associations (Jones,
Pelham, Carvallo, & Mirenberg, 2004). Similarity attraction has been found on Facebook using
experimental (Martin, Jacob, & Guéguen, 2013) and survey methodologies (K. Wright, 2012).
The current study conducts qualitative research on how similarity attraction plays out among
young parents communicating on mobile media. They are going through a major life change
(Dyer, 1963; LeMasters, 1957), making them more aware of their changing needs and identity.
Social network services store social connections accrued over time (Donath, 2007). Dyads who
have little in common in high school may find ten years later they have a greater degree of
similarity. This research extends findings generally limited to college students (Nicole B. Ellison
et al., 2007; Valenzuela et al., 2009), a relatively young group for whom having children is less
common and are already in a similar life stage.
Similarity in life-course is not often been considered as a factor for drawing on weak ties or
tie escalation on Facebook. Yet, shared interests are generally a powerful form of social
attraction (D. Byrne, 1997; McCroskey & McCain, 1974) and breaking ties on Facebook is more
likely between people in different social circles and whose ages differ (Quercia, Bogdaghi, &
Crowcroft, 2012). Results of these studies imply that similarity in life-course is an important
factor in remaining connected. These may be individuals who share more of a “what-similarity”
in “attitudes, activities, and hobbies” (Kaptein, Castaneda, Fernandez, & Nass, 2014, p. 344).
This form of similarity seems a valid explanatory mechanism for describing why relationships
escalate online: individuals start to recognize and reciprocate with others they perceive as having
common life experiences and interests that may be hidden in offline life. Individuals connected
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through SNSs are of course similar in ways that are visible or not kept secret in offline life, such
as race, ethnicity and religion. They are more likely to reciprocate to posts by others that share
thematic interests or to which they can offer suggestions. Tie conversion then may occur through
increased frequency and intimacy of posts, perhaps eventually progressing into other
communication media and offline encounters.

Privacy Concerns
Solove (2008) described privacy as a pluralistic concept best considered within a
framework of four general types that outline the current problem areas: information collection,
information processing, information dissemination and invasion. Not all of these factors are a
concern with mobile social media. However, mobile social media alter our ability to sense and
view (and be sensed and be viewed) beyond the built environment. Palen and Dourish (2003)
proposed that mobile privacy is a balancing act, an active process of management within the
context of possibilities from other technologies. Privacy is often contextual, related to the degree
of comfort individuals have with particular actions and visibility over a particular medium
(Nissenbaum, 2010, 2011). As concerns individual experiences negotiating privacy, it is a
dynamic and dialectical process (Palen & Dourish, 2003) that is subject to constant monitoring
and self-evaluation (Goffman, 1959). A completely private or public life is impossible, so
privacy is a kind of “balancing act” or negotiation between self and other (Altman, 1975).
Context collapse — when individuals from different social contexts all find the same messages
visible (Marwick & boyd, 2010; Jessica Vitak, 2012) — complicates how comfortable
individuals feel with communicating on SNSs.
How do people find a “balance” of privacy on social network sites? Several possibilities
have been suggested. Most obviously, individuals may use technical means such as privacy
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settings (boyd & hargittai, 2010). For example, Lenhart and Madden (2007) found in 2006 that
66% of youths 12-17 had limited some access to their profiles. The insistence of some social
media platforms such as Facebook on “real life identity” requires peeling back the cloak of
anonymity that is often enjoyed on the internet. As Ben-Ze'ev (2003) puts it, “with complete
strangers, the issue of privacy online is of little concern because we are in a sense anonymous”
(p. 454). Privacy is often paradoxically demanded by users even as individuals contribute media
with less awareness of how it will be used (Barnes, 2006).
If individuals want to post messages on SNSs, they might use coded messages or humor
(boyd & Marwick, 2011). However, what seems equally likely — and more frequently reported
in interviews — is a “lowest common denominator” approach. Hogan (2010) suggests that the
mental model of online identity is better served by a focus on “exhibition” rather than
Goffmanian “performance.” To Hogan, individuals focus on two groups when posting: those to
whom we wish to maintain an idealized front, and those who may find content unobjectionable.
In testing boyd and Hogan’s hypotheses, Vitak (2012) found that, as expected, privacy concerns
negative affected disclosures, and audience and disclosure characteristics predicted bridging
social capital. However, audience size and diversity positively affected disclosure. In large part
the performance-exhibition debate is still active because Vitak did not consider the content of
posts nor the mental models individuals use. However, her work suggests that context collapse
makes individuals wary about privacy even as they were interested in potential activities and
encounters arising from bridging, returning to Barnes’ “paradox” (Barnes, 2006) where people
often disclose too much even in light of persistent fears about privacy.
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5. Families
The empirical portion of this dissertation collects data on how young parents use mobile
social media to accrue social capital and escalate relationships. This chapter elaborates on the
stresses of this stage of life and defines family rituals as quotidian communicative practices that
have a positive impact on psychosocial well-being. Recalling chapter one, MSNPs combine the
social supernets of an SNS with the communicative affordances of mobile media. Families are
increasingly “doing family” in public through mobile social media. Therefore, in this chapter I
also review in detail how young parents use mobile media and social media for accruing social
capital and obtaining social support. I return to these concepts in chapter eight, which serves to
identify and quantify practices construct question items for deployment in a survey to connect
these practices with particular outcomes.

Introduction
The family has been long been described in sociology as a primary group characterized
by intimacy, cooperation, mutual identification, and emotional attachment (Cooley, 1909, p. 23).
To Simmel, families were paradoxically intertwined with identity, both an extension of one’s self
and a complex from which individuals distinguish themselves — “a unit through which one feels
one's own blood coursing” (Simmel, 1971, p. 263). While Simmel elaborated on how families
operate at different times as a group and a meso-layer between individuals and society. The
notion of “family ritual” elaborated below mirrors a concern with connecting family well-being
with integration with the outside world (Bossard & Boll, 1950; Feise, Hooker, Kotary, &
Schwagler, 1993; Wolin & Bennett, 1984). Durkheim considered family an important institution
(Bynder, 1969), even if it was rarely a central focus of his work. He considered family parties to
be domestic rituals that refreshed family bonds and insulated members from negative societal
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effects (Durkheim, 1897). While many predictions have focused on entirely new social
aggregations fostered by mobile media such as “floating worlds” (Gergen, 2010), “social
molecularization” (Humphreys, 2007) and “smart mobs” (Rheingold, 2002), I argue we should
return to the basic social institution of the family to consider how it plays out across mobile
social media.
This dissertation takes a sociological, life-course perspective on family life. A life-course
is defined as “a sequence of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over
time” (Giele & Elder, 1998, p. 22). This dissertation considers how families draw on mobile
social media to navigate the transition after the birth of a child. This chapter, then, discusses the
implications of this perspective and justifies this particular life stage that holds promise for
investigation through communicative affordances. A life-course perspective refers to particular
changes that occur throughout the lifespan of individuals related to age, period or cohort (Elder,
1994; Elder & Rockwell, 1979). While much research on how individual connect on social
network sites has focused on teenagers (danah boyd, 2007; Livingstone, 2002) or young adults
(typically in college) (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2007), older cohorts have been less researched.
Reasons why include that young people are often early adopters and thus have novel practices,
and are themselves going through a particularly important life transition. By comparison, the
motivations and outcomes for parents to seek out social support through social media have been
rarely researched (Doty & Dworkin, 2014). New parents have been a blind spot in the literature
on technology use and social cohesion (Bartholomew et al., 2012; Doty & Dworkin, 2014).
This dissertation takes a micro-sociological perspective (Roberts, 2006), meaning that the
research focus is on individual behavior, perspectives, and practices. As will be discussed
shortly, more classic sociological concerns of race and gender are in the background that impact
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practices with mobile social media. For now, it might simply be noted that a great deal of
research on computer-mediated communication uses social-psychological paradigms where
motivations for relationship formation, maintenance and dissolution are related to individual
cognitive or group factors (Walther, 2011). By comparison, a communicative affordances
perspective that takes an activity-centric approach (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2014) that relates
habitual practices that particular technologies afford to particular outcomes. Referring back to a
communicative affordances approach, affordances are “unique to the particular ways in which an
actor, or a set of actors, perceives and uses the object” (Treem & Leonardi, 2012, p. 142). While
parents different in numerous ways — location, upbringing, parenting style — a focus on new
parents helps to define the “set of actors” under investigation. In other words, while these
individuals are certainly not identical, their shared stage of life dictates a common set of
challenges and a set of shared needs. While research has been performed on parents’ use of
mobile media (Haddon, 2006) and social media (Bartholomew et al., 2012), almost none has
considered the interaction between the two.

Parenthood as Transition
Having a first child has long been recognized as a major life shift for families (LeMasters,
1957). It often results in exhaustion, loss of sleep, feelings of neglecting responsibilities,
uncertainty, difficulty adjusting, and curtailing outside activities (Dyer, 1963). “Family” here
generally refers to what Charles Cooley described in 1910 as a “primary group” characterized by
intimacy, cooperation, mutual identification, and emotional attachment (p. 23). What we
recognize as a a “correct” configuration is often historically contingent. Contrary to panics about
social atomization, families remain an important source of resilience (Fischer, 2011). It is most
accurate to say that family is a diverse and fluid concept defined by practices and identity more
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than one particular formation (Morgan, 2004). The more fluid nature of modern family defies an
easy linkage to one particular structure or role. In the current day we can witness changing roles
of fathers (Gerson, 2010) and increased length of time children progress into adulthood before
marriage (for those who get married). There is a welcome increase in recognition that, not
surprisingly, children of gay parents experience no deficiencies compared with heterosexual
parents (Biblarz & Stacey, 2010). Thus, any discussion of “family life” must define what exactly
family is.
I define “family” as referring to a primary social group living in the same household that may
include biological parents, adoptive parents, children, and grandparents (all of which are
represented in my interviewees). At times in this dissertation I also am interested in extended
family — those members not living in the immediate household and are often physically distant
and looser ties, such as cousins. The arrival of a child presents challenges for parents in these
families for different reasons. For biological parents, childbirth can lead to postpartum
depression in the mother. An increased rate of depression and anxiety is particularly noted
among women who are younger, single, and African-American (Wisner et al., 2013). Adoptive
families encounter social stigma (March, 1995) and challenges to shape their children’s
development (Grotevant, Dunbar, Kohler, & Esau, 2000). Parent identity also shifts during time
of a child’s arrival (Bruess, 2011).
Ability to successfully manage this transition is contingent on support from a wider network
of friends and family outside the primary group. The well-worn aphorism “it takes a village to
raise a child” may now be adapted to consider mediated social ties (Wellman, 1998). People’s
core discussion networks have on the whole been reduced, mobile and Facebook users have
larger and more diverse networks (Hampton, Goulet, Her, & Rainie, 2009). Online resources can
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be used to navigate the often specialized challenges that parents confront. For example, parents
can find themselves confined to being inside, separated from previously active friendship
networks. “Offline” play groups can promote an exclusionary in-group dynamic (Mulcahy,
Parry, & Glover, 2010). Both fathers and mothers have been found to seek informational and
social support through social media (Doty & Dworkin, 2014).
Against this backdrop of potentially helpful social support, “doing family” in a public setting
such as Facebook also engages with a set of potentially negative consequences. Family
communication scholars and psychologists describe the intrusion of home into work life (and
vice-versa) as “spillover,” connecting it with negative effects such as stress on the parent
(Grzywacz, Almeida, & McDonald, 2002). Spillover appears more prevalent on mobile media
and social network sites and involves spheres outside of simply “home” and “work.” Because
mobile media are carried on the body they become sites of intrusion (Judy Wajcman et al., 2009;
J. Wajcman et al., 2008). For example, Chesley (2005) found support for use of a cell phone
negative impacting parental stress. On SNSs danah boyd terms the general effect of
communication in previously private spheres becoming more visible to unintended parties online
“context collapse” (Marwick & boyd, 2010). Both negative and positive outcomes from
broadcasted messages are possible, as individuals often don’t mind disclosing information as
long as it doesn’t immediately strike them as a privacy violation (Barnes, 2006). On one hand,
individuals can ask questions of their social network (J. Vitak & Ellison, 2012) and maintain
relationships (K. B. Wright, 2004). On the other, individuals often find their communications are
visible to unintended parties. In response they augment their amount of self-disclosure (Jessica
Vitak, 2012), change privacy settings (boyd & hargittai, 2010), and “unfriend” parties (Sibona,
2014) to become comfortable with their audience.
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Practices as Family Rituals
Bossard and Boll (1950) introduced the notion of family rituals to social science in their 1950
book Ritual in Family Living. They defined family rituals as “certain forms of family behavior so
recurrent as to suggest the term ‘habit’ and yet having about them aspects of conscious rigidity
and a sense of rightness and inevitability not generally associated with mere habits” (p. 9). They
identified family rituals as patterned social interaction that is prescribed, relatively rigid, and
with a sense of rightness (p. 16). Wolin and Bennett (1984) defined family rituals as celebrations,
traditions, and patterned family interactions. Reviewing 50 years of research on naturally
occurring family rituals, Feise et al. (2002) summarize that research on family rituals across
mainstream sociology and family therapy has commonly focused on process, embeddedness in
family life, and the intersection between individual and collective factors (p. 381). They
conceptualize rituals slightly differently than Wolin and Bennett (1984) as occurring across daily
living and family life, involving communication, commitment, and continuity.
Family rituals are patterned communication that includes both “high moments” and everyday
phenomena that serve to refresh and solidify the family unit. In the context of early parenthood,
family rituals were associated with positive martial satisfaction (Also see: Hendrick, 1988) and
had a stronger impact among parents of older (preschool) children (Feise et al., 1993). Family
rituals also sustain family identity (Bruess, 2011). It isn’t entirely clear if family rituals constitute
a positive family environment or they reflect it. That said, many rituals are utterly everyday but
have a surprisingly strong correlation with healthy environments for children. Dinnertable
conversations, for example, have a positive relationship with child achievement and likelihood of
positive outcomes (Spagnola & Fiese, 2007).

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Young Parents and Social Network Sites
Facebook started as a site for college students to meet and date (d boyd, 2007). Accordingly,
studies on social network services have tended to focus on teenagers and young adults,
particularly easily-obtained samplings of college students (Hasebrink, Livingstone, & Haddon,
2008; Steinfield et al., 2008). However, Facebook has long since transitioned to being a general-
purpose platform and many of these adults have started families of their own. Facebook usage by
age appears to be linear with little difference by income (Brenner & Smith, 2013). Little research
has considered the role of Facebook in reinforcing supportive ties among young parents (Doty &
Dworkin, 2014, p. 193). Young parents are typically longstanding users of social network sites
(Brenner & Smith, 2013) and Facebook is quite unlike other online social media such as message
boards.
A scant literature has directly addressed new parents’ use of SNSs. For clarity I interpret the
literature through a lens of social support. Research has generally found that social network sites
and other social media (e.g. Message boards) present a way for parents to obtain instrumental
(Madge & O'Connor, 2006) and emotional support (Drentea & Moren-Cross, 2005). This clarify
is necessary because in a meta-analysis of online support for parents, Doty and Dworkin (2014)
found that often these studies follow in a model where measuring time spent on-site is used as an
independent variable, and the conceptual framework of social capital is only implied.
Informational support took the form of asking questions and telling stories (Hall & Irvine, 2009).
This informational support often filled in where traditional modes of support were lacking. For
example, Made and O’Connor (2006) found that the Internet was more important for obtaining
information on parenting than participants’ own mothers (69%). This is a good example of
bridging capital — obtaining information from weak ties that strong ties may not have access to.
Facebook groups dedicated to parenting are generally conversational or informational
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(Kaufmann & Buckner, 2014). Frequency of site use was found to be positively related to
bonding capital (Jang & Dworkin, 2014). Gender was a topic or sub-topic of much of this work,
which predominantly researched mothers, as they are predominantly care-givers in early stages
of a child’s life. Madge (2006) claims that the internet “played an important social role for some
women while at the same time it encouraged restrictive and unequal gender stereotypes.” (p.
214). Pedersen (2013) argued that a moms-only support group provided spaces for mothers to
express their identity outside of restrictive stereotypes. Bartholomew (2012) found that mothers
turned to Facebook for emotional support, but were also disproportionately stressed and tasked
with maintaining their child’s online presence. Facebook use was not significantly associated
with capital effects or outcomes like self-efficacy for men or women, although the two reported
different styles of use (Bartholomew et al., 2012). Fathers’ use of Facebook was associated with
better parental adjustment.
Shifts in life often result in altered practices on social media. For example, Choudhury and
Massimi (2015) used textual analysis to find that communication style on Twitter shifted when
an individual publicly announcing their engagement to be married. A meta-analysis of parents’
use of the internet for social support concluded that a social capital holds promise as a theoretical
lineage for explaining how practices relate to outcomes (Doty & Dworkin, 2014). Returning to a
perspective of communicative affordances, one way to unpack the differing conclusions is that a
wide variety of activities are possible on Facebook, some capital-enhancing and others not
(Smock et al., 2011). In other words, not all measures of “use” will result in identical outcomes
because not all usage is equivalent. An affordances perspective advocates a move away from
“Facebook use” as a blanket category (Bartholomew et al., 2012). Indeed, it is telling that
satisfaction has been strongly related to number of SNS activities, which was in turn related to
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bonding and bridging capital (Jang & Dworkin, 2014). No studies were found focusing
exclusively on tie conversion among young parents on SNSs. However, older adults have been
found to reconnect with friends they had lost touch with (K. Quinn, 2013), providing support for
Levin’s hypothesis that dormant ties are more easily activated than entirely new friendships and
can provide some of the benefits of both weak and strong ties (Levin et al., 2011).

Young Parents and Mobile Media
Mobile-mediated communication between family members was of interest to early mobile
communication scholars (Ling, 2004a), predominantly from an interpersonal perspective. Most
interest in mobile communication followed a route of either domestication (Haddon, 2006) or
particular practices. Domestication entails broad, mostly qualitative inquiry on interactions in the
home environment (Baym, 2010). Work on mobile media use from a domestication perspective
focuses on the period where technology ceases to be imbued with utopian hopes or dystopian
fears, become “so ordinary as to be invisible” (Baym, 2010, p. 45). A domestication approach in
mobile communication covers similar theoretical ground as affordances, as it often addresses
“how the social shaping continues after ICTs have started to be taken up” (Haddon, 2006, p.
198), and tends to focus on particular in situ questions of spatial dynamics that are less
applicable in the current study. Of particular interest was the notion that mobile media bridged
work and home life, which required constant negotiation and some perceived as stressful (Judy
Wajcman et al., 2009; J. Wajcman et al., 2008). Specific practices that were of interest were
monitoring of youth by parents (Weisskirch, 2009) and coordinating activities (Ling, 2004a;
Ling & Yttri, 2002). In the parlance of communicative affordances, each of these practices took
advantage of the portability and locatability of mobile media. Most early mobile communication
research on family in this early period tended to research direct, synchronous modes of
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communication (SMS texting, voice calling) between specific parties, such as communication
between youth and parents (Chen & Katz, 2009). Mobile media did not yet provide connectivity
to social network sites, as they only rose to prominence around 2006 and the internet was not
generally available as an option in many countries.
The combination of “mobile” and “social” has been generally seen as positively impacting
social ties. Daniel Miller, for example, found that mobile practices with Facebook, driven by
cultural and industry forces in Trinidad, were an important vehicle for family rituals vis-a-vis
mobile practices (Miller, 2011). To Miller, the space-collapsing nature of mobile media was a
way to enact diasporic family relations and maintain ties (Madianou & Miller, 2011). Mobile
media has been described as a “strong booster of intimacy among those within the social network
of the user” (Fortunati, 2002, p. 51). Rich Ling’s notion of bounded solidarity (Rich Ling, 2008a;
Richard Ling, 2008) considers how norms of use develop through shared rituals among particular
social groups. It is largely in this mold that this dissertation proceeds, although I prefer
“practices” rather than “rituals.”
Although limited, several conclusions can be drawn from this body of work. The first is that
mobile social media reach far beyond initial questions in mobile communication. Mobile social
media are now used by parents for reasons beyond synchronous interpersonal communicator or
monitoring. The aforementioned literature on parents and SNSs gestures at the importance of
larger networks of ties for social support. This is curious, given that family relations are
increasingly mediated (Livingstone & Ranjana, 2010). It would seem that the communicative
affordances of mobile media are particularly useful for young parents in their particular life
situations. Mobility and availability enable mobile media to be used in places and times
convenient for parents. Multimediality affords a constant connection for pictures of family as
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parents narrate their children’s early lives online, even as they are wary of the privacy
implications. While this is often framed as a need for control (Ribak, 2009), the early stages of a
child’s life are equally fraught with concern for making the right decisions. Finally, while family
has been a topic of periodic interest, scholarship has generally not returned to it from the early
days of mobile communication.
In sum, the publicness of “doing family” through mobile social media seems to present an
opportunity for accruing bridging and bonding capital. It seems likely that a positive family
environment will be correlated with bonding capital, which is related to frequent, intimate
communication among close families and friends. The measure of family satisfaction (Carver &
Jones, 1992) is employed to capture positive cohesion and social support within the family to
determine if this is a factor in online bonding on Facebook (Jessica Vitak et al., 2011). Returning
to the notion of “connected presence” (Christenson, 2009; Licoppe, 2004) availability for
communication on mobile social media is thought to amplify connectivity effects with one’s
social network.

Young Parents and Photography

“Cameras go with family life… through photographs, each family constructs a portrait-
chronicle of itself — a portable kit of images that bears witness to its connectedness.” - Susan
Sontag (1973)

The current study positions family rituals — celebrations, traditions, and interactions (Wolin
& Bennett, 1984) — as increasingly finding a resonance with communicative affordances of
mobile media. As will become clear in Chapter 7, mobile media have become embedded in in-
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person and mediated rituals, particularly with visual media. The remainder of this short section
serves to briefly situate photography as vital to family rituals. Photography is “a technology for
the reiteration of the party” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 27) where the symbolic meaning of images can
be successively encountered and consumed. Susan Sontag extended this notion by suggesting
that “through photographs, each family constructs a portrait-chronicle of itself — a portable kit
of images that bears witness to its connectedness. It hardly matters what activities are
photographed so long as photographs get taken and are cherished” (Sontag, 1973, p. 5). The
portability of photographs, along with their integration with social life, are more important than
their content.
Sharing photographs of milestones of children, family trips, and events such as birthdays are
commonplace, much as they were decades ago after the introduction of inexpensive cameras that
were affordable by mainstream Americans (Olivier, 2007). One difference is that social network
sites are now porous boundaries to a wider network, meaning family practices are relatively
public (Pauwels, 2008). This evolution is both the result of a specific convergence and hallmark
of difficulties in “doing family” online. Hogan and Wellman (2014) describe how what we term
“selfies” are the reflection of the convergence of two ideas: that identity can be signified, and
relationships can be conceptualized as connections (p. 53). Family members keep other family
members (predominantly strong ties) and casual friends (weak ties) alike updated with their
lives, which increasingly are oriented around children, outings and quotidian events. Parents
talking online about their lives naturally involves projecting their child’s nascent needs, quirks
and personality. As Lupton notes, “children are planning objects” (1997, p. 20). Speaking about
children naturally involves concerns about privacy and identity, who should be able to see them
(boyd & Marwick, 2011), a responsibility parents are often saddled with.
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Humphreys (2013, p. 23) suggests that an unexplored area is how visual media production
and distribution connect media flows with a wider social network. “Bounded solidarity” would
stipulate that multimedia practices bring micro-rituals to one’s social network (Rich Ling, 2008a;
Richard Ling, 2008). In the popular press, visual mobile media tends to be reduced to framings
of “selfies” as narcissistic and burnout over pictures of newborns on Facebook. I believe these
negative framings tend to downplay the importance of these snippets that can be spread and
consumed. In a sense, this dissertation ended up being an ardent defense of “selfies.” Chalfen
(1998) describes snapshots as a symbolically-interpreted form embedded in a communication
process. Family photography is increasingly about communication and what Janet Finch terms
“displaying” of family (Finch, 2007). Camera phones thus exist at the intersection of historically
social practices and new functional uses (Van House, 2009).
It would seem that images, because they constitute such a significant portion of overall
activity of MSNPs, have an overall positive relationship with social capital (Chow, 2013).
Bridging and bonding might be positively affected for different reasons. The intimacy and
connection associated with images among parents interviewed here suggest that it is
predominantly a bonding activity. We might identify a functional purpose to uploading images to
Facebook, that of simultaneously connecting all family members such that nobody feels “left
out.” However, these same visual traces may also be enjoyable as they are rich with symbolic
meaning interpretable across different families and social groups. As Schroeder (2010) notes, the
rise of real-time multimedia connectedness draws attention to if there may be common
multimodal patterns across cultures. One does not need to be part of a family to enjoy watching a
child’s development, for example. While photographs of friends and family are certainly not
universal, they just might be durable enough to act as a social currency. Facebook goes to great
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lengths to ensure that their MSNP is full of smooth and enjoyable interactions, as conflicts might
result in disuse or frustration.

6. Summary of Hypotheses

The first chapter of this dissertation proposed a framework of communicative affordances
of mobile media that mediate between perception of utility and outcomes (Figure 1). As
described in Chapter 2, an affordance are intersubjective and can be researched in three ways:
studying factors associated with perception (Gibson, 1986),
2
conceptualizing technical
characteristics (boyd, 2010), and collecting evidence to support the relationship between
particular practices and outcomes. Generally, an “affordances perspective” in communication
tends to focus on the latter question: how communicative practices are altered by qualities of
technology, negatively or positively (Majchrzak et al., 2013) impacting an outcome of interest.
The goals of the interviews were to reveal motivations for altering perception of utility and
operationalizing a set of practices that will be used in the survey. A life-course perspective (Elder
& Rockwell, 1979) takes parenthood as a particularly important time in an individual’s life
(LeMasters, 1957). Individuals are likely to have common goals with regard to how they use
mobile social media, as integrated into the everyday domestic sphere (Haddon, 2006). First, a set
of descriptive research questions on demographics and specific goals with mobile social media
are posed. These research questions cover a general overview of survey participant
demographics, specific goals accomplished through mobile social media, and differences in
multimediality and availability by race and gender.

2
However, see discussion in the affordances chapter about Gibson rejecting positivist psychology, in the sense he
was not interested in cognitive mechanisms behind perception.
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RQ1: What are the demographics of survey participants?
RQ2: What specific goals of new parents do mobile social media afford?
RQ3: What are the differences in multimediality and availability by race and gender?

Figure 2. Relationship Between Demographics, Family variables, Communicative Affordances
and Bonding Capital

The next set of hypotheses concerns the effects of demographic, family, and mobile variables
on bonding capital. Following a stepwise regression analysis, these are loaded first, as they are
thought to not be direct influences. Second, family variables are considered. Family satisfaction
is correlated with intimacy, communication, and cohesion among family members (Carver &
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102
Jones, 1992). Following from Ling’s (2008) notion of bounded solidarity, we would expect
families with strong cohesion and communication patterns to be positively related with bonding
capital, which involves strong ties, frequent communication, and intimacy (Norris, 2002).
Parental stress has been found to be correlated with intense use of SNSs among parents,
particularly mothers (Bartholomew et al., 2012). A single question about single parents is
included, as it is thought that single parents might find SNSs a useful site of emotional and
instrumental support. The final block considers the impact of multimedia practices, as well as
availability on mobile Facebook. Facebook used on a desktop computer is included to support
the proposition that bonding capital accrual is occurring primarily on a mobile device. These
hypotheses are listed below.

H1A: Family satisfaction will have a positive relationship with Facebook bonding capital.
H1B: Parental stress will have a negative relationship with Facebook bonding capital.
H1C: Single parenthood will have a positive relationship with Facebook bonding capital.
H1D: Multimediality will have a positive relationship with Facebook bonding capital.
H1E: Facebook availability over mobile media will have a positive relationship with
Facebook bonding capital.
H1F: Facebook availability on a desktop will have no relationship with Facebook bonding
capital.

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Figure 3. Relationship Between Demographics, Facebook variables, Communicative
Affordances and Bridging Capital

The next set of hypotheses take bridging capital as a dependent variable. First, demographic
variables are considered. A gendered dimension has been found in bridging, as women reporting
more frequent SNS usage and also higher levels of parental stress (Bartholomew et al., 2012).
Judy Wajcman, Michael Bittman and Jude Brown (2009) propose that the question of spillover
should be shifted from static notions of spillover to “the control that individuals can and do
exercise over what passes through these boundaries” (p. 12). Further, they suggest a move
towards family practices and how they manifest through mobile media. Privacy concerns have
been found to be negatively correlated with disclosures that are necessary to draw on bridging
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capital (Jessica Vitak, 2012). Parents are forced to performa a balancing act, negotiating levels of
disclosure (A. E. Marwick & d. boyd, 2014). Friend list size has been found to be correlated with
bridging capital (J. Vitak & Ellison, 2012). Multimedia practices and availability on mobile and
desktop mirror predictions about bonding capital. In the case of multimedia practices, it is though
that images act as a “social currency” (Chow, 2013) that can travel across social groups.
According to some predictions, the frequency of availability of mobile social media result in
their being useful for obtaining information “on the go” (Rainie & Wellman, 2012).

H1A: Privacy concerns will have a negative relationship with Facebook bridging capital.
H1B: Facebook friend list size will have a positive relationship with Facebook bridging
capital.
H1C: Parental stress will have a negative relationship with Facebook bridging capital.
H1D: Multimediality will have a positive relationship with Facebook bridging capital.
H1E: Facebook availability over mobile media will have a positive relationship with
Facebook bridging capital.
H1F: Facebook availability on a desktop will have no relationship with Facebook bridging
capital.

A set of specific goals was also selected for analysis to ensure capital measures are leading to
the expected outcomes. Predictions have been made about outcomes of bonding and bridging
capital (Norris, 2002). Bonding capital should be correlated with outcomes of trust (Valenzuela
et al., 2009). Bridging should be related to specific goals of asking for advice (J. Vitak & Ellison,
2012) of one’s Facebook network. Further, because H3B, H3C & H3D specifically query
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activities on mobile Facebook, this provides further evidence to the shift from the desktop to
mobile interface.

H3A: Bonding capital will be positively related to trusting a parent in one’s Facebook
network with watching their child(ten).
H3B: Bonding capital will be positively related to activity coordination on mobile Facebook.
H3C: Bridging capital will be positively related to asking for advice on important issues on
mobile Facebook.
H3D: Bridging capital will be positively related to use of online groups on mobile Facebook.

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Figure 4. Relationship Between Demographics, Facebook variables, Communicative
Affordances and Tie Conversion

The last set of hypotheses employ tie conversion as a dependent variable. The sociological
notion of a “tie” is an abstraction of an interpersonal relationship (Simmel, 1898). Chapter 4
addressed how tie re-activation has been generally thought to be a property of SNSs because they
retain access to “social supernets” (Donath, 2007) of weak ties. Mobile media connect
individuals through multiple media, such as voice calls, texting, synchronous chat apps (Boase,
2008). Strong ties are likely to be connected through multiple media (Haythornthwaite, 2005).
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However, weak ties are more likely to be solely connected through SNSs such as Facebook.
While much research focuses on college-aged individuals, this may not be the best test case, as
they do not have the wealth of weak ties that individuals in later stages of life do (K. Quinn,
2013). Previous relationships that have lapsed are thought to have the “residue” (Granovetter,
1983) of past friendships while combining positive attributes of both weak and strong ties (Levin
et al., 2011). The relative ease of tie conversion on SNSs stands in contrast to predictions that
such conversion is difficult in different online communities, such as shared recreational interests
(Baym & Ledbetter, 2009). While tie conversion is made possible through SNSs’ affordances
(boyd, 2010), simply having access to latent ties does not dictate how or why they are drawn on
by individuals. While tie strength is often measured by frequency of communication, this is only
part of tie activation (Haythornthwaite, 2002, 2005). Because “tie” is an abstraction of a
relationship, communication is necessary but rarely sufficient to have a relationship. One might
communicate frequently with someone and never escalate into more intimate communication.
One might never exchange other forms of contact such as email or meet in-person, as illustrated
in James’ example above. These factors are often subjective and cannot be easily collected
through trace data, making surveys a useful alternative.
Privacy concerns, unfriending, and family satisfaction comprise H3A - C. Privacy concerns
negatively impact self-disclosure necessary to escalate relationships (Wheeless, 1976).
Unfriending may, at first glance, seem to be negatively correlated with tie re-activation — how
could they be correlated if one is escalating relationships and the other de-escalating? The
answer is that social networks are fluid and not static. Implicit in the notion of “network
privatism” (Scott W. Campbell, 2015) is a tightening of the private sphere and move towards
communication with close ties (Ling, Bjelland, Sundsøy, & Campbell, 2014). Parenting is part of
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a shift in identity (Bartholomew et al., 2012), reflected in interviews with parents finding they
have less in common with the activities and worldview of their single friends. Should parenthood
be part of a life-course phenomena we would expect new parents’ de-escalation of certain ties to
be related to re-activation of ties with other parents that are more suitable friendships during this
life-course. Extending this idea, family satisfaction is thought to be correlated with positive
communication and positive family life. Family members reporting more satisfactory families
are thought to be more likely to seek out and convert ties online. Were this true it would echo a
“rich get richer” perspective on family life on SNSs where those with positive family lives
snowball and accrue more social ties. Finally, for H3D - F practices involving multimediality,
availability (mobile), and availability (desktop) were used as independent variables, as
previously discussed. Visual records of family rituals and frequency of phatic communication is
here thought to amplify warm feelings towards those in a similar life-course, as described by
James.

7. Interviews
Mobile communication scholars have shared sociology's historical concern with social
cohesion (Scott W. Campbell & Park, 2008; Chayko, 2007; Richard Ling, 2008). Two criticisms
of this research are that mobilities has not produced much in the way of theories or testable
propositions (D'Andrea, Ciolfi, & Gray, 2011), and mobile communication has focused on
locative media rather than social media (Humphreys et al., 2013). Much of the work in mobile
communication has been descriptive, outlining practices with mobile media in particular
communities (Humphreys, 2007; Palen et al., 2000). Neither have insights from mobile
communication been incorporated with quantitative research on how technology mediates
interpersonal relationships (Walther, 2011). We are often left to live with vague assertions that
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mobile media “bringing us together and pushing us apart” (Ling & Campbell, 2012) without
addressing how and why one or the other might be. Clearly, simply noting the prevalence of
particular forms of usage does not sufficiently connect these observations outcomes for social
cohesion. Such is the work of a social scientist to collect empirical data to support a particular
position.
To connect patterned behavior with outcomes of interest I interviewed new parents (N = 10)
about how they used mobile media and the social network site together. Part of this methodology
was to obtain detailed information about how family practices (né rituals) are enacted through
MSNPs. Another incentive was to determine which of the affordances of mobile media might
matter for social cohesion and how they use MSNPs. The two affordances of mobile social
media that were most prevalent were multimediality and availability. These constructs were
successively operationalized into survey questions and sequenced with family-specific variables
and outcomes of interest (social capital, tie conversion). Responses were then collected from a
cross-section of parents of young children (N = 250) across the United States.

Sampling and Participants
This dissertation employs data collected from online surveys and interviews. The motivation
for the mixed-methods data collection was to obtain information that is useful at different points
of the discussion of the relationship between individual goals, communicative affordances, and
particular outcomes. It bears mention that not all hypotheses are likely to result in significant
results (in the case of quantitative tests) or entirely aligned with expectations (in the case of
qualitative interviews). This is particularly true given the newness of the terrain surrounding
communicative affordances as a framework for empirical social science research.

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Content Analysis
Interviews were used to develop survey instrumentation for deployment to a larger
population. In-depth interviews are appropriate for this initial step because they can elicit
responses that are detailed (Berg, 2004)and allow for the emergence of new insights (Lindlof,
2002). The analysis of qualitative data resulting in construction of questions about practices is
described briefly here and more fully in Chapter 8. In brief, a set of in-depth interviews were
performed with ten parents of young children in the Los Angeles area. Their responses were
subjected to a qualitative content analysis (Berg, 2000) using the program NVIVO to create
clusters of practices that reflected practices enabled by communicative affordances of mobile
media. The goal of content analysis was to reveal latent themes rather than just manifest content
(Babbie, 2010). That is, I delved into the relationship between practices and how communicative
affordances are evaluated rather than just counting extant phenomena, otherwise the interview
would threaten to cover similar methodological ground as a survey (Babbie, 2010, p. 338). This
process was primarily deductive — using categories of communicative affordances of mobile
media developed in chapter 2 — but left room for inductive emergence of new themes (Strauss,
1987). Glaser and Strauss (1967) make clear that inductive and deductive modes are not
mutually exclusive. For example, data suggested specific motives as to why parents unfriend
others, even as they escalate other relationships. Specific motives for unfriending were salient in
the interviews enough that I constructed a set of survey questions (81 − 92) to capture the
nuances of these practices. Unfriending in general has been researched (Sibona, 2014) but not the
interplay between unfriending and tie conversion, which appeared to be mutually constitutive. I
came to term this process “network tuning” to capture individuals’ awareness of crafting their
egocentric networks.
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In a more general sense, wording from the interviews also captured the way parents of
young children used to describe their practices. Strauss (1987) terms these in vivo codes, by
which he means an emic level of meaning-making (Lévi Strauss, 1962). Certain key terms were
often retained for use in constructing scales, as it was useful to capture the way individuals
referred to their own actions, within certain boundaries of scale construction such that the
question wouldn’t be leading and could be understood by a variety of respondents. As previously
described, this dissertation takes a micro-sociological perspective on human action. That is,
attention was paid primarily to practices, rather than the network itself or psychological
variables, as would be the case with a dissertation from network analysis or psychological
perspectives, respectively. The overall goal is to collect empirical evidence for how
communicative affordances relate to processes and outcomes for accruing social capital. In
chapter 2 I proposed that there are four communicative affordances of mobile media that are
thought to have an amplification effect on the utility of ego-centric network ties: portability,
multimediality, availability and locatability.
Portability is a fundamental property of mobile media that undergirds other affordances.
However, using portability as an independent variable of its own would be methodologically and
theoretically problematic. Data collected on portability would not be particularly useful because
individuals often carry some form of mobile media near them at all times. While a device
running mobile Facebook has been found to have an interaction effect on feelings of
belongingness with offline social groups (S. Quinn & Oldmeadow, 2013), it is not entirely clear
that the direct effect is related to mere presence of the device.
3
Quinn (2013) focused on a

3
It bears mention that I am attempting to replicate findings of Quinn’s “martini effect” in a separate study with a
college-aged group. Her claim is that the presence of a mobile device in the pocket - separate from active or passive
“use” - has a kind of residual effect on feelings of belongingness. As a communication scholar I am somewhat leery
of talisman-like claims that mere presence of a device leads to particular outcomes. Given that she captured only
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particular stage of adoption among pre-teenagers when approximately half had adopted mobile
media and the other half had not. A variable for comparison groups — mobile owners and non-
owners — was naturally present. That is not the case in the current study and likely difficult to
find in societies where mobile media have reached mainstream adoption. Theoretically, an
affordances perspective dictates a focus on how particular processes (e.g. practices) are
connected with outcomes. Although frequency-based measures may still be useful, it draws
attention to why particular uses lead to particular outcomes. Simply put, individuals can use
mobile media for behavior that supports social relationships and has no effect on social ties
maintained online (e.g. Fruit Ninja).
Multimediality captures use of multimedia for particular practices. These practices were
conceptualized into dimensions of taking, sharing, and uploading media for and of relational
connections, reflecting different ways multimedia are integrated into everyday relationship
maintenance. Availability was captured with frequency of use of mobile Facebook (question 19:
“How frequently do you use Facebook on a mobile device? (include mobile app, Facebook
messenger, and mobile website)”). Although availability does not equate to social accessibility,
frequency of use is the most fruitful way to operationalize Licoppe’s notion of “connected
presence” (Licoppe, 2004). While some have taken connected presence towards virtual
environments (Schroder, 2006), I remain attuned to a definition of connected presence that
focuses on relationships that are symbolically maintained through a constant stream of
communication or what Naaman, Boase and Lai(2010) term “social awareness streams.” The

active use, my suspicion is that there are a range of other uses that account for the direct relationship she observed
between mobile owners and non-owners.
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impact of this constant connectedness has been supported in the literature on family
communication (Christenson, 2009).
4

Few parents described attaching any particular meaning to performing a check-in (Frith,
2014) or geo-tagging (Zollers, 2007). Still, three questions (questions 78 − 80) were synthesized
from practices proposed by de Souza e Silva and Frith (2012). Locationality enables practices
such as check-ins (Humphreys, 2007) and coordination of in-person meetings (Ling, 2004a; Ling
& Yttri, 2002). Yet, attempts to quantitatively connect this with mobile media has not been
successful (S. Quinn & Oldmeadow, 2013). The difficulty with identifying location as a
significant factor in social cohesion is that friends get together in-person regardless of whether
they use a mobile device (Eagle, Pentland, & Lazer, 2009), and mobile media are equally adept
at breaking such meetings. Not all practices performed on mobile social media represent a
significant difference from previous forms. In this sense, location enables the smooth functioning
of everyday life (Ling, 2012) rather than radical different forms of in-person sociality.
Interview subjects were recruited from Los Angeles county, a location selected because of
the area’s racial, ethnic, and economic diversity. A quota sampling of interview candidates was
employed approximately equivalent to census data of Los Angeles county. A diverse range of
participants was essential for the current study because although mobile devices have entered
mainstream adoption, social networking on mobile devices is higher among African-Americans
and Latinos, as compared with Anglos. For example, the 18 − 29 year-old age group is
Facebook’s largest user demographic and most likely to access the service on a mobile device
(Brenner & Smith, 2013). Young adults also must navigate a variety of transitions: moving from

4
Frequency of use of Facebook on desktop or laptop was captured using an identical scale to mobile Facebook.
However, desktop Facebook use was found not to be a significant factor in either bonding or bridging. That is, it
appears that availability, as conceptualized as a frequent stream of communication with one’s social group, was
afforded by mobile media.
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home life to independence; getting a job or going to college; and supporting a family. From a
life-course perspective (Elder, 1994; Elder & Rockwell, 1979), these transitions present different
challenges for maintaining contact with family and drawing on friendship networks. That is,
social capital is likely of particular importance for this particular population as they need to
maintain social ties across distance and draw on others for support.
Interviews were administered at a public location local to the interviewee, often a coffee
shop. A $20 card to Target was offered as an incentive for participation. Time to conduct the
interviews averaged 31:23, with the shortest interview running 17:18 and the longest 40:09. The
interviews centered around the perception of particular mobile applications for various practices.
Participants were requested to identify the three mobile applications they used the most to
communicate with friends and family. Instagram would be considered such an application, while
Sigalert or a stock ticker application would not qualify. One of these applications was generally
Facebook, although this is not true for all interviewees. After a short set of demographic
questions, discussion prompts centered around 1) why individual practices with these three
applications differed, and 2) how mobile media afford particular practices. A complete interview
protocol can be found in Appendix B, which was approved by the University of Southern
California IRB
Interviews are appropriate for investigating practices: active, recurrent media usage for
social goals (Couldry, 2010). For example, Hitchings acknowledges that interviewing people
about mundane tasks can require certain strategies such as serial lines of questioning and
concludes that “talking to people about these matters is not logically inconsistent with the
arguments made by proponents of social practice theory” (Hitchings, 2012, p. 65). Individuals
can recall times when they perform everyday tasks, and the biggest barrier is if care is taken to
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develop trust and participants have time to respond (Hitchings, 2012). Indeed, scholars interested
in norms of habitual use have used interviews as their primary methodology to collect nuanced
and complex everyday interactions with devices (Gershon, 2010). This research does not
particularly require new methodologies (Büscher, Urry, & Witchger, 2011). Here I am
sympathetic to Merriman’s (2013) complaint that mobilities research couples new
epistemologies with new ontologies, implying that to understand the impact of mobile devices
we require new ways of seeing (Sheller & Urry, 2006). Established methodologies can be used to
capture emergent phenomena.
Finally, I treat socio-economic demographics such as income, race, and gender as secondary
concerns in the interview process. Here I followed suggestions by Strauss (1987) to not assume
the analytic significance of traditional demographic variables until the data reveal them to be
important. Only a naive sociologist would treat practices as entirely determined by “class.” Yet,
the experience of using mobile social media and what communicative goals mobile media is
perceived to afford are clearly different if you are an affluent married mother in Beverly Hills or
a single mother living with her extended family in South Los Angeles. Keeping with a rational
choice perspective on media usage, individuals are able to describe their goals and decision-
making process with mobile social media. Following on the general goal of discussing how
affordances were encountered and interpreted, the story often became about how mobile media
can be used to maneuver around restrictions in space and time. One interview subject was a
young mother of middle-eastern descent living with her family with a total household size of ten,
mostly children. There was one desktop in her household, which was primarily used for
homework each night. As a result, her phone became her lifeline to both far-flung family (her
mother-in-law) and hyperlocal siblings (in the same house). Generally this reflects the position
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taken by sociologists that networks make the space between people less relevant (Castells, 2005;
Wellman, 2002). However, against grand predictions of the impact of a global infrastructure, the
domestic environment still mattered. The benefit of “mobile media” in her case was to maneuver
around restrictions imposed by her home life, accruing bonding capital and connecting with
family, even those in the same household.

Recruitment
Recruitment for interviews was conducted through a list of contacts with participants in day
care centers and local schools who were asked if they or their friends used both mobile media
and Facebook. Care was made not to excessively target one social group or institution. That is, a
snowball sampling was deliberately not employed because it would potentially lead to a
participant group that are part of the same social groups. Mean age of participants was 33, with
40% males and 60% females. Racially, 20% of interviewees identified as African-American,
10% Asian, 10% Middle-eastern,
5
20% Latino or Latina
6
, and 40% Anglo / White.

Interviewee Demographics
Interviewee demographics are listed in Table 1 (N = 10). This group includes an over-
sampling of female and non-Anglo participants to provide appropriate detail for practices of sub-
groups. One interview was abandoned after the participant revealed he didn’t use his mobile
device beyond texting and voice calling, and is not listed or used in subsequent analysis.

5
While not yet an official racial category, the United States Census is currently exploring a census category of
“Middle East/North Africa.”
6
Latino/Latina serves to cluster both Anglo and Black identifying “Hispanic” participants.
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Table 2. Interviewee Demographics

Alias Race Gender Age Marital Status
Francy African-American female 33 divorced
Nina White/anglo female 39 married
Colt Asian male 43 married
Kaisha African-American female 26 married
Margie Middle-eastern female 26 long-term partnership
Mike White/anglo male 37 married
Angela White/anglo female 32 married
Steve White/anglo male 33 married
Liz Latino/a female 28 separated
James Latino/a male 30 married

A qualitative content analysis with NVIVO was conducted around in-depth analysis of
motivations for perceiving the communicative affordances of mobile media (Appendix B).

Doing Family on Facebook
A central assumption thus far has been that mobile Facebook aligns with and augments
existing practices, or ways of “doing family” that involves a more public display (Finch, 2007)
or exhibition (Hogan, 2010) to various social groups and the persistence of data (boyd, 2010).
For this initial section interpreting interview data I focus on the nature of Facebook itself before
turning to specific questions of how communicative affordances of mobile media augment
practices on Facebook. While this environment presents new challenges, on the whole it provides
a positive environment for socializing around family issues during a time of transition. MSNPs
are often central modes of maintaining ties across geographically-distant families, even as they
are often a kind of side stage for the main performance that occurs in the domestic spaces. Thus,
the first component of the interview findings considers on the whole how family is conducted
differently, and what “doing family” on Facebook entails.
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One key difference in “doing family” on mobile Facebook is the feelings associated with
“displaying family.” By this, Finch hones in on how “household” rarely captures a full notion of
family, how more fluid family identities are established and have interplay with personal
identity. Historically, families serve as a porous boundary between individual and community.
Simmel noted the duality of the family, as an extension of self and complex one distinguishes
one’s self from (Simmel, 1971). Family rituals, documented through photography, served to
integrate families into communities (Bourdieu, 1996). Loosened from its ritualistic foundations,
“display” of families becomes more about the everyday display of events (Wolin & Bennett,
1984). This is not a trivial function, because for families to achieve their desired function – for
integration into community and mutual support – “they need to be understood and accepted by
others” (Finch, 2007, p. 79). Thus, “displaying” is not peripheral to family life – it is a practice
that constitutes family life in the public sphere.
Interviewees reported mobile Facebook being used for the display of warmly personal
moments. Paradoxically, it was not viewed as a particularly intimate environment even though
the pictures posted there are of intimate moments and are often viewed by immediate friends and
family. Positive interactions, rather than conflict, defined the experience on Facebook. This
warmly personal posting style had a strong overlap with mobile image production. While few
reported using Facebook groups extensively, Kaisha was part of a blended family (including both
biological and non-biological children) and visited a support group, which was also, in her
words, very “picture oriented.” Although a critical difference with Facebook is often its
instrumental value, Kaisha referred to posting pictures that were, “not really asking questions…
just making statements.” Her response demonstrates the impersonality of Facebook, even within
the context of a personal facet of one’s identity (blended families).
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Conversations sparked on Facebook were another theme, particularly among geographically-
distant parties. Interestingly, while not all “display” work was oriented towards inviting
responses, even as it often led to conversations. For example, Francy used the same way of
describing her status updates: “I pose everything more as a statement than a question.” When
asked why, she replied that “I’m sharing with other people. I don’t really want their input.” Yet,
when pressed about what kinds of conversations came out of her posts, she recounted posting a
video of her daughter’s first steps and enjoying the casual responses from other parents
comparing notes with their children. Following a theme of personal, not intimate
communication, conversations to emerge around utterly quotidian topics: everyday events and
activities. If parents were interested in a private, synchronous conversation, SMS texting was
most often mentioned. The advantage of Facebook status updates was often to keep people “in
the loop” while not being obtrusive or insistent. More rarely, these updates could be of moments
of high ritual, such as weddings or the moment of introducing a child to the family. For example,
Francy lived in California while most of her family was in Mississippi. She told her best friend
and cousin about becoming pregnant, but didn’t make a public announcement until after her
daughter was born:

My first picture of [my daughter] was of me giving birth of her, and then taking that
picture and putting it online with me holding her. And everyone was like, oh my God, I
didn’t even know you were pregnant, much less now you have a baby. So that was a big
thing. Because that was my first time using social media to announce something that was
major in my life.

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Finally, Facebook acted as an archive for these public-facing displaying activities and
conversations. This echoes Katie Day Good’s (2012) reading of Facebook as a personal media
archive that documents friendships and builds capital. Mobile Facebook’s flexible, timely and
expressive characteristics often dictated the immediate motivations for uploading images. Digital
traces invited revisiting, reflection, and meaning-making beyond simply reflecting the context in
which they were taken. As Mike put it, “I post the pictures the way I want to remember them.”
He and his wife then revisited the images posted on Facebook in moments of downtime relaxing
in bed at the end of a busy day. From a pragmatic standpoint, Mike was less concerned with
about whether these postings are an accurate reflection of their life; it seems that his postings
were highly selective. As van Dijck (2008) suggests, “the function of memory reappears in the
networked, distributed nature of digital photographs” (p. 57), away from historical record and
towards uses of identity formation and communication. Yet, despite the typical perspective of
identity as a kind of performance (Goffman, 1959), “exhibition” (Hogan, 2010) or “display”
(Finch, 2007) seems more appropriate to describe the interweaving of archive, conversation, and
display evidence in practices of young parents.
The materiality of photographs and their ability to be appreciated within central groups and
between them served quite different purposes. These images, posted as “statements” to display
family could be enjoyed and consumed by parents as a reminder of who they were collectively as
a family. Images were also often posted with “weak ties” in mind, people who were at a similar
life stage as they were. Looking ahead to survey responses, evidence of the importance of
Facebook’s semi-permanent digital traces could also be seen in the 44% of survey participants
that reported referencing Facebook when assembling a “baby book.” The practices that mobile
social media afforded were not isolated from “offline” practices. Rather, practices with mobile
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social media reflected historical practices and were tightly interwoven with everyday life. In the
process, historic practices were remediated (Bolter & Grusin, 2000) by parents and the
affordances of mobile media. As has been discussed here and will be discussed more fully in the
next section, the communicative affordances of multimediality contributed to practices involving
image production, curation and uploading.
The relative permanence of mobile social media jostled uncomfortably with efforts to keep
people “in the loop” and conversations flowing freely. Status updates and photographic
“statements” could be fraught with concerns, particularly of images of children that participants
feared would be viewed by unintended parties. At other times, parents became aware of how
their changing status updates would modify how others view them. Steve reported a friend
blocking his posts because there were too many photos. Other parents reported trying to find a
balance between pursuing their own interests, narrating their child’s life, and connecting with
friends. In this sense, mobile Facebook mirrored many of the difficulties presented by having
children, which results in geographic confinement, a shift in identity, and conflicting feelings of
obligation.

Communicative Affordances of Mobile Media

Portability
Portability was the most salient of the communicative affordances (Ito et al., 2005). Mobile
media work their way into everyday situations because they are always on-hand (Ling, 2012).
When asked why portability is important, answers tended to focus on smaller movements around
the house (for stay at home parents) and brief sense of relief in work spheres (for working
parents). Angela describes why portability has particular utility for stay-at-home mothers:
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As a parent, you are often not seated at a desk. I'm a stay-at-home mom, so I am always
following my son around. We're outside, in his playroom and in his room. We're all over
the place, but I always have my phone on me.

For working parents mobile Facebook was useful for similar reasons, but interviewees
reported a greater interplay between desktop and mobile. Desktop environments were useful to
have Facebook on in the background in a minimized window (James). Steve, a working father,
described mobile Twitter and Facebook as “good for [the] elevator” because it “gives you nice
little digestible chunks of information.” Yet, certain actions, such as deleting a page (Liz)
weren’t possible through Facebook’s mobile versions.
As aware of portability as interviewees were, it wasn’t clear if portability would be
connected with social capital effects on its own. Mobile media are, of course, only the latest form
of portable media. As de Souza e Silva and Frith (2012) note, paperback books were an
eminently portable media that allowed for “filtering” of offline life. For de Souza e Silva and
Frith the critical distinction with mobile media is how it acts as an interface to public space,
enabling “people to filter, control, and manage their relationships with the spaces and people
around them” (p. 5). Recalling the discussion of communicative affordances in chapter 2,
affordances are often drawn on in combination. It appears that portability more enables other
forms of communication than alone can be said to be factor in practices. That is, there may be
little distinction between a “phablet” (phone tablet) and “smart phone” because individuals have
agency to appropriate technologies, reinterpreting and adapting technologies to fit different
situations (Bar, Pisani, & Weber, 2007b; Eglash, 2004). For example, in Japan Keitai novels are
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written through text messaging on mobile phones (Nishimura, 2011). Portability undergirds the
practice, driven by emergent cultural norms and enthusiasm for an emerging literary genre, even
as the modes of text entry may be viewed as non-ideal by outsiders.

Availability
Availability was thought to be related to frequency of communication in small bursts that
symbolically maintains relationships (Licoppe, 2004) without the usual openings and closings
(Couch, 1996). In a basic sense, availability makes possible interpersonal communication and
communication with ego-centric networks. Bernie Hogan (2008) describes the move towards
accessibility for communication as a critical feature of mobile media, similar as Rainie and
Wellman frequently discuss more around instrumental support (2012). As Hogan makes clear
there is always an element of negotiation in this availability. My phone might ring but I am not
obliged to answer it. My tablet might be always within arm’s reach but I do not actually reach for
it. Availability, then, is availability for communication and availability to communicate, subject
to perceptions of need, norms, and so on, as part of a communicative affordances approach.
Another point to draw out is that availability on a mobile device often entails options. Boase’s
(2008) notion of a “personal network” centers on the relative awareness individuals have of the
benefits of various modes of communication at their disposal. As Helles (2013) observed, “the
parallel presence of more or less all media on a single mobile platform means that they are
available in every instance of medium choice” (p. 16).
Interviewees were cognizant of availability, it proved difficult to ask questions specifically
about, as nearly all tasks involved some form of communication. In other words, availability was
always attached with “availability for what?” While a legitimate interpretation of affordances,
the level of practice was unclear. Therefore, rather than operationalize a set of survey questions, I
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opted to alter Bayer and Campbell’s (2012) frequency of use scale to reflect mobile Facebook
usage, desktop Facebook usage, and overall mobile usage, with a set of drag & drop questions at
the end of the survey for other mobile social applications (such as Instagram) (Question 144).

Locationality
Ample interest in mobile communication focused on how location changes communication
patterns (Schrock, 2012). Humphreys (2007) suggests that viewing people nearby acts as a
bridging agent, encouraging congregation in venues for recreation. Facebook has slowly
absorbed other locative platforms (R. Wilken, 2014) and now allows for the integration of
locative features through check-ins and geographic tagging. However, it isn’t entirely clear how
users understand the meaning of a check-in. For example, Frith (2014) found that, quite contrary
to predictions that check-ins act as a signal for availability, “few participants viewed check-ins as
direct invitations to friends to show up to a location” (p. 897). Frith instead proposes that check-
ins act as a prompt for further mobile communication and were evaluated situationally,
particularly as related to specific places (Dourish, 2006). Communication is central to a
definition of communicative affordances, which implies an ongoing practice or goal is necessary
to recognize and draw on the affordance of a particular technology. However, the lack of a
particular meaning to this form of communication leaves quite ambiguous its effects on social
capital.
Interviewees often used mapping applications but did not attach a wealth of meaning to
location on social media. They often simply didn’t tag locations (Angela), or described it as
something they no longer do. Margie, a 26-year-old mother of Middle-Eastern descent, said,
“Maybe two or three years ago, I would check into places. Now, I don't really feel it necessary
for everyone to know where I am at all times.” This mirrors nationally-representative surveys
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that show a downturn in check-ins over the last several years (Zickuhr, 2013). Steve said he
couldn’t think of one good example, although noted that he appreciated knowing where a post
was made from if “it's cool and it's not something that's widely known.” James associated geo-
tagging with trips to exceptional places, such as Disneyland or a road trip, associating checking
in with “showing off.” Nina, a married mother of one, described Facebook’s locative tagging as
useful because it left a trace “like a scrapbook” she could later refer to.
Simply put, it wasn’t clear that location had much to do with maintenance of social ties or
social capital per se. Interviewees rarely reported a strong emotional connection or use for
location as a type of information. Interviewees felt check-ins were mostly unnecessary or passé,
with the exception of James and Nina. Location appeared to be part of a performance of self
(Schwartz & Halegoua, 2014) or a reference that could be stored and later referenced. It should
be noted that this lack of perception of the utility of location is sensible for the research group,
most of whom rarely had free time to use location in a recreational way (Luke, 2005). For this
reason three items were created to capture locationality but it wasn’t expected to be a significant
factor in either bridging or bonding on Facebook.

Multimediality

“If they post some photos, then it starts to feel like you know [them] and they're more a
part of your life” — Steve

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126
Multimedia practices among families serve a vital integration function with online networks
that are enriching of social capital, particularly bonding capital. In Photography
7
Pierre Bourdieu
(1996) positioned photographic practices as central to family rituals — high moments such as
weddings — and integration in community life
8
. In family rituals the picture is “an object of
regulated exchange” that “joins the circuit of gifts and counter-gifts” (p. 20). His formulation
helpfully positions photography as quotidian and important to fulfilling vital social functions. He
suggests that the social function of photography is dependent on the “rhythm of the group” (p.
31). Here we can return to Rich Ling’s notion of “bounded solidarity” (Richard Ling, 2008) as
shared mobile-mediated rituals that serve to reinforce relationships between close families and
friends. To be clear, while images (Chow, 2013) and self-portraits (Schwarz, 2010) have been
argued to be a vehicle for capital, returning to my argument about social capital as process, I am
here more interested in photographic micro-rituals (Lee, 2009) than I am in semiotics. Practices
that occur around and through photography can be considered to be “capital enriching” because
they allow for a geographically-dispersed group to focus attention on a shared event.
The introduction of affordable cameras brought with it a shift from professional to amateur
(Olivier, 2007). Bourdieu (1996) suggested that the social function of photography “can adapt to
any sort of instrument… as long as it is capable of… supplying picture which permit
recognition” (p. 32). For example, the web afforded opportunities for “doing family” through
public photography, being more expressive even as it enabled access to a larger audience that
individuals needed to negotiate (Pauwels, 2008). As should be clear, family practices do not
entirely shift due to technology, but through complex societal changes. Finch (Finch, 2007)
connects this “displaying” activity with modernity and fluid, less structural perspectives on

7 Originally issued as Un Art Moyen: Essai Sur les Usages Sociaux de la Photographie in 1965.
8
Other interests of Bourdieu have aged less gracefully, such as his interest in connecting aesthetics with “class.”
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family life (Galvin, 2008) where technologies support and extend strong tie relationships (Little,
Sillence, Sellen, & Taylor, 2009).
A communicative affordances approach entails what I term “augmented practices” where
social functions or uses of photography often have historical precedents even as technology
extends or complicates them (boyd, 2014). Scholars have debated the evolution of practices with
technology and whether they mirror previous practices or create new ones. Mobile media’s
affordance of multimediality has long been noted (Gye, 2007; Hjorth, 2007; Ito et al., 2005;
Okabe & Ito, 2006), providing an opportunity to consider how practices evolve in response to
technologies. Gye (2007) notes that personal photography through mobile media has altered the
way individuals capture, store and disseminate photographs. Koskinen (2007) describes how
“small discoveries grew into more stable methods of social action” (p. 165) as they explored
their mobile devices. Yet in large part practices still mirror previous ones, and neither are they
exclusively online. For example, approximately 44% of survey participants reported referring to
Facebook pictures “frequently” or “very frequently” when putting together a “baby book.”
Continuing previous findings on the increased publicity afforded by the web (Pauwels, 2008),
these images also present an ongoing opportunity for large egocentric networks of friends to
participate. Writing in 1965, Bourdieu noted that “by means of photographs, the new arrival is
introduced to the group as a whole, which must ‘recognize’ the child” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 22).
Yet many of the photographs distributed through MSNPs are utterly quotidian, in addition to the
expected images of high rituals (ceremonies, celebrations).
Affordances is appropriate here because we might conclude that while digital imagery
augments the practice, as Bourdieu makes clear, the technology does not cause it to come about.
For example, James took photographs during the weekend of his daughter. During the week he
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reported a complex set of steps to decide on which images to post. He would use the SMS
texting capabilities of mobile media to send possible pictures to his mother-in-law and a close
friend. If they replied with enthusiasm, he would add them to a mental queue, posting them
publicly on Facebook periodically while at work. This brief break provided a respite during the
otherwise stressful work day to think about his family. The post would spark discussions with his
Facebook friends about his family. As Bourdieu (1996) suggests photographs serve as “a
technology for the reiteration of the party” (p. 27) where interactions are archived and revisited.
Images act as a currency so far as they symbolically re-affirm relationships and capture events
that can be later recalled (Bourdieu, 1996). They act as placeholders for interactions, to be
shared, gazed upon and reflected on in processes that are eminently social through varying
degrees of intimacy and publicity. My emphasis, keeping with a focus on capital-as-process, is
that mobile media practices have a particular resonance with everyday rituals, particularly
encouraging bonding capital through bounded solidarity (Richard Ling, 2008). As a
consequence, I am less concerned with the precise photos are are uploaded except that they are
of social events and resonate with relationships. As Sontag (1973) argues, “it hardly matters what
activities are photographed so long as photographs get taken and are cherished” (p. 6).
James’ media practices demonstrate how family photographs are an opportunity for
enjoyment and social connection at various stages: taking/sharing, curating, and uploading. It
also demonstrates how “family” might be a central theme in photography that relates to larger
conversations among a wider circle of friends. As Chalfen (1998) observes, family snapshots are
a “symbolic form embedded in a communication process that necessarily includes making
(encoding), interpreting (decoding), and a multifaceted use of pictures” (p. 191). Van Dijck
(2008) describes “the increased deployment of digital cameras - including cameras integrated in
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other communication devices - favours [sic] the functions of communication and identity
formation at the expense of photography’s use as a tool for remembering” (p. 58). At first glance,
this framing might seem to revisit media richness theory (Dennis & Kinney, 1998) where the
technical capabilities are deemed by users to be more appropriate for certain tasks. This would,
however, downplay both the more nuanced theoretical lineage of affordances (see Chapter 2) and
the symbolic importance of everyday practices with visual media (Koskinen, 2007; Okabe & Ito,
2006).
My focus is on the processes surrounding photographs that are afforded by mobile media,
with a particular interest in “doing family” online through what Lisa Gye (2007) describes as
uses of camera phones to “capture, store and disseminate” (p. 279) photographs and videos.

Figure 5. Multimedia Practices with Mobile Media: Uploading, Curating and Sharing

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Sharing
Shared media production and sharing on a mobile device was noted in early writing on Keitai
in Japan (Ito et al., 2005), extending historic practices with cameras (Olivier, 2007) such as
vacation pictures (Larsen, 2005). Van House (2009) describes co-viewing of media as
“collocated photo sharing.” “Selfies” — photographs shared on social media — have become a
buzzword that is a shorthand for self-centered narcissism. However, they reflect a complex
history of online identity formation and are fundamentally relational — produced by and for a
social network (Hogan & Wellman, 2014). The family photos in the wallet has become the set of
images on the mobile phone. Steve’s example above can be seen as “displaying” (Finch, 2007)
activity oriented towards curating an image stream for his public-facing Facebook network, but
these same images can also be for later enjoyment with one’s partner. Here Mike talks of the
intimacy of the everyday pleasures of perusing an image stream with his wife:

It's a pretty regular thing… [my wife] and I will go back and just look through the past
ten months pictures of [their son] on Facebook and look at the videos and watch them.
Yeah. It'll, it'll be we're just you know, laying in bed and he's sleeping and he's nursing
and she’ll say "Show me some pictures of [him].”

Curation
Compared to sharing, curating is the organization, viewing, and thinking of photographs and
videos on a mobile device. This activity may overlap with sharing, similar to the above example,
but is also often a solo activity, a necessary step between taking and uploading. Interviewees had
hundreds, even thousands of photos on their mobile devices. They rarely report uploading the
image at the moment they took it. This delay encourages opportunities for future reflection and
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encounters with media, through organization and processing necessary for creating a personal
archive on a device, portions of which will emerge online as meaningful connection points with
others.

Uploading
Images tend to be asynchronously trickled out onto social networks. “Image dumps” to
computers only rarely performed as a backup rather than a primary connection. Angela describes
how the streamlined pathway enables the easy flow of images online: “It's easy, since they're all
right there, on my phone. I can go into my phone's camera roll and upload them straight to
Facebook.” Affordances may make new practices possible or simply more seamless. Initially it’s
understandable that one’s Facebook feed becomes inundated with images reflecting a changing
family life. Mike describes the evolution of his news feed as, “since Will has been born it's been
much more photocentric… all photos of him.” This is as much a community moment as it is a
family moment; as Bourdieu (1996) observed, “by means of photographs, the new arrival is
introduced to the group as a whole, which must ‘recognize’ the child” (p. 22). Distribution of
photographs of high moments has traditionally been accomplished through in-person rituals,
mail, and finally email. Angela described how she “joined [Facebook] right before my wedding
because I knew there would be a ton of pictures.” Yet, as Figure 6 shows,
9
images can also be
everyday social moments captured and uploaded. They act as capital because they serve as
opportunities for social connectedness, reminder of relationships, and site of future interaction.
Parents develop trust with their networks through images that serve as affective nudges, phatic
communication rather than information on which to act.

9
Permission was obtained for use of the non-visually-anonymous photograph from the interview subject, who was
one of the few who was an acquaintance of the author. This is the only piece of personally-identifiable content
reported in this dissertation.
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Figure 6. Family Photography as Micro-Ritual

Tie Re-activation
Tie re-activation (Levin et al., 2011; Lim et al., 2013; K. Quinn, 2013) describes the
progression of a relationship from latent to weak, or weak to strong ties, as described in chapter
4. Friends on Facebook have typically met “offline” but often are only connected on Facebook,
making it a likely place for these relationships to escalate (Haythornthwaite, 2005). A shift in
identity to being a parent was correlated with a shift in practices, both in terms of drawing on
social affordances of mobile media and acting on egocentric networks. This mutual recognition
led to increased intimacy, frequent communication and even offline meetings: characteristics of
the re-activation of a dormant tie. Contrary to rational choice theories of social capital (Lin,
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133
2001) evidenced in activities such as asking questions (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2013), this
attraction wasn’t necessarily strategic. Rather, it grew out of peripheral observation where
compatibility was of primary importance. Eric describes the shift towards parenting resulted in
his viewing his past activities as more frivolous:

“I used to be a party person. I used to be having a lot of friends, I used to be going out,
socializing, playing video games, going out to parties and clubs. But… I started to drift
away from those friends who weren’t really parents, who were, all they wanted to do was
just play and have fun… I have a responsibility and I’m a parent now, so that has cut
down significantly. So a lot of the friends I kind of keep an eye on now are friends of,
who are parents, people who are going to soon be parents, and people who are just,
running, leading successful lives. That’s the kind of people I kind of look into now.
Because now I can’t see myself with people who are just going to party and be going to
sleep at four or five in the morning and waking up by one in the afternoon. Can’t do that
anymore. So that all changed.

Re-activation took place between individuals going through shared life transitions (Elder &
Rockwell, 1979), a specific type of “what-similarity” (Kaptein et al., 2014), or “similarity in
attitudes, activities, and hobbies” (p. 344). Similarity can be evaluated through various media
such as images, status updates and comments. The degree to which individuals view others as
similar to them depends on uses that emphasizes not just visual media, but a motivation to
escalate the relationship to more intimate and supportive. Supportive ties have been noticed in
online communities since the early 1990s (Rheingold, 2001), but communities of shared interest
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often simply lack the ability to reinforce these relationships (Baym & Ledbetter, 2009). The
advantage, then, of ego-centric Facebook networks is that they are composed of people that are
already similar in other dimensions, such as cohort and family, or demographics such as race and
ethnicity.
Tie conversions appeared to arise almost naturally out of shared circumstances. Of critical
importance is Facebook’s progressively more aggressive focus on users’ primary identity, rather
than alternate identities or anonymous communication. This reliance on an identity rather than
being a site for “identity play” where individuals gain satisfaction from presenting aspects of
themselves in new ways (boyd, 2008) marks a difference from earlier SNSs (boyd & Ellison,
2007). The symbolic value to relationship arose after-the-fact rather than an expectation of
particular returns. As Eric simply put it, “they live a common lifestyle as I do.” Facebook’s
analytics respond to posts that individuals respond to and match them with more posts like them.
In this sense it is an amplifier of shared attention. Elizabeth here talks about growing closer to a
friend she lost touch with since her childhood:

“She wasn’t even really a friend… she was an associate. We grew up, we went to junior
high school together, but we stayed in contact because we were in the same class. Once I
found out she was pregnant and we were both pregnant at the same time, then we started
corresponding… and I noticed she was pregnant, so I just made the comment of, how’s
pregnancy going? You know, like having that comradery, the common thread between
us… that did… push us together.”

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Parents appeared to prefer the shorter everyday rituals that were low in “drama.” Frequency
of overall posting went down as new parents shifted to focus on narrating their family life,
browsing Facebook less and being pickier with their social connections. In particular they
recoiled from “drama,” which Marwick and boyd describe as “performative, interpersonal
conflict that takes place in front of an active, engaged audience, often on social media” (A.
Marwick & d. boyd, 2014, p. 1). Even high-ritual moments — births, deaths, events — were
moments for emotional support and communication, but distanced from strong opinions and
interpersonal conflict. They wanted to keep people symbolically informed without the ritualistic
dimensions often associated with mobile communication practices (Richard Ling, 2008). A flow
of images depicts child milestones, places, and people — quotidian communication. Pictures
were easy to take and rich with emotional context, while comparatively bereft of controversy.

8. Surveys
Interviews were used to shape the creation of an online survey, which was used to collect
data on outcomes shaped by communicative affordances of mobile media and, more broadly, the
role of social media in the lives of young parents. That is, while the communicative affordances
of mobile social media might augment practices with Facebook, as discussed in chapter 5, there
still are numerous open questions concerning new parents use of SNSs in a more general sense
(Bartholomew et al., 2012; Doty & Dworkin, 2014). Surveys are appropriate for this round of
data collection because they enable the systematic collection of quantitative data (Groves et al.,
2009) across a population that is geographically distributed or otherwise hard to reach (Andrews,
2003).
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Recruitment was performed through an online panel of parents (N = 262) provided by the
online survey company Qualtrics. Quota questions for gender (60% female, 40% male) and
screening questions for owning a mobile device and being a member of Facebook were
employed to isolate a sampling of interest. Qualtrics was selected over alternative survey
companies (Surveymonkey) and crowdsourced administration (Mechanical Turk) for several
reasons. Qualtrics could provide an equal sampling of men and women, had experience with
surveys for social science research, and could guarantee a rapid turnaround. Online
“crowdsourced” panel surveys have gained acceptance as an inexpensive source of survey data
that is comparable with in-person survey methods (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). It
also offers advantages to locate groups that are difficult to obtain a diverse sampling of through
other means. Survey recruitment through online panels was deemed preferential to other options,
such as recruitment from online discussion groups or geographically-situated sites such as day
care. Informal parental support networks can be insular (Mulcahy et al., 2010). Snowball
recruitment would potentially collect participants from the same group (who are likely similar in
race, age, and income level) rather than a cross-section of parents. Perception of utility of
affordances is evaluated through observing use, meaning it is also likely that parents in a tight
friend network have similar patterns of use. Recalling that this dissertation takes an agentic,
micro-social (Roberts, 2006) perspective on the utility of Facebook, variance in the networks that
individuals create through Facebook is desirable. As described in interview findings, some
parents choose to connect with parents online while others do not, for example. This variance is
necessary to discuss the central research question of this dissertation, which focuses on how
multimediality and availability are integrated into existing suites of practices. As H2 suggests, I
find it likely that individuals who use Facebook to keep their family updated on family life
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through images will have a stronger degree of bonding capital on Facebook, as bonding capital is
most strongly related to frequent communication, strong ties and intimacy (Haythornthwaite,
2002). Individuals who do not connect with parents on Facebook, by comparison, may be more
involved with tie conversion and bridging capital.
Qualtrics was able to integrate a pre-survey filtering block to eliminate participants that
didn’t match desired criteria, rather than requiring a pre-survey, as would be the case with
Mechanical Turk. Selection criteria were that participants were required to be adults with at least
one child aged under 5, and active users of both Facebook and mobile media. The first block of
questions in the survey served to filter out participants who did not match this description. A
question on gender was also used for quota purposes to ensure an approximately equal number of
men and women. Given that online participant pools may disproportionately favor women with
children over men with children, this was necessary to ensure comparison groups. The survey
took an average of 15 minutes to complete to maximize completion and reduce burnout. Two
additional mechanisms were employed to ensure data quality. First, an attention filter was added
to detect participants who were “straight lining” through surveys. Second, a timer was added to
prevent individuals from going through too quickly. Participation was restricted to residents of
the United States. Given that the target demographic — new parents with young children — is so
specific, a nationally representative sampling was not feasible. However, a quota was employed
so that equal numbers of fathers and mothers took the survey, because gender was a primary
comparison group of interest.
A mixed-methods design was employed to take advantage of the respective benefits of in-
depth interviews and surveys. Surveys are useful for obtaining quantitative data on specific
sources of variance that may affect outcomes of interest, such as familial satisfaction, gender,
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and marital status. These data can be examined through descriptive and inferential statistical
methods such as t-tests, regression analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM). However,
compared with in-depth interviews, surveys are rather blind to the nuances of decision-making
processes around affordances. Open-ended questions typically take time to complete and rarely
result in useful data. Neither can they be used to explore motives for using multiple applications
that individuals use in tandem; the number of questions would quickly grow beyond being
practical for a single interview and would lose specificity across different applications that are
often functionally different. Thus, as described in the previous action, survey questions were
created to capture on practices drawing on communicative affordances of mobile media
(availability, locationality, and multimediality), and successive outcomes for social capital and
tie conversion. This dissertation focuses on multimediality and availability, which appear to
enable the most fruitful sets of practices to connect with the proposed effects. Although
interviewees rarely mentioned drawing on locatability, several questions were included to
eliminate this affordance as potentially linked with outcomes of interest. Generally, questions
were arranged from general (demographics) to specific (granular questions on use of mobile
Facebook for particular purposes) to reduce response bias. Randomization was enabled within
blocks of questions to reduce effects from particular sequences of questions. The construction of
the survey is discussed in detail below, and a complete set of survey questions can be found in
Appendix A.

Survey Instrumentation
This dissertation focuses on connecting affordances with mobile social media practices of
parents of young children. Affordances theory suggests a goal of identifying high-level
characteristics of how mediating technologies are perceived as useful for particular suites of
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activities. As previously discussed, mobile media have been found to afford specific practices.
Research suggests that mobile media tend to be associated with certain phases of life (Ling,
2010). Little research has been performed on new parents mobile social media habits
(Bartholomew et al., 2012), despite that it is recognized as a particularly difficult life transition
(LeMasters, 1957) and adults at the age they are parents of young children are disproportionately
mobile users (Brenner, 2012) and Facebook members (Duggan & Smith, 2013). Therefore,
mobile social media habits of parents of young children are an opportunity to consider how the
communicative affordances of mobile media, particularly multimediality and availability, might
magnify social capital effects. This requires a relatively narrow focus on a particular population
of interest rather than a sampling drawn from a frame of all adults of a certain geographic region
(i.e. a “nationally representative” sampling). This survey was approved by USC IRB #UP-14-
00372 as exempt. Methodologically, the task at hand is identifying and measuring the factors
affecting perception of utility, practices and subsequent outcomes. The scale for multimediality
comes from qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews, as described in the subsequent chapter.
Questions that were not required to be answered in a particular order were randomized within a
given question block. The completed survey can be viewed in Appendix A.

Recruitment
To obtain quantitative data a sampling of 262 adults was obtained through Qualtrics’ panel
partners. Initial hesitancy about the equivalency of online surveys with paper versions (K. B.
Wright, 2006) has led to multiple studies demonstrating the general equivalence of online and
paper surveys (Teo, 2013; Weigold, Weigold, & Russell, 2013), although may vary in
competition time. Further, online surveys provide benefits of low cost and more rapid response
time. Qualtrics filtered out respondents who did not fit the criteria for participation (Facebook
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member, mobile phone owner, parent of a young child). A quota of 40% male and 60% female
was set in advance, with a final participant group of 39.6% male (N = 103) and 60.4% female (N
= 157). A higher quota of females was selected because online males with children were proving
slower to recruit from survey pools in the 10% sampling that was administered to test the survey.

Survey Construction
Filter and Attention Check Variables
The survey targeted adult US resident parents with a child under 5 years old who used
Facebook and a mobile phone. A participant panel was obtained through Qualtrics that fit the
demographics. An initial block of questions were used as filter variables to ensure individuals
taking the survey fit the user profile. Questions 1 − 6 were used to verify that individuals taking
the survey profile. An attention filter check (“In order to continue, please select the rightmost
option to this question: strongly agree.”) was used for question 103. If anything other than “5”
was selected the survey was flagged for review and discarded. After 10% of the total sample size
(N = 250) was administered, a mean time to completion of 957 sections was observed
(approximately 16 minutes). A speed check was added such that a participant spending less than
1/3 of mean time on the survey would be flagged and discarded.

General Demographic, Mobile Usage, and Facebook Use
Questions 7 − 9 collected data on zip code of residence, education, and race/ethnicity.
Employment status was collected by first asking if participants are employed (question 10). If
they answered either full-time or part-time they were asked if their employment brought in the
majority of household income (question 11). Finally they were asked what their total household
income was (question 12) using values from the most recent census categories rounded to the
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nearest 100. Questions 13 − 16 concern the total number of mobile devices, model of primary
mobile device, operating system of primary mobile device, and frequency of use of primary
mobile device. This and other questions on frequency used a 9-point likert scale drawn from
Bayer and Campbell’s work on texting (2012). While recall frequency is made more difficult by
human errors in salience and calculation, it was not possible to obtain this same sampling while
also collecting log data. Further, this 9-point likert format has been previously used in mobile
communication work (S. W. Campbell & Kwak, 2011) and has been found to be more valid than
asking individuals to recall amount of use in a specified period of time (Boase & Ling, 2013).
Questions 17 − 20 concern number of Facebook friends, length of Facebook membership,
frequency of use of mobile Facebook (mobile app, Facebook messenger and mobile website),
and frequency of use of Facebook on a desktop.

Family Demographics and Relational Satisfaction
The following question block (21 − 42) collects information on family demographics. Marital
status (question 21) is a branching question that leads parents currently without a long-term
partner to question 32 (“How many total family members are in your immediate household?”).
The remaining participants answer a set of questions about their partnership. If the parent is
married they skip question 22 (“What year did you get married?”). Questions 23 & 24 concern
their overall relationship length and their significant other’s gender, which is used to identify
same-sex couples. Questions 26 − 31 use items on relational satisfaction to determine how
positive the relationship between interviewee and his/her significant other is (Hendrick, 1988).
Questions 32 − 39 concern demographics of children and whether any children are non-
biologically related (i.e. adopted). Questions 40 − 42 concern size of friendship networks for
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work friends and family members on Facebook; and family members on Instagram
(respectively).

Multimedia Practices and Social Capital
The scale for multimediality in questions 43 − 53 was derived from interviews with parents
(see Chapter 7) and includes three items on Sharing (“I show friends pictures or videos on my
mobile device when I’m spending time with them in-person.”), four items on curation (“I
organize pictures on my mobile device.”), and four items on uploading (“I share images of my
family taken on my mobile device on an image sharing site such as Instagram.”). Questions on
bridging (54 − 63) and bonding (64 − 73) were drawn from Williams (2006) modified to reflect
one’s “Facebook network” rather than online or offline (Jessica Vitak, 2012). As previously
described, one’s Facebook network can be created in a number of ways, but generally reflect
“offline” friendships more than those forged “online.” This approach has been used by Ellison
and Vitak (2013) to research outcomes associated with certain suites of activities on SNSs. For
example, given the practices of parents with multimedia narration of their children’s lives, we
might expect uploading practices among families with a high degree of family satisfaction and
family members on Facebook to be associated with a higher degree of bonding capital. The ease
of producing images and videos on mobile devices and their intrinsic appeal to viewers may
contribute to multimediality having a particular resonance with capital (Chow, 2013).

Privacy and Location
Four questions on privacy strategies (questions 74 − 77) were included, modified from Vitak
(2012). Three questions on locative practices (questions 78 − 80) were synthesized from those
proposed by de Souza e Silva and Frith (2012) (example: “I ‘tag’ my status updates with my
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location”). These variables were not of primary interest here because no interviewed parents
reported location being relevant to their everyday habits. They were still collected to demonstrate
the lack of relationship between locative practices and effects on parents’ stress and social
capital.

Unfriending and Tie Conversion
Unfriending emerged as an important factor in parents use of SNSs. While it didn’t have a
clear connection to mobile media, data on unfriending was collected to provide data to support as
an alternative hypothesis about parents “tuning” their friend networks in response to their
shifting identity. Parents reported becoming nervous about old friends viewing their pictures,
feeling lack of connection with single friends, and frustration over friends who were “too much
drama” (A. Marwick & d. boyd, 2014). Questions 81 − 92 were created by operationalizing
unfriending behaviors conducted in response to context collapse (Sibona, 2014) with concepts
drawn from interviews with parents (example: “I unfriended people because they made
inappropriate posts.”).

Tie Re-Activation with Other Parents
As discussed in chapter 4, re-activating dormant ties involves converting latent to weak ties
or even, potentially, strong ties. Tie re-activation may be relatively low-effort and provide a
valuable source of information gathered through the other individual’s life-course (Levin et al.,
2011). Granovetter (1983) suggests that re-activated ties could benefit from a residue of
“previously attained common understandings and feelings.” Levin et al. propose that re-activated
ties are particularly powerful because they “combine some of the best aspects of both weak and
strong current ties, i.e., efficiency, novelty, trust and shared perspective” (Levin et al., 2011, p.
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936). The importance of re-activated ties in everyday life is simultaneously quotidian and
profound. Quinn (2013) describes reconnection among the elderly as an essential distinction
between SNSs and other technologies. The current set of practices (questions 93 − 100) was
developed by operationalizing Haythornthwaite’s list of ways that latent ties can be converted to
weak ties (Haythornthwaite, 2005).

Parental Stress and Family Satisfaction
The next two blocks of question concern family life. Questions 101 − 112 collect responses
on parental stress (Haskett et al., 2006). This dependent variable is of interest because parents
should hypothetically be less stressed if they have a greater degree of resources at their disposal.
Should Facebook serve as an emotional resource for parents with young children, particular
practices may have a negative relationship with stress. Questions 113 − 131 are on family
satisfaction (Carver & Jones, 1992), which describes feelings and interpersonal functioning in a
family. A text area at the top of the block instructs participants that “the following questions
concern the family you grew up with.” That is, family satisfaction is an independent rather than
dependent variable. Parents who have a poor relationship with their extended families are
probably less likely to use Facebook as a mode of connecting with their extended family
members.

Mobile Facebook Practices and Closing Questions
Questions 132 − 139 and 143 concern specific practices that parents had with mobile
Facebook in the last year. Sample questions include “I used mobile Facebook to ‘vent’ about the
frustrations of being a parent” (136) and “I coordinated in-person activities for my child(ten)
using mobile Facebook” (132). These are placed at the end to follow a general rule of broad to
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specific in ordering questions. Question 140 asks who in the participants’ family takes and
uploads the most pictures of social network sites such as Facebook, question 141 is about cousins
(as example of more distant family ties), and question 142 concerns degree of trust (“I would
trust one of my friends on Facebook who is also a parent to watch my children for an hour.”).
Finally, a drag & drop question collects frequency and order of other mobile social media
(Instagram, Foursquare, Nextdoor, SMS texting, Vine, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, Email,
Tinder). Individuals can order these mobile social media according to “use daily,” “use weekly,”
“use monthly,” and “never.” Frequency of use can be identified for each section as well, with
most frequently-used on top and least frequently-used on bottom.

Demographics
Demographics in the resulting data set, compared with shows census statistics, show a skew
towards the educated (Figure 7), younger (Figure 8), and Anglo (Figure 8) participants.
Hindering claims of a nationally-representative sampling, no data at the national level can be
obtained that specifically provides nationally-representative statistics on the mobile media habits
of parents with young children. However, there exist separate nationally-representative surveys
on habits with mobile media (Brenner, 2012) and census data on young families (United States
Census Bureau, 2015). Part of this skew is likely a result of the online recruitment, while other
variance is related to the filter and quota requirements for the survey as deployed by Qualtrics;
the less educated tend to be excluded from online survey pools, and the 20 − 30 age demographic
tends to be disproportionately high mobile users (Brenner, 2012).

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Figure 7. Survey Participants’ Education Compared with 2014 Census Data of Parents with
their own Children aged 5 or under (United States Census Bureau, 2015).

Figure 8. Survey Participants’ Age Compared with 2014 Census Data of Parents with their
own Children aged 5 or under (United States Census Bureau, 2015).
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Figure 9. Survey Participants’ Race / Ethnicity

A series of questions inquired about specific activities performed on mobile social media that
participants report doing more than monthly. Some activities were selected because they have
been found on social network sites — asking for information on important issues (J. Vitak &
Ellison, 2012) and using parenting groups (Pedersen & Smithson, 2013). Others questions
targeted mobile practices that have been found quite apart from large networks of weak ties, such
as communicating with family who live far away (Chen & Katz, 2009) and coordinating
activities (Ling, 2004a). These questions were asked at the end of the survey. Family
communication and posting pictures and videos of children were reported by nearly 90% of
interviewees, reinforcing the attention paid to bounded similarity (Rich Ling, 2008a; Richard
Ling, 2008) and multimedia (Koskinen, 2007).

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Figure 10. Frequency of Specific Activities on Mobile Facebook

Finally, to address RQ3 differences in mean multimediality and availability by gender and
race were considered. To assess gender differences in multimedia practices a t-test was run on
the compound variable multimediality between male (N = 103, M = 28.379, SD = 12.04) and
female (N = 157, M = 31.898, SD = 12.533) participants. Levene’s test for equality of variances
was > .05, meaning we can assume equal variances. A t-test for equality of means was
significant, t(258) = −2.249, p < .05. To assess gender differences in availability on mobile
Facebook a t-test was run on the availability variable. Levene’s test for equality of variances was
> .05, meaning equality of variance could be assumed. Results showed a significant difference,
t(258) = −2.879, p < .01.
To assess differences in multimedia practices by race a t-test on the compound variable
multimediality was run between anglo (N = 192, M = 29.35, SD = .833) and non-anglo (N = 68,
M = 33.75, SD = 1.73) participants. Levene’s test for equality of variances was p = .009,
meaning the null hypothesis failed to be rejected and we cannot say that the variability in the two
conditions is not significantly different. Anglo participants differed in the amount of multimedia
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practices they employed with mobile devices as compared with non-anglo participants, t(100) =
−2.292, p < .05. However, there was no significant difference in availability through mobile
Facebook between anglo (N = 192, M = 5.92, SD = 1.985) and non-anglo (N = 68, M = 5.94, SD
= 2.265) participants, t(106) = -.079, p = .937.

Communicative Affordances and Bonding Social Capital
As described in the interview portion of this results section, a set of multimedia practices was
extracted through a content analysis from interviews with young parents: taking (3 questions),
curating (4 questions), and uploading (4 questions) pictures and videos of friends and family.
This scale was operationalized in the survey with questions 43 − 53 (see Appendix B). A factor
analysis with Varimax factor rotation was conducted in SPSS, revealing an expected single
factor solution. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin’s measure was .941, indicating sampling adequacy and there
is no threat of colinearity. One item (“I take screen shots on my phone”) had a low loading value
in factor analysis (Extraction = .529) and highest increase in Cronbach’s alpha if removed.
Additionally, the question was inadvertently phrased to target “phones” rather than “mobile
device” as with the other questions, which may also account for its low loading value. For these
reasons it was removed from the final scale. The final Cronbach’s alpha for the multimediality
scale was .932, skewness = .890, kurtosis = .439, M = 30.5, SD = 12.44, indicating normalcy
appropriate for use in regression analysis.
Availability for mobile Facebook and desktop Facebook was measured by overall frequency
of use. It was taken from questions 19 (“How frequently do you use Facebook on a mobile
device? (include mobile app, Facebook messenger, and mobile website)”) and 20 (“How
frequently do you use Facebook on a desktop or laptop computer?”). Possible responses cover a
9-item range from “never” to “about every 10 minutes.” This phrasing and range was
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methodologically found to be more reliable than overall time-based measures (Bayer &
Campbell, 2012) and theoretically best fits the notion that relationships are symbolically
sustained by short bursts of communication on mobile media rather than long periods of usage
(Licoppe, 2004). Overall frequency of use of Facebook on a mobile device was overall greater
(M = 5.92, SD = 2.058) than frequency of use of Facebook on a laptop or desktop (M = 4.5, SD
= 2.222).
Scales for bonding and bridging social capital were taken from Williams (2006). Wording
was altered to reflect “Facebook network” as suggested by Vitak (2012; Jessica Vitak et al.,
2011); as described in chapter 3, Facebook networks commonly reflect offline ties maintained
online (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2007). Analysis found bonding (α = .855) and bridging (α = .906)
scales to be reliable. The variable “Anglo” was created by assigning “White or Caucasian” to 1
and all other values (“Black or African-American,” “Asian,” “Hispanic or Latin-American
Ethnicity,” “Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander,” “Multiracial” and “Other”) to 0 (see
Figure 9). For regression all non-dichotomous variables were normalized into a z-score unless
otherwise stated.
Recalling the relationship of variables with bonding capital (Figure 2), a hierarchical
regression analysis was performed with three blocks: demographics (gender, age, race, and
income), family variables (family satisfaction, parental stress, and single parenthood). Non-
dichotomous variables passed tests for normality (skewness and kurtosis values under 1.0) and
were expected to have a linear relationship with Facebook bonding capital. Regression was
performed in enter sequence, so values reported in Table 3 reflect only final loadings.

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Table 3. Hierarchical Regression Predicting Facebook
Bonding Capital.
Facebook Bonding
Capital

β t value
Block 1 - Demographics
(p = .637, df = 255, R
2
= .010)

Gender (Female)
Age
Race (POC)
Income
-.092
-.004
-.130*
-.042
-1.537
-.074
-2.238
-.689
Block 2 – Family Variables
(p ≤ .001, df = 252, R
2
= .101)

Parental Stress
Family Satisfaction
Single Parent
-.037
.238**
-.007
-.587
3.758
-.120
Block 3 – Mobile Practices
(p ≤ .001, df = 249, R
2
= .211)

Multimediality
Availability (mobile)
Availability (desktop)
.276**
.130*
-.003
4.185
1.993
-.050
** = p ≤ .001, * = p ≤ .05

Results summarized in Table 3 indicate that contrary to expectations a significant negative
relationship was found between race (anglo/non-anglo) and Facebook bonding capital.
Participants who identified primarily as Anglo had overall higher Facebook bonding capital than
people of color (defined as all other racial categories combined, including Latino/Latina, Multi-
racial, and African-American). H1B was support, as family satisfaction was correlated with
bonding capital, but H1A and H1C were not. Multimedia practices (H1D) and mobile
availability (H1E) both had a significant relationship with Facebook bonding. As expected,
desktop availability did not have a relationship with Facebook bonding (H1F).

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Communicative Affordances and Bridging Social Capital
The second set of hypotheses take Facebook bridging capital as a dependent variable, and the
same blocks of variables for demographics (H2A - D) and communicative affordances (H2H -
H2J). Variables for Facebook and Family comprised the second block (H2E - H2G). “Privacy
concerns” employed a compound measure (summing questions 74 − 77), as suggested by Vitak
in her dissertation and employed elsewhere (Jessica Vitak, 2012). The resulting variable was
slightly bimodal on inspection of a histogram, but had a relatively normal distribution (M =
13.65, SD = 3.244, Skewness = -.121, Kurtosis = -.238). Number of Facebook friends (M =
332.115) was leptokurtotic (Kurtosis = 32.844) and positively skewed (Skewness = 4.963). A
variable was created for low and high Facebook friends with below mean given a value of “1”
and above mean given a value of “2.” Family stress was the same variable as employed in H1.
Table 4. Hierarchical Regression Predicting Facebook
Bridging Capital.
Facebook Bonding
Capital

β t value
Block 1 - Demographics
(p = .196, df = 255, R
2
= .023)

Gender (Female)
Age
Race (POC)
Income
-.004
.037
-.040
-.022
-.075
.709
-.768
-.410
Block 2 – Facebook and
Family Variables
(p ≤ .05, df = 252, R
2
= .101)

Privacy concerns
Facebook friend list size
Parental Stress
-.060
.050
.015
-1.115
.971
.288
Block 3 – Mobile Practices
(p ≤ .001, df = 249, R
2
= .211)

Multimediality
Availability (mobile)
Availability (desktop)
.484*
.108
.144**
8.192
1.853
2.652
* = p ≤ .001, ** = p ≤ .01

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Contrary to predictions, H2A - C were not found to be significant, contradicting findings
elsewhere about the the impact of privacy concerns and Facebook friend list size on bridging
capital (Jessica Vitak, 2012). Hypotheses connecting multimediality (H2D) to bridging capital
were supported. Contrary to predictions, desktop availability (H2F) was a significant factor in
bridging capital, whereas mobile availability (H2E) was not.

Outcomes of Social Capital
Previous research suggests that bonding capital is correlated with more intimate, frequent
communication with close friends and family and linked with beneficial outcomes such as trust.
Four bivariate correlations were conducted, all controlling for demographic variables of gender,
age, education, income, and race (anglo/non-anglo). H3A verifies that bonding capital is
positively correlated with trust (question 142: “I would trust one of my friends on Facebook who
is also a parent to watch my children for an hour”). H3B verifies that Facebook bonding capital
is positively correlated with activity coordination (question 132: “I coordinated in-person
activities for my child(ren) using mobile Facebook”). Bridging capital tends to connect
heterogeneous groups and leads to exposure to more diverse viewpoints and information. H3C
and H3D verify that bridging capital is correlated with question asking behavior (question 134:
“I asked for advice on important issues using mobile Facebook”) and use of online groups
(question 135: “I used groups on mobile Facebook to talk about topics related to parenting”),
respectively. Table N reports the results of the bivariate correlations, with each hypothesis
passing at p ≤ .001.

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Table 5. Outcomes correlated with bridging and bonding capital on
general Facebook (H3A) and mobile Facebook (H3B – D).

Bonding Bridging
H3A: offline trust of other parents on FB.
H3B: activity coordination on mobile FB.
H3C: asking for advice on mobile FB.
H3D: parenting groups on mobile FB.
.440*
.244*

.461*
.473*
* = p ≤ .001

Tie Conversion
“The people that I least talked to, all of a sudden I’m talking to them more often because
they’re now parents, they’re now married. They live a common lifestyle as I do. And often we
[say], hey, we should hang out, we should email. All this through Facebook…” - James

To assess data quality of the items for intensity of tie conversion (questions 93 − 100, minus
one question that was an attention filter) a factor analysis with Varimax factor rotation was
conducted in SPSS on all 7 items, revealing an expected single factor solution. Kaiser-Meyer-
Olkin’s measure was .890, indicating sampling adequacy and no threat of colinearity.
Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .882, which explained 58.84% of variance. The resulting
compound variable (N = 260, M = 23.92, SD = 6.25) was relatively normal (skewness = -.573,
kurtosis = .221).
To assess data quality of the items for breadth of unfriending (questions 81 − 92) a factor
analysis with Varimax factor rotation was conducted in SPSS, revealing a dual factor solution
explaining 62.33% of variance. One item (“I unfriended people because they are an old
boyfriend or girlfriend”) had a low loading value in factor analysis (Extraction = .250) and
highest increase in Cronbach’s alpha if removed, and was removed. After rotation, the first set of
components represented motivations for reducing number of items on a feed, not in contact with
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them any more, don’t want them to see my posts, too frequent posting and low quality posts. The
second represented negative reactions to particular posts, behavior, and drama. Kaiser-Meyer-
Olkin’s measure was .899, indicating sampling adequacy and there is no threat of colinearity.
Final Cronbach’s alpha for the scale with the removed item was .890. The resulting compound
variable (N = 260, M = 32.92, SD = 9.30) with a relatively normal distribution (skewness = .002,
kurtosis = .296).

Table 6. Hierarchical Regression Predicting Intensity of
Tie Conversion.
Tie Conversion
β t value
Block 1 - Demographics
(p = .012, df = 255, R
2
= .049)

Gender (Female)
Age
Race (POC)
Income
.088
.030
-.024
.087
1.589
.562
-.443
1.562
Block 2 – Facebook and
Family Variables
(p ≤ .001, df = 252, R
2
= .144)

Privacy concerns
Unfriending
Family Satisfaction
-.155***
.246*
-.010
-2.431
3.730
-.184
Block 3 – Mobile Practices
(p ≤ .001, df = 249, R
2
= .314)

Multimediality
Availability (mobile)
Availability (desktop)
.333*
.142***
.043
5.204
2.336
.767
* = p ≤ .001, ** = p ≤ .01, *** = p ≤ .05

A significant negative relationship between privacy concerns and intensity of tie
conversion, confirming hypothesis H3A. As anticipated, unfriending was significantly related
with intensity of tie conversion, confirming hypothesis H3B. H3C was not confirmed, as family
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satisfaction was not related to tie conversion. Finally, tie conversion was positively related to
multimediality, and mobile availability but not desktop availability, confirming H3D & H3E.
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9. Conclusion, Limitations, and Discussion
Conclusion
Facebook took a central position among parents as a site to present family, start
conversations and serve as an archive. In interviews, bonding capital developed on Facebook
was correlated with a satisfactory family life. Parents reported drawing on the communicative
affordances of their mobile devices, with multimediality having a relationship with bridging and
bonding. Social capital was correlated with trust for offline trust and specific tasks such as
activity coordination. Contrary to other uses of mobile media by parents that tend to be examples
of using technology to reinforce boundaries – such as to keep surveillance on their children
(Weisskirch, 2009) – the warm environment and porous boundary of mobile Facebook appeared
to be a net positive. These findings reinforce a perspective of bounded solidarity where mobile-
mediated rituals serve to sustain social groups, in this case, mostly strong ties (close friends and
family).
Interviewees recalled times when Facebook became a primary site of display and
conversation around high rituals – weddings, births and deaths – particularly posted for
geographically-distant family. Yet, survey data revealed that these experiences were not the most
common as compared with a quotidian narration of everyday life. More commonly, posts were
described more neutrally as “statements” and for general “sharing.” These displays had a
particular utility for individuals. Established private rituals (e.g. bedtime stories, morning coffee)
require no such publicness as they are embedded in relationships. Public displays of affection are
in a sense required for individuals and activities to be validated as related to family. This broadly
supports Ling’s notion of bounded solidarity where rituals are thought to weld together central
social groups. However, a notion of ritual carries with it certain requirements. According to
Collins requirements include shared presence, awareness and emotion (Collins, 2005, p. 35).
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Distributed, asynchronous interactions on Facebook might not meet this standard, but still fulfill
Ling’s definition of “events where participants share a mutual focus and a common mood”
(Richard Ling, 2008, p. 159).
10
Family members fostered a warm but not exactly intimate
environment on Facebook. Despite the failure of many online interactions to rise to the level of
formal rituals, multimedia practices had a strong relationship on both bridging and bonding.
Thus, I suggest that even though these communication patterns often do no rise to the level of
ritual, they still a way parents accrue social capital.
I use the term “porous solidarity” to describe the relationship of these micro-rituals to
communicate both within and outside of primary groups. Evidence presented here suggests that
certain mobile content created through mobile media can bridge even more strongly than bond.
This has a clear relationship to the well-being of parents, who need emotional support during this
time of transition. The relationship of imagery to family rituals has been long established
(Bourdieu, 1996), making the relationship between image production, curation and uploading
and bonding capital not altogether surprising. More surprising is that one does not need to be part
of a family to appreciate the display of family life. Images of everyday life appear to be a form of
content appreciable across groups. For example, pictures of people on Facebook attract more
likes and comments (Bakhshi et al., 2014). Clearly, this is a more measured notion of
“solidarity” as well – more diffuse and potentially stimulated by affect (Hjorth & Lim, 2012;
Papacharissi, 2014) and similarity (Condon & Crano, 1988; Martin et al., 2013). This sense of
solidarity can be thought of as common experience that draws us together through positive social
surveillance and asynchronous interactions. Porous solidarity thus stands counter to many
predictions about the capacity of mobile media to encourage us to focus on strong ties at the

10
See Chapter 6 of New Tech, New Ties and Ling, 2008a for further discussion by Ling
synthesizing Collins, Durkheim and Goffman’s perspectives on ritual.
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expense of weak ones (Scott W. Campbell, 2015; Crawford, 2008; Kobayashi & Boase, 2014;
Ling et al., 2014). Looking at one-site capital at least, there may be no such trade-off. It may
simply be a false dichotomy
Multimedia practices had a positive relationship with bridging capital, yet was only
significantly predicted by desktop availability and not mobile availability. That is, parents who
spent more time around a computer were more likely to access bridging capital. One
interpretation is that images have a general appeal to translating common experiences of others,
thereby serving as bridging capital. However, desktop environments, although they still access
the same networks, may allow for easier media processing, browsing, and multitasking —
affordances that may be associated with bridging capital. Returning to the constraints of mobile
media, “desktop Facebook” patterns of communication are likely different than “mobile
Facebook” patterns, and the two may be synergistic. For example, in a qualitative content
analysis of videos circulated around the Occupy movement, videos captured and distributed at
sites of protest were picked up by others on desktop computers worldwide, who remixed and
further distributed them on social media platforms (Thorson et al., 2013). Another possibility is
that Facebook’s algorithms, on the whole, nudge our interactions towards sameness rather than
difference. Facebook has a vested in interest in ensuring a frictionless and generally upbeat
experience because complaints and conflict reduce time with the platform and (in the case of
flagged images) take time and money to review. It’s important to recall that “bridging capital” on
Facebook exists within a network that is constructed by users and already reflects various forms
of “offline” similarity.
This dissertation also sought support for communicative affordances as a research
perspective. I have taken three routes to understanding affordances in the context of MSNPs:
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perception of utility for particular practices (Chapter 8), conceptualizing intersubjective (but
latent) affordances (Chapter 2), and how outcomes are altered through affordances (Chapter 8).
Reinforcing a Gibsonian perspective, individuals who didn’t see a particular resonance with their
goals and the capabilitities of a device simply didn’t maximize that affordance, although they
were aware of it. For example, locatability was not deemed to be a particularly useful affordance,
as parents had less free time and went outside of the house more rarely. In interviews they rarely,
if ever, attached particular meanings to check-ins and tagging activities. However, counter to a
Gibsonian perspective, in the case of portability, the ability to easily transport a device was so
deeply embedded that responses were extremely simplistic or difficult to verbalize. This suggests
a break from a Gibsonian perspective on affordances, which stipulates that affordances should be
perecivable, and towards Norman’s notion of “hidden affordances” (Norman, 1999).
To the notion that affordances can be not entirely positive, survey data shows that young
mothers had paradoxical relationships where mobile media presented both a burden and an
opportunity for socialization. That is, mothers were, as in Bourdieu’s day, disproportionately
responsible for narrating online life. Ammari, Kumar, Lampe and Schoenebeck (2015) defined
the labor put into maintaining a child’s online presence the “third shift,” referring to
Hochschild’s (2003) notion of the “second shift” of domestic labor imposed upon working
women. Another finding was that non-Anglo participants were less likely to draw on bonding
capital, which might be traced to people of color habitually using more diverse suites of mobile
software, thereby relying less on mobile Facebook. Instagram, for example, appeared
approximately twice as often in ranking of frequently-used mobile applications among people of
color as it did with anglo interviewees. Another possible explanation was that this is an artifact
of culturally-contingent ways of “doing family.”
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Limitations
This dissertation focuses on the intersection between mobile media with social network sites,
or what I term MSNPs (Schrock, in press-b). A communicative affordances framework (Schrock,
in press-a) suggests that while technologies offer new opportunities for communication, these
opportunities are interpreted across communities in different ways. An affordances approach
differs from a mass communication perspective on “active” technology usage (For example:
Blumler & Katz, 1974; Ruggiero, 2000). Recall that affordances as a relational concept are
connected with a “specific domain and set of actions” (Majchrzak et al., 2013, p. 39) or “set of
actors” (Treem & Leonardi, 2012, p. 145). The very definition of communicative affordances
implies that while affordances exist as potentialities in technology, to research them in a
meaningful way requires considering how and why they are either perceived as useful, or bound
practices such that they are connected to particular outcomes. That is, a communicative
affordances perspective leans towards naturalistic modes of research that prioritize existing
practices rather than “effects” brought on by pseudo-experimental design, as is more common in
mass communication or computer-mediated communication.
My relatively narrow sampling targets in-group differences rather than between-group
comparisons. That is, I did not seek to compare young parents with other age groups. Rather, a
communicative affordances approach will be of interest to communication researchers interested
in activity centered research (Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2013) and extending a sociomaterialities
perspective on communication (Orlikowski, 2007). This relatively narrow inquiry was necessary
to connect with these lineages, but brings with it certain limitations. Methodologically, I selected
interviews to provide a qualitative front-end to build survey questions on practices then deployed
in surveys. However, I query parents’ Facebook networks rather than offline networks. In this
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dissertation I am not able to determine if, for example, mobile media afford new connections in
urban space (in the model of democratic pluralism) (Hampton, Livio, & Sessions Goulet, 2010)
or on the confine people to their strong-tie networks at the expense of their offline ties (one
interpretation of the onerous “mobile cocooning”) (Crawford, 2008). While this dissertation may
inform these questions, it certainly doesn’t resolve them.
This dissertation takes a perspective that Facebook serves as a resource for multiple activities
(Smock et al., 2011). I do not ask questions about single ties, as would be common with network
analysis, but how the utility of ties in aggregate are subjectively interpreted and drawn on. While
not ideal – it lacks fidelity of looking at specific ties in turn – a resource view allows other
questions to be asked, specifically concerning affordances. Further, because the survey is only
administered once, its claims of causality are limited. The goal was to draw conclusions about
how parents leverage the affordances of mobile media and social media. For example, I can say
that parents who have historically positive relationships with their family are more likely to
connect with them online, and this makes a difference in terms of the bonding social capital they
accrue. I am not able to say whether they would, for example, rely on Facebook for social
support in response to a traumatic event.
A survey methodology is based on recall of frequency of media use and is subject to errors in
interpretation by interviewees. Trace data would be ideal because it provides a more accurate
record of variables such as time spent on-site (Boase & Ling, 2013). While this was not feasible
this time to inexpensively combine modes of data collection, eventually trace data could provide
more accurate data to connect with particular affordances, as suggested and implemented by
Boase (Boase, 2008, 2013; Boase & Ling, 2013).
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Given a narrow set of participants, lack of generalizability is one limitation of this
dissertation. Practices can be more or less common because how individuals draw on
communicative affordances might be more or less prevalent across different communities. But as
should be clear, not all uses of mobile media are alike – recall how the spread of semi-illicit
photos among teenagers engendered trust (Rich Ling, 2008b). Youth may draw on mobile
media’s communicative affordances of multimediality through “selfies” (Hogan & Wellman,
2014), albeit likely for entirely different reasons than the parents I interviewed. Multimediality
appears an easy way to keep their social networks up to date with their latest events and
socialization, and be more about presentation of self (Goffman, 1959; Hogan, 2010; Kane, 2008).
As these examples suggest, how understanding of affordances cognitively “spread” relates to
perception of utility is quite a different question, which I spent comparatively little time. Some
scholars take a more normative approach to affordances as technologies enter mainstream usage
(Rogers, 1995). For example, interest in “broadcast” affordances of SNSs (boyd, 2010) revolves
around their general utility from a social psychological perspective (Nicole B. Ellison et al.,
2013; Nicole B. Ellison et al., 2014; J. Vitak & Ellison, 2012). Multimediality and availability
may also be relevant for social cohesion across different groups, but conclusions here are limited
to a particular sampling of parents with young children. Affordances can have more or less
resonance with particular practices for different groups.

Discussion
A framework of communicative affordances has opened up several questions for future
research. How mobile social media operate in a larger media ecology at their disposal is one area
of consideration. In this dissertation I focused on how individuals perceive the utility of a single
medium (Boase & Kobayashi, 2008). Yet, a communicative affordances approach may be
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brought together in the future with precepts from media ecologies, that such as that new media
forms are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. There have been varying definitions of “media
ecology” from variance of local practices with technologies (Nardi & O'Day, 1999) to systems of
control (Altheide, 1995). Boase’s notion of the “personal communication system” implies that
mobile media’s affordances are interpreted alongside multiple other possibilities (Boase, 2008).
My own MA thesis (Schrock, 2006) applied media system dependency, an ecological perspective
of active media use and power (Ball-Rokeach, 1985). Over the last several years I became
convinced that affordances became more appropriate to describing how individuals perceive
certain technologies to be appropriate for particular tasks. Affordances provides an agentic
perspective of sense-making and outcomes for the individual that would be not possible with
other perspectives. This focus came at a sacrifice of an inquiry of the larger media ecology and
how power is enacted through it
11
.
Affordances may be a micro-level front-end for ecosystemic notions of media use. MSD
generally assumes that media entities control access to scarce resources that are needed to
reconcile ambiguity (Ball-Rokeach, 2009). As should now be clear, communicative affordances
exist in cycle where usage is evaluated, norms of use developed, and goals triggered (Hogan,
2009). This answers objections such as Rich Ling, who objected to applying affordances to
mobile media because he found it “tautological” (Ling, 2004b, p. 26). His objection was that
affordances were structural-functionalist, co-created in the intersection between structure and
agency (Giddens, 1986). Ling’s reading of affordances was, more or less, objects are used in a
certain way because that is how they are designed to be used. The mutually constitutive nature of
affordances was structural-functionalist and, to him, lacked analytical power. This increasingly
does not describe social media or mobile media. Affordances might be viewed as the micro-level

11
A topic I tackled elsewhere (Schrock, 2014).
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groundwork for clarifying how the assumptions of MSD might be reconsidered in light of an age
of relative communication abundance.
Given the newness of terrain I have focused on positive outcomes. However, it has been
noted that affordances can lead to positive or negative outcomes (Majchrzak et al., 2013). From a
rational choice perspective, we would not expect individuals to continue using media in a certain
way if it was not satisfactory to achieving their goals. Thus, young people use broadcast
affordances to connect with peers, augmenting communicative habits to avoid communicating
with unintended parties (A. E. Marwick & d. boyd, 2014). Recalling the Gibsonian roots of
communicative affordances (Gibson, 1986), while affordances exist separately from interaction,
it is only through interaction that they can “do” anything. There is the possibility that unintended
consequences of technologies exist when their operations are less fully understood. Privacy, for
example, is evaluated contextually through information available at the time (Nissenbaum,
2010). It is only at certain junctures that they alter their opinion on how technologies should be
used, while largely remain unaware of how platforms technically operate. That is, when
considering how people interpret utility, downsides may not be visible through the interface of
the technology. Individuals tend to be connected with posts that they respond to. To use one
example, in the last election cycle it was noted that Facebook promoted an insular “red state,
blue state” dynamic. Here we might point to Ethan Zuckerman’s points about using technologies
to draw attention to the inner workings of algorithms, allowing us to be more aware of the
decisions we make regarding technologies (Zuckerman, 2013).
Finally, since I began this dissertation, platforms for visual communication have gained
popularity. Instagram (owned by Facebook) became the first “mobile first” application to
achieve mainstream success. The Vine short video sharing platform emerged and, while more
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associated with Twitter, fills a niche between “video” and “image.” If mobile affordances
themselves are not shifting, the ease in which visual media can be shared is increasing. Clearly,
mobile Facebook, while not necessarily waning among the group I looked at here, is increasingly
not the only conduit for visual communication. Unfortunately, even as visual media emerged as
particularly important in this study and CMC (in general) can still be said to have a “textual bias”
(Soukup, 2000). Successive research could focus on multimedia practices as a central research
question uniting and comparing disparate mobile applications, rather than focus predominantly
on a single platform, as was the case here. Mobile images appear to be linked with intimacy
(Hjorth & Lim, 2012) and affect (Papacharissi, 2014), perhaps provoking a revisiting of the
assumptions of Bourdiusian capital as compared with a rational choice model.

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Appendix A: Survey Instrumentation
1. FBmember Are you a member of Facebook?
• - Yes (1)
• - No (2)

2. haveKids1 Do you have children?
• - Yes (1)
• - No (2)

3. haveKids2 What is the age of your youngest child in years?

4. ownUseMob Do you own and use a mobile device, such as a smartphone, feature
phone or tablet?
• - Yes (1)
• - No (2)

5. gender What is your gender?
• - Male (1)
• - Female (2)

6. age What is your age in years?

7. ZIP What is the zip code where you live?

8. education What is the highest level of education you have attained?
• - Did not graduate high school (1)
• - Graduated high school (2)
• - Some college, did not graduate (3)
• - College (4)
• - Graduate school (5)
• - Ph.D (6)

9. race What race most accurately describes you?
• - White or Caucasian (1)
• - Black or African-American (2)
• - Asian (3)
• - Hispanic or Latin-American Ethnicity (4)
• - Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (5)
• - Multiracial (6)
• - Other (7)

10. empStatus Are you currently employed?
• - Yes, full-time. (1)
• - Yes, part-time. (2)
• - No. (3)
If No. Is Selected, Then Skip To Counting all sources of income, what ...
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11. monMaj Does your employment bring in the majority of your household income?
• - Yes (1)
• - No (2)

12. HHincome Counting all sources of income, what was your total household
income last year?
• - Under $12,500 (1)
• - $12,501 - $21,000 (2)
• - $21,001 - 40,000 (3)
• - $40,001 - 52,000 (4)
• - $52,001 - 65,600 (5)
• - $65,601 - 106,000 (6)
• - $106,601 - 150,000 (7)
• - over $150,000 (8)

13. mobHours How many total mobile devices (smartphones, cell phones, tablets, and
"wearable" devices such as the Fitbit) are in your household?

14. mobModel What model of mobile device do you carry with you and use most
frequently?

15. mobDev What operating system runs on this mobile device?
• - Apple iOS (1)
• - Android (2)
• - Blackberry (3)
• - Windows (4)
• - Firefox OS (5)
• - Other (6)

16. mobFreq How frequently do you use this mobile device?
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)
• - 2-3 times an hour (8)
• - about every 10 minutes (9)

17. FBfriends How many people are on your Facebook friends list?

18. FByears How many years have you been a member of Facebook?

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19. FBuseFreq How frequently do you use Facebook on a mobile device? (include
mobile app, Facebook messenger, and mobile website)
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)
• - 2-3 times an hour (8)
• - about every 10 minutes (9)

20. FBdesktop How frequently do you use Facebook on a desktop or laptop
computer?
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)
• - 2-3 times an hour (8)
• - about every 10 minutes (9)

21. rel-type What is your marital status?
• - Married (1)
• - Long-term partnership (2)
• - Separated or divorced (3)
• - Single or just dating (4)
• - Widowed (5)
If Separated or divorced Is Selected, Then Skip To How many total family members are in ...If
Widowed Is Selected, Then Skip To How many total family members are in ...If Single or just
dating Is Selected, Then Skip To How many total family members are in ...If Married Is
Selected, Then Skip To What year did you get married? If Long-term partnership Is Selected,
Then Skip To How many years have you been "serious...

22. Q167 What year did you get married? (YYYY)

23. rel-length How many years have you been "serious" with your significant other?
Years (1)
Months (2)

24. rel-gen What is your significant other's gender?
• - Male (1)
• - Female (2)

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25. relSat7 How many problems are there in your relationship?
• - Low (1)
• - (2)
• - (3)
• - (4)
• - High (5)

26. relSat1 How well does your partner meet your needs?
• - Low (1)
• - (2)
• - (3)
• - (4)
• - High (5)

27. relSat2 In general, how satisfied are you with your relationship?
• - Low (1)
• - (2)
• - (3)
• - (4)
• - High (5)

28. relSat4 How often do you wish you hadn't gotten into this relationship?
• - Low (1)
• - (2)
• - (3)
• - (4)
• - High (5)

29. relSat5 To what extent has your relationship met your original expectations?
• - Low (1)
• - (2)
• - (3)
• - (4)
• - High (5)

30. relSat6 How much do you love your significant other?
• - Low (1)
• - (2)
• - (3)
• - (4)
• - High (5)

31. relSat3 How good is your relationship compared to most?
• - Low (1)
• - (2)
• - (3)
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• - (4)
• - High (5)

32. totalfam How many total family members are in your immediate household?

33. totalkids How many children of yours are in your immediate household?
If How many children of yours ... Is Equal to 1, Then Skip To What is the age of your youngest
child? If How many children of yours ... Is Equal to 2, Then Skip To What is the age of your
second younge...If How many children of yours ... Is Equal to 3, Then Skip To What is the age of
your third younges...If How many children of yours ... Is Equal to 4, Then Skip To What is the
age of your fourth younge...If How many children of yours ... Is Greater Than or Equal to 5,
Then Skip To What is the age of your oldest child ...

34. childold What is the age of your oldest child in years?

35. Q132 What is the age of your fourth youngest child in years?

36. Q133 What is the age of your third youngest child in years?

37. Q134 What is the age of your second youngest child?

38. childyng What is the age of your youngest child?

39. adopted Are any of your children adopted or not biologically yours (e.g. your
partner's biological children)?
• - Yes (1)
• - No (2)

40. workOnFB Approximately how many friends and acquaintances you met at
work are on Facebook?

41. famOnFB Approximately how many immediate and extended family members
are on Facebook? (include spouse/partner, parents, cousins, siblings, etc.)

42. famOnIG Approximately how many immediate and extended family members are
on Instagram? (include spouse/partner, parents, cousins, siblings, etc.)

MM-0 The following questions are about how frequently you do certain activities on
your mobile device. For this set of questions please answer only for the mobile device
(such as a "smartphone" or mobile phone) that you use most frequently.

43. MM-shar1 I show friends pictures or videos on my mobile device when I'm
spending time with them in-person.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
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• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

44. MM-shar2 I take "selfie" pictures with my family and friends.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

45. MM-shar3 I take videos of my family and friends.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

46. MM-cur1 I organize pictures on my mobile device.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

47. MM-cur2 I think about pictures of my family on my mobile device.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

48. MM-cur3 I look at pictures of my family on my mobile device.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
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• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

49. MM-cur4 I take screen shots on my phone.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

50. MM-up1 I upload images or videos of my family from my mobile device to a
social network site such as Facebook.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

51. MM-up2 I share images of my family taken on my mobile device on an image
sharing site such as Instagram.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

52. MM-up3 I make status updates, messages and posts about my family with
pictures or videos attached.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

53. MM-up4 I share videos of my family taken on my mobile device on a video
sharing site such as YouTube.
• - never (1)
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• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

FBbridge0 For the next series of questions, think about people you are connected
to on Facebook, including relative, close and distant friends, coworkers and
acquaintances.

54. FBbridge1 Interacting with people on Facebook makes me interested in things
that happen outside of my town.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

55. FBbridge2 Interacting with people on Facebook makes me want to try new
things.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

56. FBbridge3 Interacting with people on Facebook makes me interested in what
people unlike me are thinking.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

57. FBbridge4 Talking with people on Facebook makes me curious about other places
in the world.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

58. FBbridge5 Interacting with people on Facebook makes me feel like part of a
larger community.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
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• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

59. FBbridge6 Interacting with people on Facebook makes me feel connected to the
bigger picture.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

60. FBbridge7 Interacting with people on Facebook reminds me that everyone in the
world is connected.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

61. FBbridge8 I am willing to spend time to support general community activities on
Facebook.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

62. FBbridge9 Interacting with people on Facebook gives me new people to talk to.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

63. FBbridge10 On Facebook I come into contact with new people all the time.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

FBbond0 For the next series of questions, think about people you are connected
to on Facebook, including relative, close and distant friends, coworkers and
acquaintances.
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64. FBbond1 There are several people in my Facebook network I trust to help solve
my problems.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

65. FBbond2 There is someone in my Facebook network I can turn to for advice
about making very important decisions.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

66. FBbond3 There is no one in my Facebook network I feel comfortable talking to
about intimate personal problems.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

67. FBbond4 When I feel lonely, there are several people in my Facebook network I
can talk to.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

68. FBbond5 If I needed an emergency loan of $500, I know someone in my
Facebook network I can turn to.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

69. FBbond6 The people I interact with in my Facebook network would put their
reputation on the line for me.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
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• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

70. FBbond7 The people I interact with in my Facebook network would be good job
references for me.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

71. FBbond8 The people I interact with in my Facebook network would share their
last dollar with me.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

72. FBbond9 I do not know people in my Facebook network well enough to get them
to do anything important.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

73. FBbond10 The people I interact with in my Facebook network would help me
fight an injustice.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

74. PC-FB1 I worry about people who are not my friends seeing my posts on
Facebook.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

75. PC-FB2 Concerns about privacy keep me from posting to Facebook.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
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• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

76. PC-FB3 I "unfriend" people on Facebook because I don't want them seeing what I
post.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

77. PC-FB4 I am careful in what I post to Facebook.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

78. PC-LOC1 I "tag" my status updates with my location.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

79. PC-LOC2 I "check in" to locations on applications such as FourSquare or
Facebook.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

80. PC-LOC3 I let mobile applications access my location.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)
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NT-me-0 The following questions concern why you have unfriended people on Facebook
in the last year.

81. NT-me-1 I unfriended people to reduce the number of posts on my news feed.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

82. NT-me-2 I unfriended people because they are too much drama.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

83. NT-me-3 I unfriended people because they are an old boyfriend or girlfriend.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

84. NT-me-4 I unfriended people because I don't really know who they are.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

85. NT-me-5 I unfriended people because I am no longer in contact with "offline."
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

86. NT-me-6 I unfriended people because I don't want them to see my posts.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

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87. NT-them-1 I unfriended people because they were too polarizing.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

88. NT-them-2 I unfriended people because they discussed unimportant topics.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

89. NT-them-3 I unfriended people because they posted too frequently.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

90. NT-them-4 I unfriended people because they posted about boring, everyday
things.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

91. NT-them-5 I unfriended people because they made inappropriate posts.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

92. NT-them-6 I unfriended people because I disliked their behavior.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

Q82 The following questions concern activities with parents in your Facebook friend list
over the last year.

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93. TC-1 I have gotten to know other parents better on Facebook.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

94. TC-2 I have spent time offline with parents after interacting with them on
Facebook.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

95. TC-3 I've interacted on Facebook with friends from high school and college who
also have children.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

96. TC-4 I've traded phone numbers or email addresses with other parents on
Facebook.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

97. TC-5 I have gone on Facebook to see how my friends' families are doing.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

98. Filtermid In order to continue, please select the rightmost option to this question:
strongly agree
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

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99. TC-6 I have become closer friends with other parents who don't live near me
through Facebook.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

100. TC-7 I chat directly with other parents using Facebook or Facebook messenger.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly agree (5)

101. pStress1 I feel that I cannot handle things.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

102. pStress2 I gave up my life for my children's needs.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

103. pStress3 I feel trapped by parenting responsibilities.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

104. pStress4 I am unable to do new and different things.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

105. pStress5 I am never able to do the things I used to do.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
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• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

106. pStress6 I am unhappy with the last purchase of clothing for myself.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

107. pStress7 Quite a few things bother me.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

108. pStress8 Having a child caused problems with my partner.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

109. pStress9 I feel alone and without friends.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

110. pStress10 I expect not to enjoy myself at parties.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

111. pStress11 I am not as interested in people as I used to be.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

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112. pStress12 I don't enjoy things as I used to.
• - Strongly Disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither agree nor disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

Q164 The following questions concern the family you grew up with.

113. FamSat1 In their treatment of one another, my family was consistent and fair.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

114. FamSat2 I would do anything or a member of my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

115. FamSat3 I had a good time with my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

116. FamSat4 I always felt my parents supported me.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

117. FamSat5 I always knew what I could and couldn't "get away with" at my house.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

118. FamSat6 I was never sure what the rules were from day to day with my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
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• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

119. FamSat7 My family was one of the least important aspects of my life.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

120. FamSat8 I would do anything necessary for a member of my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

121. FamSat9 There was too much conflict in my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

122. FamSat10 I usually felt safe sharing myself with my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

123. FamSat11 I was happy with my family just the way it was.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

124. FamSat12 Member of my family treated one another consistently.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)
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125. FamSat13 There was a great deal about my family that I would have changed if I
could.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

126. FamSat14 With my family I could rarely be myself.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

127. FamSat15 I was very unhappy with my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

128. FamSat16 I was deeply committed to my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

129. FamSat17 I often found myself feeling dissatisfied with my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

130. FamSat18 My family always believed in me.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

131. FamSat19 I found great comfort and satisfaction in my family.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
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• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

MFB0 The following questions concern activities using "mobile Facebook" (mobile app,
mobile website, and Facebook messenger) over the last year.

132. MFB1 I coordinated in-person activities for my child(ren) using mobile
Facebook.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

133. MFB2 I posted pictures and videos of my child(ren) using mobile Facebook.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

134. MFB3 I asked for advice on important issues using mobile Facebook.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

135. MFB4 I used groups on mobile Facebook to talk about topics related to
parenting.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

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136. MFB5 I used mobile Facebook to "vent" about the frustrations of being a parent.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

137. MFB6 I worried about how much information, videos and pictures of my
child(ren) I put online through mobile Facebook.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

138. MFB7 I used mobile Facebook to communicate with family members that don't
live nearby.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

139. MFB8 On mobile Facebook I noticed my friends getting stressed out about family
topics.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

140. webPics2 Who in your family takes and uploads the most pictures of your
child(ren) to social network sites like Facebook?
• - Me (1)
• - My significant other (2)
• - My mother or father (3)
• - My significant other's mother or father (4)
• - Other (5)
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141. FBcousins I communicate with my cousins on Facebook.
• - never (1)
• - monthly (2)
• - weekly (3)
• - 2-3 times a week (4)
• - daily (5)
• - 2-3 times a day (6)
• - hourly (7)

142. FBkidTrust I would trust one of my friends on Facebook who is also a parent to
watch my children for an hour.
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

143. webPics1 I refer to online pictures when putting together a "baby book."
• - Strongly disagree (1)
• - Disagree (2)
• - Neither Agree nor Disagree (3)
• - Agree (4)
• - Strongly Agree (5)

144. appFreq How frequently do you use these applications or websites on your mobile
device? Please drag and drop the items to the appropriate areas and sequence with most
frequently used on top. If you never use the application or website please drag it to
"never."
Use daily Use weekly Use monthly Never
______ Instagram (1) ______ Instagram (1) ______ Instagram (1) ______ Instagram (1)
______ FourSquare
(2)
______ FourSquare
(2)
______ FourSquare
(2)
______ FourSquare
(2)
______ Nextdoor (3) ______ Nextdoor (3) ______ Nextdoor (3) ______ Nextdoor (3)
______ SMS texting
(4)
______ SMS texting
(4)
______ SMS texting
(4)
______ SMS texting
(4)
______ Vine (5) ______ Vine (5) ______ Vine (5) ______ Vine (5)
______ Snapchat (6) ______ Snapchat (6) ______ Snapchat (6) ______ Snapchat (6)
______ YouTube (7) ______ YouTube (7) ______ YouTube (7) ______ YouTube (7)
______ Twitter (8) ______ Twitter (8) ______ Twitter (8) ______ Twitter (8)
______ Email (9) ______ Email (9) ______ Email (9) ______ Email (9)
______ Tinder (10) ______ Tinder (10) ______ Tinder (10) ______ Tinder (10)
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Appendix B: Interview Protocol
• Demographics and warm-up questions
⁃ Name
⁃ Age
⁃ Are you married or in another form of long-term partnership such as domestic
partnership?
⁃ Do you work? If so, full or part-time?
⁃ How large is your total household size?
⁃ Do you have a computer at home? How many? Are they laptops?
⁃ What mobile devices do you have?
⁃ How long have you been on Facebook? How often do you use mobile and desktop
versions?
• How many children do you have? What’s his/her/their name(s)? How old is he/she/they
now?

Exercise 1: Looking Through the Cell Phone
• For the next few minutes we’re going to look at your cell phone. Could you get it out?
⁃ Where do you usually carry it?
• Can you show me the three apps you most frequently use for communicating with people,
outside of phone and texting? (Discount non-social applications such as stock tickers,
flashlight, mapping)
⁃ Who do you talk with on these apps? Are they friends or family?
⁃ What is this application “good for?” (Stay on this if comparisons are interesting,
explore affordances)
⁃ Would you talk with these people anyways?
⁃ Have you ever gotten to know these people better through these applications?
• Can we look through your camera roll? (If none, look at images on Facebook)
⁃ What’s your favorite picture on here right now?
⁃ How do you upload these to the internet? Do you transfer them to your computer?
⁃ What pictures do you typically post to Facebook and why?
• What do you use your mobile for…
⁃ At work?
⁃ At home?
⁃ At other times?
• Do you have “push notifications” turned on?
• Is there anything you wish you could do on your cell phone that you currently can’t?

Exercise 2: Looking at Mobile Facebook
• Could you open your Facebook app?
• Let’s look at your friends page.
⁃ How many total friends do you have?
⁃ How many family members are you friends with?
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⁃ Can you think of friends or family that you have become closer with over time?
How about other parents?
⁃ Can you think of any friends that you have become less close with?
⁃ When and why do you un-friend people?
• Let’s look at your news feed together. (looking at the last three posts)
⁃ Are these a good example of the type of things you post about?
⁃ Do you ever ask people for advice through wall posts?
⁃ Thinking of the different types of people on Facebook, who are you trying to
reach with wall posts?
⁃ Do you ever feel that people are seeing things you posted you would rather not?
• Other Facebook-specific questions
⁃ Do you use Facebook groups?
⁃ Do you ever use Facebook chat?
⁃ How do you feel about Facebook requiring messaging over the Facebook
Messenger app?
⁃ Do you ever “check-in” to places?
⁃ Do you ever tag pictures with a particular location? If so, what does that mean to
you?

Exercise 3: What’s different now? (More back to older topics)
• Thinking about what we’ve talked about — habits with your mobile phone and Facebook
in particular — do you use them differently since you become a parent?
• Changing habits
⁃ Do you post different things?
⁃ Have the people you enjoy interacting with changed?
⁃ Are you more careful with adding or deleting people?
• Specific actions
⁃ What about asking people for advice?
⁃ “Venting” online about being frustrated?
⁃ Getting emotional support from friends?
⁃
⁃ Anything else you can think of (wrap-up) —
⁃

Running head: CONNECTING COMMUNICATIVE AFFORDANCES
233
Appendix C: Survey Protocol
University of Southern California
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

3502 Watt Way, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0281

INFORMATION/FACTS SHEET FOR NON-MEDICAL
RESEARCH

Social Affordances of Mobile Social Media

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
Mobile devices enable more convenient and effective communication between individuals and
their social networks. The current study asks questions about specific types of uses of mobile
devices.

PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
Brief (approximately 10-minute) surveys will be conducted to discuss the prevalence and
character of participants' practices with mobile media.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
You will receive minimal financial compensation as described in the HIT for Mechanical Turk.

CONFIDENTIALITY
There will be no identifiable information obtained in connection with this study. Your name,
address or other identifiable information will not be collected. Members of the research team
may access the data.

INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
Name: Andrew Schrock, email: aschrock@usc.edu, phone: 714-330-6545
Address: 3502 Watt WayLos Angeles, CA 90089-0281

IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
University Park IRB, 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-
5272 or upirb@usc.edu

Running head: CONNECTING COMMUNICATIVE AFFORDANCES
234
Appendix D: Interview Protocol
University of Southern California
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

3502 Watt WayLos Angeles, CA 90089-0281

INFORMATION/FACTS SHEET FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH

Locative practices with mobile social network platforms

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
Mobile social networking enables communication on social networks through mobile devices.
Three types of practices with mobile devices are different than desktop counterparts: mobile
congregation, immediate support, and presentation of self. This study asks people about these
practices to examine how they integrate them into everyday communication with friends and
family.

PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
Brief (approximately 30-minute) interviews will be conducted to discuss the prevalence and
character of participants' practices with mobile Facebook. The interview will be audio recorded.
If you decline to be recorded, the interview will discontinue.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
You will receive a $20 gift card from Target for your time. You do not have to answer all of the
questions in order to receive the card. The card will be given to you by the researcher when you
return the questionnaire.

CONFIDENTIALITY

There will be no identifiable information obtained in connection with this study. Your name,
address or other identifiable information will not be collected. Members of the research team
may access the data.

INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
Name: Andrew Schrock, email: aschrock@usc.edu, phone: 714-330-6545
Address: 3502 Watt WayLos Angeles, CA 90089-0281

IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
University Park IRB, 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-
5272 or upirb@usc.edu

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Asset Metadata

Creator Schrock, Andrew Richard (author)

Core Title Doing family on Facebook: connecting communicative affordances of mobile media, parental practices, and social capital

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 04/22/2017

Defense Date 03/09/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag affordances,family communication,OAI-PMH Harvest,practices,social capital

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bar, Francois (committee chair), Boase, Jeff (committee member), Hollingshead, Andrea B. (committee member), Williams, Dmitri (committee member)

Creator Email ars@andrewrschrock.com,aschrock@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-558249

Unique identifier UC11300033

Identifier etd-SchrockAnd-3375.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-558249 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-SchrockAnd-3375.pdf

Dmrecord 558249

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Schrock, Andrew Richard

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA