Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/14
Outputs
Target Audience: The goal of this project was to understand how communication via digital media contributes to quality of life for people of different ages, particularly, older adults. We engaged in different efforts to reach the target audiences: 1) Delivering science-based knowledge through participation in extension and outreach activities. In June of 2014, I participated in two outreach activities organized by the Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research: Research Navigator Initiative Workshop and the Fourth Annual Youth Development Research Update. Each of the events gathered around 50 outreach educators from different counties in New York State. I presented research findings on how social media affect significant aspects of people's lives, including life satisfaction, loneliness, social networking, and family relationships. As part of those workshops, I had discussions with outreach educators on how to translate research findings into practical implications aimed at strengthening quality of life for families, older adults, youth, and communities as a whole. 2) Engaging in educational activities: I taught a guest lecture for the CALS Leadership course for graduate students in February 201. The lecture topic was on how to engage with social media and connect with others in the digital age. 3) Formal classroom instruction: I taught a course on Personal Relationships and Technology to 50 undergraduate students in the spring of 2014. An innovative aspect of this course is a research project through which students learn first-hand knowledge about personal relationships and technology. 4) Experiential learning opportunities for 15 undergraduate research assistants who worked in the Social Media Lab at Cornell during Fall'13-Summer'14. Through their research experience, students engage in a creative exchange of innovative ideas and develop inquiry, analytical, and team skills. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? This project provided collaboration, training, and professional development opportunities, including those related to the development of a conceptual study design, theory development, data collection, data coding and analysis, paper writing, and presentations of results at conferences. Project Director mentored two graduate and three undergraduate students on activities related to this project. As a result of this mentoring, students attained greater skills and knowledge in data analyses and coding, interdisciplinary understanding of communication technology and human development, generontological and communication theories, paper writing, and result presentation, and outreach and public dissemination. One of the graduate students - Pamara Chang who was a research assistant on this project- presented the results of our survey study at the ICSWM conference in the summer of 2013 and is a lead author on the journal publication forthcoming in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. The other graduate student - Yoon Choi who was also a research assistant on this project - presented the results at two conferences (International Communication Association and National Communication Association) and is a lead author on the journal article forthcoming in the Journal of Human Communication Research. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? The results of this project were presented at three professional conferences: the National Communication Association Convention in Washington, DC, the International Conferenece on Weblogs and Social Media in Boston, MA, and the International Communication Association Convention in Seattle, WA. We published a blog post about our study in the CrowdResearch blog, which disseminates research in the area of social computing to broad audiences. This blog has been receiving about 1,000 unique visitors each month, and the CrowdResearch ICWSM 2013 Chairs invited us to publish an accessible blog post about our study of older adults and communication technologies because they believed our work would appeal to broad audiences. A blog post can be found here: http://crowdresearch.org/blog/?p=7230 The results of this project were also published in three academic papers in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Journal of Communication, and Human Communication Research. Finally, Project Director presented the findings to Cornell Cooperative Extension educators during two outreach events in the summer of 2014 and has been collaborating with several of those educators on how to create evidence-based educational programs and initiatives in order to reach broader audiences in different counties of the New York State. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The resources provided by the funds were essential to achieveing a number of important outcomes and impacts related to achange of knowledge.The main objective of this project was to examine how social media influenced social connectiveness, well-being, and quality of life of older adults in the United States. To meet this objective, we collected and analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of adults residing in the United States. The age range of participants in our survey was from 18 to 93 years old, and the question of interest concerned older population, their use of technology, and the effects of technology on their lives. The major findings show that compared to younger adults, older adults' online networks are smaller in size but higher in quality, which indicates an increased selectivity of social partners with age. These findings are consistent with a generontological socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006). Although this theory is well-established in offline networks,our study is the first application of this theory to online social networks demonstrating that the quality and size of networks are different across the age span not only offline, but online too.Furthermore, the changes in social networks with age are socially adaptive because, as we find, the quality of online networks is positively associated with psychological well-being. This association holds, even when controlling for marital status, socio-economic status, age, physical and mental health, and education. Thus, our study establishes that the quality and size of online social networks are different for different age groups, and the increasing selectivity of online social partners is associated with better psychological well-being and less social isolation. These results met the grant objectives of understanding the differences in social media use and their association with well-being and social isolation throughout the life span. These findings open a way for interventions leading to achange in condition, such as behavioral changes and adjustments to facilitate well-being of older adults with new comunication technologies.We have disseminated these results to both professional audiences and broader population. They were presented at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media in Boston, MA, and are forthcoming in a journal publication in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. Additionally, they were published in a blog post devoted to our study in the CrowdResearch blog, which disseminates research in the area of social computing to broad audiences. This blog has been receiving about 1,000 unique visitors each month, and the CrowdResearch ICWSM 2013 Chairs invited us to publish an accesible blog post about our study of older adults and communication technology because they believed that our work would appeal to broad audiences. A blog post can be found here: http://crowdresearch.org/blog/?p=7230 Finally, these results were presented at two meetings with Cornell Cooperative Extension educators organized by the Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Cornell Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research in the summer of 2014. The other goal of the project was to understand psychological mechanisms underlying social media use.We achieved this goal by examining social media motivations and practices in a series of studies, in which people reported on their goals and motivations for information sharing in different media. These studies analyzed types of information shared in social media, privacy concerns associated with shared information, and social rewards that people seek from sharing data with their online social networks. To understand psychology behind soical media use, we developed a novel method of coding self-disclosure motivations in soicial media, which has been applied to different communication channels and has shown a good intercoder reliability. These findings resulted in a new conceptual model - the functional model of self-disclosure in social media - that proposes that different audience representations embedded in a communication channel trigger different social motivations, which in turn impact the types of personal information that people share in social media. This model and the findings contribute to the new knowledgeon how technologies affect people's lives and well-being, and how people utilize these technologies to achieve their social goals.The new knowledgeabout motivational drivers presents opportunities for interventions leading to a change in condition, asthese interventions can leverage social media to improve well-being of individuals and communities.The results of the two studies were presented at the Annual Conventions of the International Communication Association and National Communication Association, and were published in the Journal of Communication and Human Communication Research, the two most important scholarly journals in the Communication discipline. To meet the third objective aimed at promoting translational efforts, we've been engaging in outreach efforts through connections with the Cornell Cooperative Extension educators, the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, and social media (blog posts, Twitter messages and popular press). In particular, the results of this project were presented at two outreach events with the Cornell Cooperative Extension educators, disseminated in a blog post visited by 1,000 unique visitors monthly, shared on Twitter, and discussed in educational settings with undergraduate and graduate students.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Chang, P., Choi, Y. H., Bazarova, N. N., & Loeckenhoff, C. (in press). Online social networking across the life span: Extending socioemotional selectivity theory to social network sites. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Choi, Y., & Bazarova, N. N. (in press). Self-disclosure characteristics and motivations in social media: Extending the functional model to multiple social network sites. Human Communication Research.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Bazarova, N. N., & Choi, Y. H. (2014). Self-disclosure in social media: Extending the functional approach to disclosure motivations and characteristics on social network sites. Journal of Communication, 64, 635-657.
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Progress 10/01/12 to 09/30/13
Outputs
Target Audience: Outreach efforts: A blog post about our conference paper "Online Social Networking Across the Life Span: Extending Socioemotional Selectivity Theory to Social Network Sites" noted in the Products of this Progress Report was published in the CrowdResearch blog: http://crowdresearch.org/blog/?p=7230This blog disseminates research in the area of social computing from high-quality venues to a wider audience, and has been receiving about 1,000 unique visitors each month. The CrowdResearch ICWSM 2013 Chairs invited us to publish an accessible blog post about this paper because they thought our piece would be of particular interest to broad audiences. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? This project provided collaboration, training, and professional development opportunities, including those related to the development of a conceptual study design, data collection, data coding and analysis, paper writing, and presentation of results at conferences. Project Director mentored two graduate and three undergraduate students on activities related to this project. As a result of this mentoring, students attained greater skills and knowledge in data analyses and coding, gerontological theories, communication technology theories, paper writing, and result presentation and dissemination. One of the graduate students - Pamara Chang who was a research assistant on this project - presented the results of our survey study at the ICSWM conference in the summer of 2013. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? The results of this project were presented at two professional conferences: National Communication Association Convention in Washington, DC. and International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media in Boston, MA. Additionally, we published a blog post about our study in the CrowdResearch blog, which disseminates research in the area of social computing to broad audiences. This blog has been receiving about 1,000 unique visitors each month, and the CrowdResearch ICWSM 2013 Chairs invited us to publish an accessible blog post about our study of older adults and communication technology because they believed that our work would appeal to broad audiences. A blog post can be found here: http://crowdresearch.org/blog/?p=7230 What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? There are no changes to the agency-approved application or plan for this effort.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The resources provided by the funds for this reporting period were essential to achieving a number of outcomes and impacts related to a change of knowledge. First, we analyzed data collected from a nationally representative sample about social isolation, well-being, and use of social networking sites across the lifespan. The age range of participants in our survey was from 18 to 93 years old, and the questions of interest concerned older population, their use of technology, and the effects of technology on their lives. The major findings show that compared to younger adults, friend networks of older adults are small but they contain a greater proportion of individuals who are considered to be actual friends. Thus, there is increasing selectivity of Facebook social partners with age. Furthermore, the results show that age-related shifts in network composition are adaptive, and a higher proportion of actual to total Facebook friends is associated with lower levels of social isolation and loneliness across the life span. These results are novel, but consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006), which our paper extends for the first time to online social networks. These results met some of the main objectives of the project showing differences in social media use and its effects on well-being and social isolation throughout the life span. These findings open a way for interventions leading to a change in condition, such as behavioral changes and adjustments to facilitate well-being of older adults with new communication technologies. The paper was accepted for presentation at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (Bazarova, Chang, Choi, & Loeckenhoff, 2013), with 20% acceptance rate,and is currently under review for a journal publication. The other two activities for this reporting period focus on the analysis of motivational drivers, or why people disclose personal information in social media. One of these activities examined motivational drivers on Facebook, and the results of this paper were presented at the National Communication Association Convention in Washington, DC (Bazarova & Yoon, 2013). The second activity extended to different types of social media the motivational approach and the coding scheme that we had previously developed for this project (as reported for the first reporting period), with the data collection completed and data analyses currently under way. The new knowledge about motivational drivers underlying information sharing in social media presents opportunities for interventions that leverage social media to improve well-being of individuals and communities.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Bazarova, N. N., Chang, P., Choi, Y. H., & Loeckenhoff, C. (2013). Online social networking across the life span: Extending socioemotional selectivity theory to social network sites. The 7th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM13, non-archival track). Boston, MA.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Bazarova, N. N., & Choi, Y. H. (2013). Self-disclosure in social media: Extending the functional approach to disclosure motivations and characteristics on social network sites. Presented at the the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association. Washington, DC.
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Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: This grant supported a few major activities. The first one was a comprehensive literature review of social media use by older adults, and how it might affect their social isolation/connectedness. This literature review was conducted by a graduate research assistant in the spring, summer, and fall of 2012. Second, we conducted a retrospective diary study on how people express themselves and relate to others in different communication modalities on social networking sites as part of the groundwork for understanding uses and effects of social media on social connectedness and social isolation for older adults. Third, we developed survey questions for measuring social isolation and use of social networking sites for a national survey. These survey questions were selected on a competitive basis by the Cornell Survey Institute for the inclusion in the Cornell National Social Survey, with data collection currently in progress. Forth, we analyzed data from the retrospective diary study and wrote a paper on language use as a social and psychological tool for connecting with others in social media. Next, we developed coding schemes for analyzing self-disclosure data on social networking sites. Finally, we mentored graduate and undergraduate research assistants in conducting a literature review, developing a survey, conducting a retrospective diary study, and analyzing and reporting data. PARTICIPANTS: Natalya Bazarova (PI) organized research activities, provided oversight of human subjects activities, provided budget oversight, and supervised graduate research students and Social Media lab manager. Pamara Chang (graduate research assistant for the spring and summer of 2012) conducted a comprehensive literature review related to the use of social media by older adults and participated in the development of the survey study to advance understanding uses and effects of social media on social isolation and social connectedness. She also provided support for supervision of undergraduate research assistants. Yoon Choi (graduate research assistant for the summer and fall of 2012) participated in implementation, data analysis, reporting results in a journal submission, conducting interviews, and presenting at a conference. She also contributed to developing coding schemes and participated in literature review and survey development for measuring uses and effects of social media by older adults. Jessie Taft (hourly research assistant in the spring of 2011 and social media lab manager in the fall of 2011) participated in planning, design, and implementation of data collection activities. She also contributed to data coding and analysis, reporting, and presenting results at a conference. Finally, she provided support for scheduling, personnel coordination, and equipment and paperwork maintenance. TARGET AUDIENCES: Target audiences for this project are people vulnerable to social isolation because the goal of this project is to understand how social media communication contributes to social connectedness of people of different ages, particularly, older adults. By understanding uses and effects of social media, this project also aims to benefit families by exploring ways to foster stronger interfamily and intergenerational connections through social media communication. Finally, this project seeks to benefit local communities by enhancing health and well-being of social isolated individuals and promoting social connectedness and social integration. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
The resources provided by the funds were essential in achieving a number of outcomes and impacts related to a change in knowledge: 1) a novel retrospective diary method to collect people's message content along with their reflections on this content in different communication modalities in social media, 2) coding schemes for analyzing disclosure types and disclosure goals on social networking sites, 3) new knowledge about how people use language to express themselves and relate to others in social media leading to a publication as noted below, 4) improved skills of graduate and undergraduate research assistants for conducting fundamental research.
Publications
- Bazarova, N. N., Taft, J., Choi, Y., & Cosley, D. (2013). Managing impressions and relationships on Facebook: Self-presentational and relational concerns revealed through the analysis of language style. Journal of Language and Social Psychology (In press).
- Bazarova, N. N., Taft, J. G., Choi, Y. H., & Cosley, D. (2012). Managing impressions and relationships on Facebook: Attentional, self-presentational, and relational concerns revealed through the analysis of language style. The paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, Orlando, FL (33% acceptance rate).
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