Week 3 FAMILY COMMUNICATION PATTERNS

Two Key Components:

conformity orientation:

  • parents create a shared social reality by emphasizing their own authority

  • expect their children to accept their views and beliefs

conversation orientation:

  • “I can tell my parents almost anything”

  • “my parents encourage me to express my feelings”

protective - trust the adults

laissez faire - hands off approach

pluralistic - make me an argument, low conformity, high conversation

consensual - lets talk but in the end.. parents get the last word

why is this relevant to us?

  • do family communication patterns experienced in youth influence people into adulthood

  • the answer appears to be a clear yes

Class Post Discussion:

  • common debates about which parenting style is the healthiest

    • likewise for the least healthiest

  • some claimed that protective is better for children

  • for some consensual can be worse than protective

THURSDAY 9/18/25:

SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING (SIP) Theory - Objective

  • social psychological - looks for cause and effect relationships that will predict the results when people communicate

  • focused on relationship development (initial stages of developing closer relationships, not maintenance)

  • Based solely on information available online, people who meet online can still develop relationships that are just as close as those formed face to face

PROCESS OF RELATIONSHIP DEVELOPMENT:

  • social information

  • impression formation - mental image one person forms of another

  • relationship development

TWO OTHER TIME FACTORS:

  • anticipated future interaction

    • the likelihood of future interaction motivates online communicators to develop a relationship

  • chronemics

    • study of people’s systematic handling of time in their interaction with others

    • basically don’t reply too slow

HYPERPERSONAL PERSPECTIVE: CLOSER ONLINE THAN IN PERSON:

  • selective self presentation

  • asynchronous channels facilitate more

  • over-attribution of similarity: “people who do things like that are like that” (receiver needs to believe that the information is accurate)

  • reminder: theory is focused on relationship development, not maintaining them

MEDIA MULTIPLEXITY THEORY (socio-psychological)

  • strong ties use more media to communicate with each other than do weak ties

  • communication content differs by tie strength rather than by medium

  • changes in media availability most strongly influence the quality of weak ties

  • which media we use for which ties depends in part on group norms

  • international students and faculty may find such findings highly relevant

TIE STRENGTH: degree of connection with people

Strong tie - a relationship involving a lagre investment of time and emotional energy, such as a very close friend

Weak tie - a relationship involving a small investment of time and emotional energy, such as acquaintance

  • is one better than the other?

    • Not really, weak ties are especially good if we want to network

    • Bridging ties - weak tie relationships that enable information and resources to pass between groups of people

5 Propositions of MMT

  1. tie strength is positively associated with media multiplexity

  2. communication content differs by tie strength rather than by medium

  3. tie strength and media use cause one another over time

  4. changes in the media landscape particularly influence weak ties

  5. groups have hierarchies of media use expectations

    1. group norms that guide which media is used more than others based on your ties (how close you are to the person)

Wrap Up:

  • MMT is NOT saying that you will not miss talking to your loved ones in person if you are physically apart

  • it IS saying that your strong ties will remain strong: you will find ways to communicate and maintain your relationships with each other

  • relationship maintenance with weak ties, however will be more challenging

TURKLE (Rebuttal)

  • she claims that face to face conversation cannot be replaced and that even if you have strong ties, it will get weaker over time

  • when you take away F2F (face to face) you take away intimacy and empathy

POST DISCUSSION OVERVIEW: What Class Thought

  • SIP (Development)

    • CMC today is just..

    • SOME NV cues are back, SIP?

  • some platforms better than others for developing intimate relationships

  • not as INTIMATE AS in-person though

MMT (Maintenance in Relations)

  • Turkle’s view seemed to have many sympathizers (some thought it might be too extreme)

  • family: norm or exception?

  • no. of channels and tie strength?