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From Family to Friend: Family Communication Patterns and the Impact on Young Adults' Family Interaction via Facebook

Author

Supreet Mann, University of the Pacific

Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Department

Communication

First Advisor

Qingwen Dong

First Committee Member

Teresa Bergman

Second Committee Member

Paul Turpin

Abstract

In recent years there has been a marked shift from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication. This shift has also led to changes in the way families communicate as, more often than ever, social media sites are becoming a primary means of communication for a number of groups. The relationship between family communication patterns and offline interaction has long been studied. However, there is a marked scarcity in research examining the relationship between family communication patterns and online interaction. Data collected from a group-administered survey of 246 undergraduate students was used to examine eleven hypotheses related to family communication patterns, self-esteem, social media use, and online/offline family interaction. Family communication patterns were labeled as either high conversation-orientation or high conformity-orientation. Existing research suggests that these communication patterns are inversely related and a correlation analysis in this study supports this notion. The results indicate that there is a positive correlation between high conversation-orientation families and both online and offline family interaction as well as measures of self-esteem. Additionally, the results indicate that there is a negative correlation between high conformity-orientation families and offline family interaction. No significant correlations were found between high conformity-orientation families and either self-esteem or online family interaction. Future research should consider motivations behind actions as this may significantly impact how respondents view and evaluate their interaction patterns.

Pages

66

ISBN

9781339784458

Recommended Citation

Mann, Supreet. (2016). From Family to Friend: Family Communication Patterns and the Impact on Young Adults' Family Interaction via Facebook. University of the Pacific, Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/196

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.