Thesis Title: Subtitle

Quality and Quantity: Distinguishing Between Social Relationships Online

In popular as well and academic discourse there remains persistent concerns that new technologies of mediation such as social network sites dismiss our capacity for affective social relationships like friendship. Some scholars like Turkle argue that we have been driven online to live out our relationships because our offline lives are so individualised that they serve to isolate us from each other. However, friendship and technology do not exist in a zero-sum game. Just because we are using technology more to communicate with our friends, does not mean we see them less. In fact some research (e.g. Hampton and Wellman 2003) indicates that there is a positive correlation between those we

communicate with mostly online and who we connect with mostly offline. Those who we communicate with the most tend to be the ones we see the most as well.
However, the increasing ubiquity of technologies has posed a series of questions concerning how technology might structure these relationships. Technologies create spaces to ‘hang out’ (Rheingold 2000; boyd 2007; Peel et al. 2012) and help facilitate some of the activities that friendship engages in. In fact, mobile phones have become an increasingly central part of managing friendships (Licoppe 2004; Green and Singleton 2009) as they are a central space in which both the planning and debriefing of friendship related activities takes place (Peel et al. 2012). Increasing geographical mobility means that people have more opportunities than ever to make a diverse network of friendships with technology giving space for these friendships to be maintained.

The mediation of friendship via various technologies is not a new phenomenon. By drawing on historical data I argue that the mediation of friendship via Facebook can be understood as a continuation of pre-existing patterns of mediation. As Mews and Chiavaroli (2009) highlight letter writing as an important act of solace and substance for friends who were separate by distance. This research found that Facebook played a similar role for participants, who used Facebook as a way to keep in touch with those they were unable to meet with in person. Technology is important to friendship in two aspects then. Not only does it enable the mediated communication which sustains geographically distant friends but is also creates space for affective friendships to develop the first instance. As detailed by Silver (1990) commercial society, facilitated by the technological developments of modernity provided a space for affective friendships to flourish free from instrumental concerns. Consequently, technology has always been connected to the development and continuation of friendships. Facebook represents a continuation, not a break from, earlier historical developments.

Contrary to the assertion that we are no longer able to grasp whom our real friends are, the participants in this research are able to distinguish between the affective friendships and other forms of social relationships, including less close friends. Interestingly, when speaking about friendship, participants stated that for someone to be considered a friend, shared offline experiences as well as an affective bond needed to be present. Although most friendships have an aspect of instrumentality, the affective, emotional bond was emphasised by participants over any more instrumental functions that the relationship might have. Emphasising the affective nature of friendship is in keeping with contemporary

understanding of friendships. In addition to this the sharing of emotional life, as with Aristotle’s virtue friendship, is also central to participants’ ideas about friendship. Although sharing one’s problems on Facebook was not done, or deemed to be inappropriate participants emphasises that with friends one should be able to share both happiness and problems. Sharing of problems was linked to trust and self-sacrifice as other key components of friendships, which again echoes, classical ideals about virtuous friendships that help the moral growth of those involved.

While Caine’s (2012) work Friendship: A history presents a relatively tidy progression in ideals and practices of friendship, what was articulated by the participants in this research, has a historical mishmash of ideas about what friendship is, and what good friends should be. In attempting to articulate what friendship is as a social relation in late modernity, participants drew on a variety of historical ideas. Friendship in late modernity borrows from a classical understanding of friendship, in that the best types of friendship include some moral edification, including self-sacrifice and shared troubles. This also echoes Plutarch’s ideas about friendships in which friends have a moral responsibility to assist the other person in self-development. This idea is quite distinct from the behaviour that generally occurs on Facebook, which focuses on the pleasant aspect of friendships, not the difficult aspects. The fact that participants distinguish between their understanding of friendship and the Facebook environment demonstrate the complex dialectical relationship between technology and human relationships. The fact that participants’ understandings of friendship have not been dramatically reordered in relation to new technology like Facebook speaks to this complexity. If technology did impact society in a linear way, we would expect to see some reordering of ideals and discourses around friendship. Instead, the participant in this research drew on stable and persistent definitions of friendships when speaking about these relationships.

As previously discussed, mobility is now a largely accepted part of the life course. Moving away from family and friends requires that these relationships be mediated if they are to be sustained. However, the mediation of relationships via Facebook has caused some anxiety. Among participants in this research, Facebook represented a way of enriching relationships that might otherwise be difficult to sustain. Facebook, particularly for those that might be lax with personal communication represents a way to maintain friendships through the spatial proximity that Facebook offers. Being able to see that someone else is online at the same time offers a way to ‘bump into’ them, as one might on a street or

campus. Despite this, bumping into someone on Facebook is not enough to sustain a friendship. Sustaining a friendship also a required intentional action. Although Facebook has changed some of the conditions under which friendship can be maintained, people still seem to have very distinct ideas about what friendship is that has not been clouded by Facebook’s universal application of the word ‘friend’ to all social relationships. While Facebook may be making visible some aspects of our friendships that were previously hidden, technology has not caused a drastic reorganisation of our ideas of friendship which have remained comparatively stable. Unlike romantic relationships which have arguable changed most in the face of new technology (Gershon 2010), friendships have not. The flexibility of friendship means that it is more able to accommodate and incorporate the increased visibility that Facebook creates.