TY - JOUR
T1 - Teenagers' Use of MSN Features, Discussion Topics, and Online Friendship Development
T2 - The Impact of Media Richness and Communication Control
AU - Sheer, Vivian C.
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2011/1
Y1 - 2011/1
N2 - With a sample of 248 Hong Kong adolescents, this study probed the impact of media richness and communication control on teenagers' use of MSN® for online friendship development. Both media richness and communication control contributed to MSN's overall functionality and teenagers' self-presentation and friendship development. Media richness positively influenced both social and task communications and shortened the time needed to turn a stranger to friend, whereas communication control showed a positive relationship to social friendship communication. Rich features, such as webcam and MSN Spaces, facilitated the increase of acquaintances, new friends, opposite-sex friends, and total number of friends, whereas messaging helped build close friendships. Overall, media richness and communication control appeared to be valid constructs in explaining teenagers' MSN feature use and online friendship development.
AB - With a sample of 248 Hong Kong adolescents, this study probed the impact of media richness and communication control on teenagers' use of MSN® for online friendship development. Both media richness and communication control contributed to MSN's overall functionality and teenagers' self-presentation and friendship development. Media richness positively influenced both social and task communications and shortened the time needed to turn a stranger to friend, whereas communication control showed a positive relationship to social friendship communication. Rich features, such as webcam and MSN Spaces, facilitated the increase of acquaintances, new friends, opposite-sex friends, and total number of friends, whereas messaging helped build close friendships. Overall, media richness and communication control appeared to be valid constructs in explaining teenagers' MSN feature use and online friendship development.
KW - Communication control
KW - Friendship development
KW - Instant messenger
KW - Interpersonal communication
KW - Media richness
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79551707165&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/01463373.2010.525702
DO - 10.1080/01463373.2010.525702
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:79551707165
SN - 0146-3373
VL - 59
SP - 82
EP - 103
JO - Communication Quarterly
JF - Communication Quarterly
IS - 1
ER -