Purpose

Social networking sites (SNSs) offer people the possibility of maintaining larger networks of social ties, which also entails more complex relationship maintenance across multiple platforms. Whom to “friend” and via which platform can involve complex deliberations. This study investigates the relationships between users' perceived friending affordances of five popular SNSs (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn) and their friending behaviors concerning strong ties, weak ties (existing and latent ties) and parasocial ties.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey using Qualtrics was provided to participants (N = 626) through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The survey asked their SNS use and their friending behaviors with different ties on each of the sites.

Findings

Users' friending decisions are dependent on an interplay of socio-technical affordances of each SNS and specific needs for the ties. The authors found that the affordances of bridging social capital and enjoyment are aligned with friending weak and parasocial ties, respectively. The affordances of bonding social capital were not valued to friend strong ties.

Originality/value

The study extends the affordance and social capital literature by assessing users' perceived, contextualized SNS affordances in relation to actual communication behaviors in friending different social ties. This approach provides contextualized insights to friending decisions and practices on SNSs.

中文翻译：

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建立联系和建立联系：调查多个社交网站之间的交往习惯

目的

社交网站（SNS）为人们提供了维持更大的社交联系网络的可能性，这也需要跨多个平台维护更复杂的关系。与谁“交朋友”以及通过哪个平台进行复杂的讨论。这项研究调查了五种流行的SNS（Facebook，Twitter，Instagram，Snapchat和LinkedIn）的用户感知的友情提供与他们关于强关系，弱关系（现有和潜在关系）和超社会关系的友谊行为之间的关系。

设计/方法/方法

 通过亚马逊的Mechanical Turk（MTurk）向参与者（N = 626）提供了使用Qualtrics进行的在线调查。该调查询问他们在每个站点上使用SNS的方式以及在不同联系方式下的友善行为。

发现

用户的友情决定取决于每个SNS的社会技术能力和联系的特定需求之间的相互作用。作者发现，弥合社会资本和享受的能力分别与友善的弱者和超社会的联系相吻合。结合社会资本的能力并没有被朋友牢固的联系所重视。

创意/价值

该研究通过评估用户在与不同社会纽带建立友好关系时与实际沟通行为相关的感知，情境化的SNS馈赠，扩展了馈赠和社会资本文献。这种方法为SNS的友好决策和实践提供了上下文相关的见解。