Paper Info
Title
Help is on the way: patterns of responses to resource requests on facebook
Abstract
Research suggests that social network sites can support social capital exchanges, which are often triggered by requests for assistance, such as seeking recommendations or asking for favors. Responsiveness to these requests for help is important to study because these interactions have the potential to affect users' overall satisfaction with the experience of using SNSs, signal social grooming functions that are an essential part of relationship maintenance, and affect social capital processes. In this paper, we study a corpus of public status updates posted to Facebook (N=7,466) in order to identify the pattern of responses to status updates that attempt to mobilize resources from the poster's Facebook network. Findings suggest that mobilization requests are treated differently than other kinds of posts; posts that attempt to mobilize help receive more comments than non-mobilization attempts. Additionally, responses occur more quickly and are shaped by the type of support requested (e.g., a recommendation vs. a favor). These findings help us better understand the role of help-seeking behaviors in the social capital conversion process as it unfolds via social media.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2531602.2531720
CSCW
Keywords
Field
DocType
resource request,social grooming function,social network site,social capital exchange,public status,social capital conversion process,facebook network,social media,essential part,non-mobilization attempt,social capital process,mobilization,social capital
Social psychology,Social capital,Internet privacy,Social network,Social media,Social search,Computer science,Knowledge management,Social grooming,Relationship maintenance
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
32
0.98
22
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Cliff Lampe13986342.89
Rebecca Gray228212.33
Andrew T. Fiore333347.84
Nicole Ellison46051509.80