Ambient awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks

Ambient awareness refers to the awareness social media users develop of their online network in result of being constantly exposed to social information, such as microblogging updates. Although each individual bit of information can seem like random noise, their incessant reception can amass to a co...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Levordashka, Ana, Utz, Sonja
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Pergamon 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4853799/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27375343
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.037
_version_ 1782430129025187840
author Levordashka, Ana
Utz, Sonja
author_facet Levordashka, Ana
Utz, Sonja
author_sort Levordashka, Ana
collection PubMed
description Ambient awareness refers to the awareness social media users develop of their online network in result of being constantly exposed to social information, such as microblogging updates. Although each individual bit of information can seem like random noise, their incessant reception can amass to a coherent representation of social others. Despite its growing popularity and important implications for social media research, ambient awareness on public social media has not been studied empirically. We provide evidence for the occurrence of ambient awareness and examine key questions related to its content and functions. A diverse sample of participants reported experiencing awareness, both as a general feeling towards their network as a whole, and as knowledge of individual members of the network, whom they had not met in real life. Our results indicate that ambient awareness can develop peripherally, from fragmented information and in the relative absence of extensive one-to-one communication. We report the effects of demographics, media use, and network variables and discuss the implications of ambient awareness for relational and informational processes online.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4853799
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher Pergamon
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-48537992016-07-01 Ambient awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks Levordashka, Ana Utz, Sonja Comput Human Behav Full Length Article Ambient awareness refers to the awareness social media users develop of their online network in result of being constantly exposed to social information, such as microblogging updates. Although each individual bit of information can seem like random noise, their incessant reception can amass to a coherent representation of social others. Despite its growing popularity and important implications for social media research, ambient awareness on public social media has not been studied empirically. We provide evidence for the occurrence of ambient awareness and examine key questions related to its content and functions. A diverse sample of participants reported experiencing awareness, both as a general feeling towards their network as a whole, and as knowledge of individual members of the network, whom they had not met in real life. Our results indicate that ambient awareness can develop peripherally, from fragmented information and in the relative absence of extensive one-to-one communication. We report the effects of demographics, media use, and network variables and discuss the implications of ambient awareness for relational and informational processes online. Pergamon 2016-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4853799/ /pubmed/27375343 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.037 Text en © 2016 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Full Length Article
Levordashka, Ana
Utz, Sonja
Ambient awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks
title Ambient awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks
title_full Ambient awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks
title_fullStr Ambient awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks
title_full_unstemmed Ambient awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks
title_short Ambient awareness: From random noise to digital closeness in online social networks
title_sort ambient awareness: from random noise to digital closeness in online social networks
topic Full Length Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4853799/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27375343
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.037
work_keys_str_mv AT levordashkaana ambientawarenessfromrandomnoisetodigitalclosenessinonlinesocialnetworks
AT utzsonja ambientawarenessfromrandomnoisetodigitalclosenessinonlinesocialnetworks