A study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships identified 10 unwritten rules of communication on Facebook.
Erin Bryant and Jennifer Marmo of the Arizona State University conducted the study in two stages. They asked 44 aged 19 to 24 students, with an average of 200 Facebook friends what they thought were the rules in network communications.
36 large and small rules have emerged, such as check images to ensure they are flattering and wish happy birthday.
These rules were then subjected to another 800 students who were randomly assigned to think of a close friend, a relative or friend least know who they were friends on Facebook. They were asked whether, in their opinion, each of the 36 rules applied to that person.
The following 10 rules were considered important:
- Reply: if a friend or acquaintance publish on your wall, he (she) expects a response.
- Be respectful: Do not post content disrespectful about a friend on Facebook.
- Do not post content that could have a negative impact on a friend.
- Do not republish content that a friend has deleted his wall.
- True friends should be contacted by other means in addition to Facebook.
- Introduce yourself honestly and positively to Facebook friends.
- Do not be dependent on the site and use the point where it interferes with work or school.
- Do not post information that a friend or acquaintance could be used against you later.
- Use the same common sense as offline when interacting on Facebook.
- Consider how the employer to a friend or a potential employer could receive a message before it is posted on the wall that friend.
Other findings are:
- Plus a friend is near, more communication channels are open to him. Knowledge should not use instant messaging, for example, and they are not necessarily welcome if they publish on a wall.
- Certain rules of maintaining relationships, such as wish happy birthday, were considered more important in terms of knowledge as friends. Probably because Facebook is only part of the communication between friends but can represent the totality of the relationship with knowledge.
- Some issues raised concern the demarcation between public and private spheres: several participants complained of finding too many publications on core knowledge statements in the news feed. It does not seem interesting to read the raw emotion of someone who was in one of your classes two years ago but you barely know. Or, problems can arise when jokes or pictures of a good evening is displayed publicly, alerting perhaps a friend of his exclusion.
- Only one category of rules that do not differ according to the type of relationships (acquaintances or friends): one concerning his own reputation. Participants indicated see not to publish content that can be used against them either to a friend or acquaintance.
Do you spend a lot of time on Facebok, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram? Then you should consider scheduling your posts, it will save you a lot of time each day, like having a personal assistant that does your work for you. You can easily do the social scheduling with Mass Planner it's really easy to use and you can do all the scheduling from the same platform, no need to subscribe to several other services.