First Advisor

Erin Spottswood

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Communication Studies and University Honors

Department

Communication

Subjects

Electronic surveillance -- Social aspects, Social phobia, Online social networks -- Psychological aspects, Social interaction, Facebook (Electronic resource)

DOI

10.15760/honors.445

Abstract

The advent of social media has created a new type of information seeking to reduce uncertainty: extractive information seeking, which refers to when people seek information about their target by perusing their online social media profiles. The social compensation hypothesis suggests that those who suffer from social anxiety in face-to-face contexts might use a computer-mediated communication context (such as Facebook) to mitigate their face-to-face anxiety. The goal of this study is to find a relationship between general social anxiety (GSA) and interpersonal electronic surveillance (IES), a type of extractive information seeking. Results from this study indicate that while there is a positive relationship between general social anxiety and extractive information seeking, the relationship was not statistically significant. Due to finding non-significant results, implications for future research should follow up on the possibility that extractive information seeking has become normative to the point that social anxiety no longer mediates extractive information seeking.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/20450

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