Modeling Everyday Talk: Differences Across Communication Media and Sex Composition of Friendship Dyads

• In Event: Relationship Maintenance Across Communication Media

Abstract

This manuscript advances a revised instrument and statistical technique for measuring everyday talk frequency, using multitrait/multimethod decomposition to separate content-specific and medium-specific sources of variance. Results find that cross-sex friends enact everyday talk behavior less frequently than do same-sex friends when communicating face-to-face and via telephone but that these differences do not emerge in online contexts. Furthermore, trait-like online communication motivations further account for everyday talk frequency across specific media.

Authors

• Andrew Ledbetter, Ohio University

• Melissa Broeckelman-Post, Ohio University

• Adam M. Krawsczyn, University of Maryland