Chapter 2. Literature Review
2.6 Moderating Role of Selective Avoidance on SNS
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2.6 Moderating Role of Selective Avoidance on SNS
Social media has transformed our online environment with an increased likelihood of heterogeneous information exposure and opinion expression with inconsistent attitudinal others (Kim, 2011; Messing & Westwood, 2014). Yet, people tend to prefer attitude-reinforcing information over attitude-challenging ones to eliminate cognitive dissonance (Garrett, 2009a; Knobloch-Westerwick & Meng, 2009, 2011). Social media characteristics strengthens homogeneous exposure by allowing users to hide posts and comment that they are not in favor of, unfollowing, unfriending, and blocking other accounts. Furthermore, such behaviors reference social media algorithms to filter content based on individuals’ preferences, resulting in an echo chamber (Bakshy, Messing, & Adamic, 2015; John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015).
According to the literature review, selective avoidance on social media is known as actively removing the present and future exposure to dissonance by cutting off connections with dissenting information. Researchers have also conceptualized selective avoidance as “shielding oneself from dissonant views by sorting out unwanted information and breaking social ties that transmit dissimilar information (Zhu, Skoric,
& Shen, 2016). Unfriending, blocking, or hiding posts are classified as selective avoidance behaviors. People who have extreme attitudes or political engagement are more likely to conduct selective avoidance (John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015; Skoric, 2015). Additionally, individuals that serve as weak social ties with heterogeneous information and perspective are the primary target of those disconnecting behaviors (Rainie & Smith, 2012; Sibona, 2014). Approximately 95 % of people’s Facebook connections are formed as casual friends, which could be considered weak ties (Stutzman & Kramer-Duffield, 2010).
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In general, people are prone to build up friendships with those who share certain similarities, including age, ethnicity, religion, education, occupation, characteristics, and so forth (McPherson et al., 2001). Apart from family members, the largest portion of friendships is established through organizational structure. Schools, work, and geographic location have been proposed as the major elements to form a relationship.
They may also be factors in how dyadic connections are created on SNSs (McPherson et al., 2001; Sibona, 2014). Boyd and Ellison (2007) categorized thirteen common reasons for sending and accepting friend requests on SNSs. For instance, when the dyad is actual friends, acquaintances, or have similar interests or values, it is easy to form the online connection. Nevertheless, online friendships established on SNSs can be fluid and delicate, where the connections can be dissolved with a click of a bottom (Sibona, 2014).
The default function of “unfriend” on SNSs enables users to end a relationship with the other person without any permission. Moreover, the unfriended person will not even receive notifications in most cases (Sibona, 2014). Hence, “unfriending” has become a widely-used feature of SNSs. According to Pew Internet, it has revealed that 63% of users unfriended at least one member of their online social networks in 2011 (Madden & Smith, 2012). Drawing from a survey in 2018, 44% of teenagers unfriend or unfollow people on social media sometimes, with 14% who do it quite often.
Conversely, there are still young people who rarely (39%) or never (14%) unfriend or unfollow people on social media. The word “unfriend” was defined as “removing someone as a ‘friend’ on social networking sites” by the New Oxford American Dictionary for the word of 2009. Unfriending on social networking sites such as Facebook is different from ending a friendship in the real world. Sibona (2014) defined unfriending on Facebook as a conscious behavior by an individual to end the
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bidirectional relationship and explained it “manifests itself through the removal of a link between the dyad.” The other acts of selective avoidance on Facebook refer to
“unfollowing” or “hiding,” by which one filters out another without terminating their Facebook friendship. Both practices remove certain content from a user’s News Feed (the flow of stories Facebook presents to its users). Once they have been unfriended or hidden, users will no longer receive any notifications from Facebook (John & Gvirsman, 2015).
Regarding the cause of unfriending on Facebook, Sibona and Walczak (2011) have discovered four common online reasons and two offline reasons. The formers were frequent or unimportant posts, different attitudes or opinions (politics and religion), inappropriate posts, and daily life posts that urge people to unfriend others. In comparison, the two offline causes included disliked behavior and changes in the relationship. The finding indicated that 55% of people had unfriended the others for their online posting behavior, 28% due to the offline factors, and 17% unsure. An empirical study by Rainie and Smith (2012) reported that when users encounter disagreement on social media, between 18% and 26% of American SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden the contacts. Only 9% of American SNS users unfriended or hid someone’s post because of political disagreements in their entire usage histories. Whereas most of the others (66%) usually ignore the posts. Drawing from the findings in an Asian context, 15.6% of respondents hide others’ posts or unfriend people with political disagreements during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (Zhu, Skoric, & Shen, 2016). In a similar vein, the Pew research center (2018) investigated the reasons that teens at least sometimes unfriend or unfollow people on social media. The survey showed that 54% of teens have disconnected from someone who posted too often or irrelevant. A smaller percentage of teens have unfollowed
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others because they act differently online than in person (43%) or posting political views they disagree with (22%). A few months before the 2018 referendum in Taiwan, individuals and groups expressed their incongruent attitudes on controversial social issues on SNSs, which led to confrontation and arguments. Some users debated with non-likeminded acquaintances on SNSs, while some even blocked contact with dissimilar others. It is in line with the previous research that people disconnected from those who hold dissimilar attitudes.
Disconnecting disagreements on Facebook filter out diverse opinions and gradually lead to a homogeneous network. If individuals have been in a politically homogeneous SNS, they were more likely to unfriend people with inconsistent attitudes and fortify echo chambers (Jamieson & Cappella, 2008). It can also be explained by Social Identity Theory (SIT), assuming that individuals maximize differences between the group they psychologically belong to and the opposition (Yoo, Ng & Johnson, 2018).
Unfriending people holding different attitudes will reduce exposure to conflicting information, definitizing people’s inherent attitudes on political issues (John &
Gvirsman, 2015; Yoo, Ng & Johnson, 2018). As individuals increasingly performed selective avoidance, it is likely to facilitate their attitude certainty (Mutz, 2006; Sunstein, 2009; Stroud, 2010).
Prior studies regarding friendship dissolution were largely based on intimate relationships such as close friends or romantic partners (McPherson et al., 2001).
Nonetheless, research that delves into digital selective avoidance remains scant so far (Light, 2014; Light & Cassidy, 2014). Unfriending on Facebook is due to different reasons mentioned above, while it may simply happen to avoid context collapse triggered by the ubiquity of information access on SNSs (Sibona, 2014). Unfriending
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or hiding posts from others who stress dissimilar attitudes are likely to filter out heterogeneous exposure and cross-cutting discussion on SNS. The reduction of heterogeneous information exposure will minimize the network heterogeneity and lessen the opportunity for cross-cutting discussion. Furthermore, the decrease of heterogeneous information exposure will lead to selective exposure for individuals, strengthening their attitude towards certain incidents. In sum, selective avoidance on SNSs, conceptualizing as unfriending and hiding posts or comment, is susceptible to moderate the effect of heterogeneous information exposure and cross-cutting discussion on attitude certainty. Hence, the hypotheses were raised as below:
H2. Selective avoidance on SNS moderates the mediating effects of heterogeneous discussion in the relationship between heterogeneous information exposure and attitude certainty.
H3. Selective avoidance on SNS moderates the relationship between heterogeneous information exposure and individuals’ attitude certainty.