5- Staying in touch with a cousin

I have stayed in touch with a cousin who has moved all over the country in recent years via mediated communication, most specifically instant-messenger. I have not spent time with this cousin in several years, so we have been keeping up a friendly relationship primarily by communicating online. Three of McKenna's relationship facilitation factors that have played a role in our online exchanges are "Getting the Goods", interjectional control, and connecting to similar others.

"Getting the Goods" is basically a stalker-type method of learning about a person, via blogs, Google, facebook, etc., before really communicating or meeting that person. My cousin writes a blog online, and I read it to keep up-to date with what she is doing with her life. I also occasionally check her facebook site. I'm sure she checks mine as well. This give us both methods to find "common ground" things to talk about which is a basis for connecting to similar others. We want to find things we have in common in order to make conversations easy, free-flowing, and not awkward. This way we keep things friendly and continue to have a friendly relationship. It is easier to stay in touch with someone who has similar intrests, so finding common intrests is one of the main ways we try to keep our friendship in tact. Of course sometimes we talk about problems, but we like to focus on fun topics such as movie and music interests.

These interests are easily updated on facebook also, which is another way of "getting the goods". Using facebook also provides us with interactional control. We both have an idea of who is reading our facebook profiles on a regular basis and update interests and profile aspects that we believe those specific others will care about and are likely to respond to. This is a form of selective-self presentation because we are chosing what we want others to see about us. Interactional control also suggests we apply media richness theory and talk online because the nature of our conversations is often unambiguous. So, even without seeing eachother in person to hang-out, or even talking on the phone much, we gain a general sense of what eachother is doing and is currently interested in. Thus, the three features help open up the pathways for conversation, helps us stay in touch, and facilitate a friendly relationship.

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