Invisible Interactions: What Latent Social Interaction Can Tell Us about Social Relationships in Social Network Sites

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Abstract

A deep understanding of user social interaction in social network sites (SNSs) can provide important insights into questions of human social and relational behavior, as well as shape the design of new social platforms and applications. Recent studies have shown that a majority of user interactions on SNSs are latent interactions—passive actions such as profile browsing that cannot be observed directly by traditional research methods. This chapter presents a new technique to capture natural latent social interaction in Renren, the most popular SNS in China. As such, it offers a better understanding of both visible (e.g., comments and wall posts) and latent (e.g., passive profile browsing) user social interactions in SNSs than has been possible to date. We show that latent interactions are much more prevalent and frequent than visible interactions, are somewhat nonreciprocal in nature, and that visits by non-friends make up a significant portion of profile views. Our results augment earlier findings on such concepts as lurking and interpersonal electronic surveillance, and in some cases, shed new light on these phenomena.