Date of Award

Spring 2022

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Advisor(s)

Jie Ren

Abstract

COVID-19 safety protocols over the past two years moved nearly the entirety of communication online and created a single channel through which individuals could interact with their network: social media. In 2018, Huang, Cheng, Huang, and Teng used relational cohesion theory and five-factor personality theory to develop a framework to predict the personality types that develop strong social networks, finding that openness and agreeableness were positively related to factors of relational cohesion (Huang et al., 2018). I extended their research into the space of COVID-19 network experiences given the reliance on social media, with a lens towards online vs. in-person friendship origins and mental health. Data from a sample of 301 users of social networking sites was analyzed using structural equation modeling. I find that extraversion is positively related to exchange frequency. Relational cohesion is positively related to seven aspects of online relationships: relational depth, breadth, code change, predictability, commitment, interdependence, and network convergence. Extraversion was positively correlated with exchange frequency for relationships that began in-person; measures of online relationships were more strongly correlated with relational cohesion for relationships that began online. For those whose mental health was unaffected by the pandemic, the correlations between relational cohesion and the factors of strong online social relationships are much higher than the correlations between the same factors for those whose mental health was affected by the pandemic.

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