A quantitative analysis of in-group responses on converging and diverging on Facebook

Abstract EN

Billions of people use social networking sites, and they are an inseparable part of their daily lives.

Along with the development of technology, new communication behaviours have been acquired.

Facebook is the most prominent social network site around the globe nowadays.

Users join these groups on Facebook to be with members that belong to the same city, have the same major or share the same interests and this presents the opportunity to start communicating through posting, commenting, and replying to comments, and may accommodate their communicative behaviours, converging to gain approval, attractiveness, and integration, or diverging to signify uniqueness.

The purpose of this study is to examine the accommodation strategies between males and females in Mosuli social groups on Facebook, taking into consideration the various sociolinguistic variables that affect communication in CMC.

A self-designed questionnaire as a data collection method has been used to gain more insights from users themselves.

The study employed a quantitative method in its analysis.

The data were analysed by using the communication accommodation theory, SPSS program and content analysis was employed as a tool to analyse the data since it is text-based.

The results of the study reveal primarily that there are different motives to convergence and divergence in Mosuli social groups.

The content of the post proved to be the dominant variable in accommodation in online communication since it provokes the Facebook user whether to converge or diverge.