TY - JOUR AU - Doodson, James AU - Gavin, Jeff AU - Joiner, Richard PY - 2021/08/03 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Getting Acquainted with Groups and Individuals: Information Seeking, Social Uncertainty and Social Network Sites JF - Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media JA - ICWSM VL - 7 IS - 1 SE - Full Papers DO - 10.1609/icwsm.v7i1.14377 UR - https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/14377 SP - 138-144 AB - <p> This study examined whether the relationship between information-seeking and social uncertainty differed when information was sought about a specific individual (e.g. a new housemate) or a group (e.g. a group of new housemates). An online experiment recruited 488 first-year undergraduates in the weeks immediately before starting a new university. Four information-seeking strategies (Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon &amp; Sunnafrank, 2002) successfully modeled how students sought information about each other using Social Network Sites. Whereas an interactive strategy predicted lower social uncertainty about individuals than groups, a passive strategy predicted higher social uncertainty for indi- viduals and lower social uncertainty for groups. Findings are discussed in the context of impression formation, specif- ically Entitativity (Hamilton &amp; Sherman, 1995). </p> ER -