The merging of audiences in social media and the variety of participation structures they present, including different audience sizes and interaction targets, pose questions about how people respond to these new communication situations. This research examined self-presentational and relational concerns through the analysis of language styles on Facebook. The authors collected a corpus of status updates, wall posts, and private messages from 79 participants. These messages varied in certain characteristics of language style, revealing differences in underlying self-presentational and relational concerns based on the publicness and directedness of the interaction. Positive emotion words correlated with self-reported self-presentational concerns in status updates, suggesting a strategic use of sharing positive emotions in public and nondirected communication via status updates. Verbal immediacy correlated with partner familiarity in wall posts but not in private messages, suggesting that verbal immediacy cues serve as markers to differentiate between more and less familiar partners in public wall posts.

Unlike most social media, where automatic archiving of data is the default, Snapchat defaults to ephemerality: deleting content shortly after it is viewed by a receiver. Interviews with 25 Snapchat users show that ephemerality plays a key role in shaping their practices. Along with friend-adding features that facilitate a network of mostly close relations, default deletion affords everyday, mundane talk and reduces self-consciousness while encouraging playful interaction. Further, although receivers can save content through screenshots, senders are notified; this selective saving with notification supports complex information norms that preserve the feel of ephemeral communication while supporting the capture of meaningful content. This dance of giving and taking, sharing and showing, and agency for both senders and receivers provides the basis for a rich design space of mechanisms, levels, and domains for ephemerality.

Social network sites (SNS) are a novel social environment for college students with psychological distress to connect with their peers, but the nature and effects of these interactions are not well understood. This study reports findings from a Facebook study among 238 college students reporting nonspecific psychological distress using the K-6 scale. Behavioral data included Facebook status updates containing affect words written by participants within the past 60 days and the number of responses (comments and likes) each update received. The updates were also coded for depression symptoms. Self-report data included participants' self-presentational concerns, the affective valence of each post, effects of responses on mood, and satisfaction with the responses to and outcome of each status update. Higher psychological distress was associated with displaying depression language on Facebook, with higher self-presentational concerns, and with less satisfaction with audiences' responses and less overall satisfaction with the outcome of the interaction. These results offer a unique glimpse into the social world of college students with psychological distress through their everyday use of Facebook, and how the interplay of this novel environment and students' mental health impacts their social behaviors and interaction meaning-making on Facebook.