Browsing by Subject "Intimacy"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Wall of me: facebook self-disclosure and partner responsiveness resulting in confirmation or violation of expectations and consequences for intimacy and relationships.
    (2011-11) Freeman, Linda Kramer
    In a study of self-disclosure and intimacy on Facebook, research in a survey of 274 undergraduates found interaction processes generally conformed to those found in face-to-face interactions. However, four findings from this study, in particular, elaborate how self-disclosure operates in a Facebook social media context. First, as in the face-to-face context, self-disclosure and partner disclosure were directly related to greater feelings of intimacy. But in contrast to face-to-face communication, in a test of the interpersonal process model of intimacy (Reis & Shaver, 1988), perceived partner responsiveness fully mediated the effect of self-disclosure on intimacy for a self-disclosure Facebook status update. Second, those who self-disclose on Facebook tend to expect and receive positive responses from Facebook friends, and self-disclosers generally classify this positive feedback as an expression of emotionally supportive caring, respect, and/or liking. Third, when participants receive unexpected responses to status updates, these surprise responses (expectancy violations) are generally viewed as positive. Expectancy violations to a self-disclosure status update on Facebook were significantly positively correlated with perceived partner responsiveness and greater change in intimacy toward those who responded unexpectedly. Fourth, in contrast to face-to-face communication, no gender differences were found in self-disclosure behavior, closeness with Facebook partners, or change in intimacy on Facebook as a result of a self-disclosure status update. Additionally, associations between attachment, frequent Facebook participation, relationship type, self-monitoring, and intimacy in Facebook interactions involving participant self-disclosures and responses from Facebook friends resulted in weak or inconsistent findings. The survey also explored participants' motivations for posting a status update, finding that sharing news, posting humorous information, and seeking emotional support were common reasons to post a status update. Motivations for responding to someone else's status update included sharing close feelings and humor.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    zAmya Theater Project: toward an intimacy of social change.
    (2010-06) Chaves, Rachel
    This dissertation addresses efficacy in activist, community-based theater (CBT). It relies primarily on my ethnographic research with zAmya Theater Project, a community-based theater in Minneapolis, MN that makes plays with and about people who have experienced homelessness. My time with zAmya has led me to develop a theory of and language for efficacy in community-based theater based not on the desire for large-scale or systemic social change, but upon the possibility of intensely local instances of transformation in interpersonal encounters, or what I call an intimacy of social change. I draw my definition of intimacy from Buddhist philosophy, where it denotes a radical presencing, or a closeness to the present moment of lived experience without grasping or becoming averse to that experience. This theory of efficacy is not intended to replace the call for systemic change other CBT practitioner-scholars (such as Augusto Boal) articulate, but rather to enrich that mode of praxis. I look at three sites within zAmya's rehearsal and performance process where this kind of efficacy exists (or has the possibility to exist in other CBTs). These sites are: 1) the movement of bodies through theatrical space and the way that movement produces freedom or oppression, 2) the way affect and emotion are produced in rehearsals and performances, and the way they move in circuits through the room or are prevented from doing so, and 3) the narrative act, which includes an analysis of the narrators and the way they negotiate the power contained within the act of storytelling. I contend that when intimacy, or radical presencing, occurs in any of these three sites, a moment of efficacy has occurred, and I propose that this model of efficacy be included in discussions about the impact of activist theater.