Social Penetration by Social Media Usage - … Penetration by Social Media Usage A Case on...

Social Penetration by Social Media Usage A Case on Indonesian Women and Their Interaction with Online Foreign Partners

Yudi Perbawaningsih Communication Department

Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University Yogyakarta, Indonesia

[email protected]

GSTF Journal on Media & Communications (JMC)DOI: 10.5176/2335-6618_3.1.48Print ISSN: 2335-6618, E-periodical: 2335-6626 ; Volume 3, Issue 1; 2016 pp 39 - 46 © The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access by the GSTF.

39 | GSTF Journal on Media & Communications (JMC) Vol.3 No.1, August 2016

Abstract— Indonesia has a cultural value that women mustbe married. Therefore, women above 25 years and do notyet show signs for getting married will be the society’sgossip. To overcome the issues, parents usually help find amate for her daughter, known as "match" or "forcedmarriages" regardless she is willing or not. On the otherhand, women who looking for a mate through a datingagency are also considered as not good. In this condition,social media in Indonesia is very welcomed. Thedevelopment of interpersonal relationship processbecomes easier and faster.

Through conversation analysis the research showsthat the social media changes the way we communicateand build interpersonal relation. It also changes thecharacters and the quality of interpersonal relationships.In the context of intercultural communication, symbols ofcommunication are strongly bound by any culture, ratherthan inter-cultural relations based on conventional media.

Keywords-component; interpersonal communication,interpersonal relations, social media, Facebook, socialpenetration

I. INTRODUCTIONSince the invention of the Internet, communication andinformation technology, including the media, is growing veryfast. This has resulted in social change, including changes ininterpersonal communication, group, organizational and masscommunications. The number of people involved and thedistance are no longer a problem. Internet-basedcommunication media can perform its traditional functionswith more efficient, both in terms of cost, effort and time. Infact, the Internet-based media no longer requiressynchronization of time and place. These are indisputableadvantages which are owned by an Internet-based media thanconventional mass media.

In context of interpersonal communication, theweaknesses of traditionally interpersonal media such astelephone and conventional mail can be eliminated byInternet-based media, including social media, that have a lot ofadvantages, are: (1) low cost; (2) interactive ; (3) not limitedby place and time ; (4) conversation history can be restored;(5) can be used for both one to one communication and one to

many; (6) the process of building a relationship is relativelyvery easy; and able to overcome public anxiety as existed inface-to-face communication. It is the one reason of someIndonesian people using social media, such as Facebook (FB)and Twitter. FB users in Indonesia is growing fast from timeto time. In 2012 Indonesia is ranked number 4 for FB users inthe world with 42 million account in the world(Nasution,2012). In 2014 in Indonesia, there are about 65 million activeFB users, as many as 33 million active users per day(http://kominfo.go.id/) and inJanuary 2015 the number ofsocial media users in Indonesia is up to 26% of population(Digital, Social and Mobile Worldwide in 2015, January 2,2015). In addition to FB and Twitter, dating site is also a fairlypopular media to develop interpersonal relationships. Basedon study conducted by Stanford University, the internet hasbecome the second most common way for American couplesto meet, just after being introduced by friends (“You Had Me@LOL: Finding Your Soul Mate on Social Site, December 18,2012). In Indonesia, the number of online dating site and thepeople who view is getting increase.(http://www.inabuy.com/2012/07/10-situs-cari-jodoh-gratis-terbaik.html). The rapid growth of social media especiallydating sites can be caused by the a cultural reason that isIndonesia’s social values require women to marry. Womenwill be the gossip of society when in a certain age are stillsingle (not married). This is indicated by the labels attached towomen, such as: "old maid", "unsold virgin", "chronic singles","problematic women". This value pressures women with allsorts of efforts to find a partner. However, on the other hand,Indonesians are still not familiar with the marriage broker.Looking for a mate through marriage brokers is ashamed thing.as submitted Sugiono, as follows:

“Beberapa orang menolak bergabung dengan onlinedating takut dibilang depresi. Padahal banyak jugayang mendapat jodoh dari Facebook atau media sosiallain,” […] Orang Indonesia sangat sering berbagisegala macam tentang hal pribadi mereka sendiri danjuga berjual-beli di Internet, namun ketika berurusandengan mencari pasangan, mereka cenderungmenghindari situs-situs kencan.“ (“Situs Perjodohan

DOI 10.7603/s40874-016-0007-7

http://www.inabuy.com/2012/07/10-situs-cari-jodoh-gratis-terbaik.html



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‘Setipe’ Diluncurkan Secara Resmi”, 12 Desember2013)

In this context, social media and online dating site playa great role and very helpful. Using this media, women wholook for their mate can be hidden from public but can be veryopen to be viewed by other members of the online datingservice. Referring to the above description, it can beconcluded that Internet-based communication media have avery important role in interpersonal communication.

The article’s purpose is to explore a pattern of socialmedia usage by Indonesian female in building interpersonalrelationships with foreign male. This study is expected toprovide two important things on the relevance of socialpenetration theory in the context of interpersonalcommunication (1) which uses Internet-based interpersonalmedia, and (2) involve particitpants who have differentcultural backgrounds (Indonesian and Western). Referring tothe characteristics of Internet-based media, this study assumesthat there will be changes in the process of creating andmaintaining relationships, especially on some of theparticipants with different cultural backgrounds. Thus, socialpenetration theory was built in the era of face-to-facecommunication is no longer sufficient to explain thephenomenon of interpersonal communication era of Internet-based media.

Research is done by participative observations wherethe researchers (I and my colleague) collect the data from self-experiences associated with the process of buildinginterpersonal relationships using social media and Internet-based dating service. The study was conducted forapproximately one year while the participants of the study arethe researchers who interact with several men from othercountries, mostly from UK and USA. The research method isconversation analysis.

II. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

A. The Process of Interpersonal Relations DevelopmentInterpersonal relations, referring to the social

penetration theory, evolved through not intimate toward theintimate stage. At each stage is characterized by differentintensity of self disclosure (SD) both in breadth and depth oftopics. In the early stage is indicated by lower intensity of SD.The topics discussed are not too diverse and also not deep.The next stage the intensity of SD is high and the topic isvarious and deep. Because there is a clear indicator, thedevelopment of relationship can be predicted and identified.SD in one side is an important key to penetrate but in otherside, to depenetrate. It occurs because of the SD which is donenot at the right time, for example, SD is done too quickly orwithout careful leads to depenetration. (West and Turner, 2008;Griffin, 2007; Little John, 2005).

On the other hand, uncertainty reduction theory statesthat the decision made two strangers to continue ordiscontinue their interpersonal relationships, depending onseveral pra conditions, are: (1) when the other person has the

potential to reward or punish; (2) when the other personbehaves contrary to expectation; and (3) when a personexpects future interactions with another (West and Turner,2008: 175). Uncertainty reduction theory explains that highuncertainty about the verbal and non-verbal behavior of othersto drive to seek information about the other party. Moreuncertain, the higher of information seeking. Easier a personto predict the behavior of partner, more likely interpersonalrelationships to be built and maintained.

Those theories have the similar assumptions: (1)interpersonal relations are deliberately created, but withcertain conditions, (2) interpersonal relations graduallyprogress from superficial to intimate relations, called thepenetration and so do the depenetration, (3) interpersonalrelationship can go forward or backward depending on ourability to predict the expectation of verbal and non-verbalbehavior, thus can avoid violation or can adjust quickly whenit already occurred; and (4) the interpretation of verbal andnon-verbal symbols are culturally bias.

Several theories previously described are in contextof Western culture and focus on face-to-face communicationwhich allows physical interaction. Those theories assume thathumans are rational. It has implications on: (1) human wouldonly want to build and involve in interpersonal relationships ifonly profitable; (2) human is capable to predict the meaning ofverbal and non-verbal behavior, including predict thedevelopment of relationships; and (3) Western people alwaysdo a planned and intended behavior. While the characteristicsof face-to-face communication are (1) no delayed feedback, soit minimizes the possibility of misunderstanding; (2)coordination of meaning can be easier because eachparticipant can utilize all of their senses to capture the symbols;(3) two consequences of face-to-face communication bringsgreater possibilities in terms of achieving the communicationgoals.

B. Social Media in Interpersonal Relations ProcessSeveral research related to the role of social media in the

development of interpersonal relationships conclude that thepresence of social media changed the way we communicate. Astudy ("How Does Social Media Affect on InterpersonalCommunication", May 12, 2013) showed that (1) social mediahas changed the concept of "friend". The word “friend” inFacebook (FB), for example, does not necessarily mean ourrelationship with the intimate and close friends. However, it isrecognized there are some FB users do not regularly receive orrequest friendship from/to people who are not familiar with atall; (2) social media change the way of thinking about socialnetworking. Most users see a big number of FB friends but donot intend to deepen relations. The greater number of friends,the wider social networks and this has increased in popularity;(3) social media changed the way we show our existence andexpression to others and change the way people perceive orsee us. FB provides opportunities for users to show the datathemselves, and to whom the personal data submitted. In otherwords, social media allows managing se lf-disclosure, openabout what and to whom, wants to build a relationship; (4)


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social media can drive the formation of public support, (5)social media gives a person the ability to see the history (past)of somebody else, such as whom he is associated with, whathe talked about, without having to be involved directly at thesame time.

On other study, Paul Booth said, "There has been ashift in the way we communicate; rather than face-to-faceinteraction, we're tending to prefer mediated communication.We'd rather e-mail than meet; we'd rather text than talk on thephone." ("Social Media and Interpersonal Communication",May 2013). The presence of social media has changed the waywe communicate. People prefer doing mediatedcommunication, rather than face-to-face, people prefer to usetext (writing) rather than talking on the phone. Therefore,bonding relationship formed by using social media tend to beweak (weak ties). Further, he said that there are threeimportant issues related to the use of social media in buildinginterpersonal relationships: (1) people will credulity on theother side so that they are more open; (2) people are less likelyto build relationships in intensive way - "they tend range toexist in the status quo"; and (3) they tend to agree and tointeract with others who have the same perspective with them,therefore they do not get a diversity of perspectives. Thus,socially mediated interpersonal relationships are fragilebecause it does not quite have the experience in dealing withdifferences. In other words, social media become a mainstayin communication and interpersonal relationship building atthe present time. Social media has brought about importantchanges in the way of communicating the implications for thediversity of consequences, plus and minus. However, there isa study shows that the development of relationship based onsocial media usage is not different from the relationship whichdevelops by face to face communication. Social media can beused to increase predictability, self disclosure and trust and toreduced uncertainty which are important factors to create arelation. It means that the interpersonal communicationtheories is still relevant to be used to analyze the new contextof relationship. (“I’ll poke you. You’ll poke me!” Selfdisclosure, social attraction, predictability, and trust asimportant predictors of Facebook relationship.”, 2009)

III. RESEARCH FINDING

A. Pattern of Internet-based Media Usage“A” (an initial name) is a social media user but

categorized in "newcomers" whereas “B” (an initial name) is“old player” using social media since the media was invented.When compared with “B”, ”A” tends not very active in socialmedia because she only uses FB. While “B” uses all socialmedia such as twitter, FB, Path, Line, LinkedIn, Skype, Twooand Netlog. “A” thinks that FB has a fairly completecommunication facilities such as chat, photo and article upload,link and interaction/ communication with others.Meanwhile ”B” uses all social media to see the advantages ofone social media compared to others. However, the twowomen (A and B) are active and they like to use FB.

T

Therefore the following description focuses on the patterns ofFB usage.

he most important thing of using FB is an easinessto build relationships. FB itself has such facilities are “friendrequest”, “message inbox” and chat. Those facilities are usedto send and receive private messages which can be openedonly by its account owner. In this facility there are two parts,one is the “message inbox” and the other is "others". Messagesent by friends who have already been in friend list is locatedin this message inbox, but the message is sent by people notfrom friend list will fall in "others". Those are considered asspam so that the account owner is not given “alert" forincoming messages. Similar to “A”, “B” uses FB to makefriends. In addition, “B” uses FB because (1) to know currentsocial issues and (2) to interact with old friends. “A” and “B”were also more likely to use “friend request” menu to makefriends than “message inbox”.

In a friend seeking, “A” and “B” give more attentionto accept or reject friends than to request friend. The requestsgenerally come from colleagues from same and other workinstitutions, and students, where as friend request who arefrom "others" usually comes from people who are not infriend list. In A’s FB account, there are around 100 requests ,while “B” has about 363 request, mostly come from foreignmen, especially from the US and UK, aged 40 to 50 years,admitted widower with or without children. “A” and “B” arealso selective in accepting the friend request. Co-workers andstudents are preferred. But for A, this group is still selected,she only accepts friend requests which actually became friendsin the real world (not the virtual world). For “A”, virtualfriends are also friends in the real world. “A” does not acceptfriend requests from people who are totally unknown, but for acertain interest “A” will request a friend. For special cases,including for research, “A” and “B” accept friend requestfrom "others" menu. Until 2014, a virtual friend of “A” and“B” are both almost 1000 people, but not more than 10%were communicating intensively. The most forms ofinteraction is giving “like”, commenting on other’s posting,photos and statements. In the case of uploading photos andcomments or posts, “B” is more intensive than “A”. So ingeneral, the intensity of the using of social media by “B” ishigher than A.

B. Meaning of “Friend” in Social MediaThough a number of virtual friends are relatively

same as a real friend, for ”A”, the essence of virtual friendsand real friends is different. The concept of "friend" incyberspace or social media in particular is just a label that hasbeen created by the social media engine, it is given andautomatic. Once we click the “accept” or “confirm” button,our friend is added, even though we do not know one toanother, no contact and connection, no message exchange orconversation. While in a real world, friends are not that simple.Friend is indicated by a mutually deep conversation andhaving deep information about others. Similar to “A”, avirtual friend of “B” is not too much different from real worldfriends.


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T

C. Penetration Process of Virtual FriendAs described, almost foreign men who offer

friendship through social media is white male (Caucasian),generally claim to be from the USA and UK and opnly fewfrom Asia, Africa and Center East with more diverse both interms of age, and country. The interesting finding is thesestrange men began introductions in the same way that usingfirstly sweet and pleasant greeting, for example, "Hello mydear", "hello princess", "Hi my beautiful lady", "my sweetheart", or "hello angel". It was followed by admiration andpraise to “A” and “B” and then they closed their conversationwith their real purposes. The development of relations afterthe first conversation depends on the response given to thisfirst greeting, even if the response is only a very shortsentence, like, "hi, too" or "hello, I am fine". It is understoodas a symbol of friend request acceptance. Deeper conversationis a common sentence, for example "how are you today", "howwas your work today", "have you eaten?”, and “what are youdoing now?". After this conversation usually interpersonalpenetration process begins and there is media shifting, frommessage inbox to chat. Frequency to comment on any postsmade by B is also increasing. Comments are usually praisestatement, or "like". The migration of communications mediato chat shows that the penetration process intensified. Personalinformation begins to be exchanged. It generally is occupation,marital status and family history, especially as related to thestatus of marriage. Related to marital and family status, ingeneral, these people claim to be a widower with one or twochildren, shown by photographs of their familiarity. The wifehad died, and the cause is always two things: (1) cancer illness,and (2) an accident. In general they have been widowed about3 to 5 years. They also told that they are using FB because oflack of time to find friend, their work locations that do notenable them to find a friend such as under a sea, or in a warzone , or in a forest. In fact, in the case of B, the personalinformation is likely to be more aggressive and make herinconvenient, such as a question of “do you really love yourpartner", or “what is the best position in sex with yourpartner”.

Following paragraph are a shirt description of a caseof social penetration process which is done by “A” with aman from the UK, name is JA (initial name), as told by “A”herself.

D. The Process of Social Penetration: A Case of JAI start to open an interaction with a foreigner who

called JA in November 2013. He is looks very wellestablished, kind and thoughtful. JA admitted was born inLiverpool in 1969, from the United Kingdom, precisely inManchester, graduated from West London University andworked as a structural engineer at a big private company inLiverpool.

he first statement of the conversation with JA isnatural as well as it is in general. Beginning of friend requestswith the initial greeting, "hello my dear" until later I sent a

reply to a friend request with a short sentence, "hi, too." Theconversation continued. He sent a message through the chat.The first sentence he said was, "Hello dear, thank you so muchfor accepting my request. How are you doing?”. I replied, asusual, fine. At this stage, a common topic of conversation wasabout the weather and the local time. He claimed has visitedseveral countries in Asia but never been to Indonesia. Othertopic is about what I was doing or he did after away from theoffice to home, and also the physical condition after hard work.The next stage, after telling himself more general, he began toask about me, "What are you doing for living?" or “What isyour daily routine activity” and "How old are you?". I repliedthat I am a lecturer, but I did not tell my age. At this stage,some time we did chat and told information about work, dayactivities and plans for the next day. We also began to design asuitable time to communicate because of the different localtime between UK and Indonesia.

Through chats, our conversation begins more fluently.I receive a lot of information I thought is private. He is awidower with no children. His wife has died from cancer andhe still loved her so much. He greatly missed her but he had tomove on. That's why he was interested to ask friends with me.Some of the following statements show the message on thechat that occurs during a few days after the interaction hasoccurred intensively.

“I will visit your country when I finish my contract.How was your night and where are you now? Here is9:20 pm and I just get back home from church. Willyou be my wife? "

"I just feel to be with you as my wife because it hasbeen more than 3 years am alone now. Because I havenot find the one my heart choose again as my late wife.But I do not have the options Because I won ' t ask youto divorce your husband. "

"I am speechless and can only say that I love you somuch and want to be with you."

The first statement above is quite surprising. I wishonly to be a friend because of my status on FB was alreadymarried. He should have already known about it. I then saidthat was impossible, I was married. At the time I thought thatour relationship will end soon because it is not in accordancewith the purpose of friendship he thinks. I also began to thinkthat "the research process" to disguise also coming to an endwhen I need more data up to the penetration as in the socialpenetration theory. But I think it did not happen. He stillcontinued to chat as the second statement. After he wrote it, Isay, so, what will you do? So, he replied as the third.

Thinking that JA’s profile is as in the picture, and if Iwere still single and not do participative research, I might havefallen in love with him. His statements were very romanticand touching. But, on other hand, I think the kind of statementis too quickly said before we knew each other well. So, I saidthis to him:"How come you say it while we do not have enough


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information about us. How could the relationship will happenwhile we live in different countries, and the distance is veryfar away." Then the following sentence is very seductive.

“Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was achoice, but falling in love with you was beyond mycontrol. I really do not know exactly how you look, butI truly love the person am seeing in the pictures and Ihave faith that you are the one I want to spend my lifewith."

"The will of God must be done no matter how we try toachieve our aim, and I can not question God Becausehe created all things Including us human beings and Ihave Mourn the death of my late wife as I can and needto forge ahead with life. Out of all you wrote to me inyour last message, I do not understand exactly whatyou mean. What do you want between us?"

He stated the same sentences over and over again. Irationally said two things: (1) have never met him face to face,and yet I have much information, and (2) long distancerelationships are not easy, especially between two differentcountries: Indonesia - UK. But he kept saying that he was inthe completion of the contract. He plans, after the contractfinished, he would go to Indonesia. I was also saying that thisis a very high cost relationship. For this, he expressly said thathe was financially very secure. Everything can be set when thetwo have agreed to establish a relationship. For the secondcase, he also repeatedly insists that love is a gift. People haveto believe in the God-given love. Love means to believe. Onething he wants to say is that although we have not met and notquite know each other, if we have faith that God has betrothedus, then everything would have happened and passed.

It is already very intimate conversations. He talkedabout the future and a full life, marriage. It happened just twoweeks after the first ‘meeting’. In the third week, I wassurprised to a call from a number with the country code +44,UK code number. It was JA's phone number. Several times wetalked via phone. However, the longer the call, the voicethrough hand phone is less clear, and often interrupted.Therefore we decided to go back to the old media, chat. I didnot propose to video chat to just know the actual figure wasover there because I do not have a computer device suchfacilities. I did not know why he did not propose it. Maybe theproblem is the same, but maybe he wanted to "hide" the realhim.

Actually I found something weird during myinteraction with him. Early phase of penetration process isreally left. Messages are delivered only love, love and love,and did not want to speak about daily issue as people do. I feltthe awkwardness when in the following days he had nevertalked about his family, his job, his friends and other personalinformation. His FB’s timeline does not show many photos ofhis daily life, and is also inactive.

Two months later, he began to be frustrated after Istill did not give the progressive development of relationships

and still are not sure that the relationship between peoplefrom different countries and cultures and also never met face-to-face will work so well. It is seen from his message in chat,as follow:

"Love works with faith even when the two have not yetmet other call now. I have severally ask you when youwant me to come, but you said nothing."

"You sound sarcastic and nasty."

"Thank you for remembering me today but love withouttrust and faith is rubbish."

"You are very funny Yudi, I love you too but love doesnot work without faith."

Even if so, there is no sentence that expressed a desire to stopthe relationship. The relation "like hanging" for some timeuntil then I tried to search pictures of JA on the web GoogleImage. There were a lot of pictures of JA, but with differentnames and identities. I also found the same things in foreignmatchmaking sites, social media abroad and also mediaentertainment/artist. The big question is which the real ownerof the photo? The facts lead me to make confirmation. Here ishis reaction: "You do not trust me and you are not sure if I amthe one talking with you."

This sentence is followed by other messages that seemshowed anger.

"Yes because I do not want to call or sms you againuntil after we meet."

"So let everything be pending."

"I lack words for you."

"Because I'm tired of your insults."

After this sentence appears, chats from JA wereincreasingly rare, although he still wanted to wait as if I cameto Manchester. After a few weeks I saw JA‘s FB account hasbeen closed and could not be called by phone.

DISCUSSION

A. The Aspect of Cultural DifferencesThe process of social penetration through social media,

even with strangers, is not different from the process of face-to-face or conventional interpersonal relationships. Therelationship development is a gradual process, from earlystage until the intimate stage. Stages of the process areidentified based on the subject or topic which exchange inconversation, both in breadth and depth of the topic.Referring to the social penetration theory, stage one will rungradually toward the next stage. This means that the process ofbuilding relationships can’t jump or negate the stage that


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should be passed. Therefore, according to this theory, theprocess of the development of interpersonal relationships canbe predicted. Referring to some of the experiences describedearlier, it can be concluded that which distinguishes it frominterpersonal relations based on social media in this study isthe time required to progress from one stage to the next. Thespeed of the progress is faster than conventional relationship.It could be motivated by a low context culture of theconversation focuses on the goal (goal oriented) – marriage.For Indonesian people, especially women, may experience ashock related to this kind of communication model.Indonesian is categorized in a high contextual culture whichtends to communicate with more on non-verbal symbols.Model of communication "to the point", "bluntly" especiallyin a fast tempo sometimes perceived as a form ofcommunication that is not polite. It can be the one ofinhibiting factor on relationship development. On other hand,for Western culture, this communication style which peoplenot say explicitly can be perceived as a not serious attitude or"playful". In this case misperception occurs because of thecultural background.

In another aspect, the stages of depenetration alsotakes place. It also runs gradually and fast. The topic ofconversation becomes unfocused, rarely communication, andfinally no interaction at all. In some cases, the symbols of de-penetration do not expressed verbally by foreigner male. Theyprefer to make action, for example to stop contact by closingthe account of email, FB, or made no active the phone or didnot reply to the message. Whereas Indonesian woman tends tobe expressed verbally for instance by texting of message:"should leave this relationship because ....". For Indonesianwomen, direct action like this is regarded as outrageousbehavior, impolite, unwise and “no macho action”. In terms ofWestern culture, again, "do not want to beat around the bush,concrete, clear, and straightforward, efficient and effective."

Some of these issues can be understood in the contextof East versus West cultural differences. West adheres lowcontext culture and Indonesia as a high context culture.Implications on cultural variations are in the style ofcommunication and this could have implications for thedifferent perception, including violations of the non-verbalsymbols expectation Discomfort in communicating on twopeople with a different culture could be caused by the lessinformation about each other and expectation violations whichlead to misperception.

B. The Aspect of Social MediaCharacteristics of communication by social media

which is interactive, relatively inexpensive, and private haveconsequence on the development of interpersonal relationships.There are some changes in this process when compared withthe development of interpersonal relationships through theconventional process (face-to-face was physically meet).These differences are (1) the nature of the concept of friendsand friendship, (2) the process of building, developing andmaintaining relationships, and (3) the quality of relationships.

Referring to the experience which has been describedpreviously, the definition of a friend is easily attached to theinterpersonal relationships that are built through social media.It includes the time required, which starts from the meeting oftwo strangers who do not know each other until decided toestablish friendship. Just need a second to proceed by push thebutton of accept/confirm. However, this process can be a littlelonger when before deciding to accept or reject, one examinesfirst the background of the person by opening the "about" inFB menu. Completeness of the information we get depends onthe completeness of the information written by the person inthe "about" menu. The information provides history ofeducation, current employment, home address, phone number,FB account, date and place of birth, gender, and marital status.In addition to these features, there is also a gallery ofphotographs. It can be seen as a whole if we've becomefriends. Through these two menus, one can fairly be helped todecide whether we want to accept strangers into our friends, orvice versa. Based on the experience above, in certaincircumstances, to decide accepting or rejection of a friendshipdoes not need to find information about the person. It happensin the condition: the person who offers the friendship isactually a friend of our FB friends. It means the credibility ofour friends determine us to accept or reject them.

When compared with the conventional concept of"friends" and "friendship" has a definition and a morecomplicated process. Referring to the social penetration theory,strangers or people will become our friends when involve inthe process of communication and do the self-disclosure. It isan important key to progress the relationship. However, theprogress from one stage to the next stage requires a relativelylong time because of the self disclosure has also risk, that isdepenetration or dissolusion. It is also explained in the socialpenetration theory in the term of cost and reward of selfdisclosure. Other factors that hampers the development ofrelationships, good progress forward and backward is asemantic factor, physical, psychological and physiological.Meanwhile, the relations based on social media, obstacles likeit could easily be overlooked or minimized, unless thesemantic barriers because of the limitation of verbal symbolsto express people think and feel. Rapid process in relationbased social media impacts on the low quality of therelationship, It is being more fragile, when compared with aconventional relationship. Referring to the case, the friendshipcan happen so quickly, but also so easy to break up(depenetration and dissolusion).

IV. CONCLUSIONIn the introduction to several foreign males above,

the penetration process tends to take place with the samepattern. Introduction to the process towards a more intimaterelationship occurs not much different from those described inthe social penetration theory but a process from one stage tothe next stage takes place faster. It is caused by (1) thepurpose of the relationship is clear, has been set at thebeginning, and (2) high openness. This is understandablewhen considering that the men were from countries with have


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low context culture. In selecting and interpret symbols(encoding and decoding), culture is more straightforward,open, what it is, meanings and symbols have a highconsistency. Communication models "straight forward" -oriented to goal achievement is more dominant than theconversation 'niceties' as is mostly done by a culture of highcontext. On the other hand, the use of social media is a veryimportant role in the process of accelerating the process ofdeepening the relationship. Indonesian women who tend tohave cultural values such as "ashamed", "too careful", "slowdown" and "closed" greatly helped with this social media.However, the other side of this aspect, the character of socialmedia that is able to hide its privacy leads people tocommunicate very openly and straight forward. It potentiallycauses psychological discomfort. Keeping much the privacyalso leds communication participants becomes suspicious ofthe truth of information, including the identity and purpose ofthe actual relationship. In fact it is the primary inhibitingfactor to process of penetration and depenetration.Conventional interpersonal communication that relies on face-to-face communication and physically contact has thepossibility of dishonesty, prejudice, misperceptions, and otherinconveniences, but it is less than the distance interpersonalrelations that relies on Internet-based media. It because face toface communication offers greater opportunity to elaboratenon-verbal and verbal symbols from other participant(s) orfrom the surrounding environment in order to create meaning.

REFERENCES

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[2] Debush. “Penipu Berkedok Cinta”, 16 September 2010.http://teknologi.kompasiana.com/Internet/2010/09/16/penipu-berkedok-cinta-259306.html

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http://dailysocial.net/post/situs-perjodohan



AUTHOR’S PROFILE

Yudi Perbawaningsih is a lecturer at Communication Department, Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University, Indonesia. She got her Dr.phil. from Tecnische Universitat Ilmenau, Germany in 2008. She has concern in social media and other internet based media, and its impact on society, including on the interpersonal relations and communication.


Yudi Perbawaningsih

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