Kapitalisierung von Paarbeziehungen

This study examines the role that the social networking site Facebook plays in the different aspects of relationship management by couples. The communication of couples is influenced not only by the relationship phase but also by the geographical distance between the partners. Based on the assumption that these factors are also important for the couple’s (partly) public Facebook communications, the online survey explores whether couples in the first phase of a relationship or in a long-distance relationship use Facebook intensively for relationship management. Furthermore, the concept of capitalization (Gable et al. (2004, 2006)) is applied to the social network communication. Originally, it referred to interpersonal communication. In conjunction with the publicity of social networks, the awareness of others could change the processes of capitalization. It can be shown that relationship management in a narrow (“romantic”) sense is upheld on a rather low level. Contrary to expectations, there is less (partly) public relationship communication in the first phase of a couple’s relationship as well as in long-distance relationships. Also contrary to a culturally pessimistic point of view, Facebook is not replacing traditional forms of relationship communication. Capitalization also has deficits; nonverbal forms of communication such as facial expressions, body language, and gestures are lacking on Facebook, despite all of its various emoticons.