Social Network Profile
1. What purposes does your profile serve? In what ways might it serve the five pur- poses of interpersonal communication identified here (to learn, relate, influence, play, and help)?
2. In what way is your profile page a package of signals? In what ways do the varied words and pictures combine to communicate meaning?
3. Can you identify and distinguish between content from relational messages?
4. In what ways, if any, have you adjusted your profile as a response to the ways in which others have fashioned their profiles?
5. In what ways does your profile exhibit interpersonal power? In what ways, if any, have you incorporated into your profile the six types of power discussed in this chapter (legitimate, referent, reward, coercive, expert, or information)?
6. What messages on your profile are ambiguous? Bumper stickers and photos should provide a useful starting point.
7. In what ways (if any) can you identify the process of punctuation?
8. What are the implications of inevitability, irreversibility, and unrepeatability for publishing a profile on and communicating via social network sites?
9. Women often report that an essential quality–perhaps the most important quality–in a partner is the ability to communicate. How important, compared to all the other factors you might take into consideration in choosing a partner, is the ability to communicate? What specific interpersonal communication skills would you consider extremely important in a life partner?