Research On Factors Of Social Network Tie-Strength Affecting Fear Of Missing Out

In this era of rapid development of the mobile Internet,people are accustomed to stay in touch with the outside world through various mobile social media.When such contact cannot be met immediately,people will subconsciously generate negative emotions such as anxiety,which will lead to corresponding behaviors such as frequent information checking.This phenomenon is called "FoMO(Fear of Missing Out)".FoMO exists widely among mobile social media users,and has become a common social syndrome in this information age.In recent years,it has attracted the attention and research of academia and industry,and has become a new research hotspot in psychology,sociology,communication,information management and other disciplines.However,domestic research on FoMO has just begun,and this proposition still has much room for social science researchers to explore.Based on the analysis of previous research results,this paper defines the concept and characteristics of mobile social media FoMO,and summarizes the influencing factors of FoMO from four perspectives:individual characteristics,psychology and cognition,media factors and social factors.It is found that the related research on social factors is relatively weak,so the research focused on the impact of interpersonal tie strength and contextual factors on FoMO.But at the same time,through literature review,it is also found that academia does not yet have the same standard for the concept and measurement of social network interpersonal tie strength,and there is no comprehensive interpersonal tie strength scale suitable for China’s mobile Internet background.Therefore,this article combines previous literature and in-depth interviews and takes WeChat as an example to compile the mobile social media interpersonal tie strength scale.On this basis,the reliability and validity of the WeChat interpersonal tie strength scale was tested through a questionnaire survey(N=654),and the correlation and impact of interpersonal tie strength,context factors with FoMO were deeply explored.The results of the study found that,regardless of the context,the total tie strength of interpersonal relationships was significantly positively related to the FoMO of WeChat;as for the sub-dimensionality of tie strength,there was no significant correlation between "Interaction strength" and FoMO;"Intimacy" is positively correlated with FoMO only in the context of leisure and entertainment,and is one of the factors that positively affects FoMO;but in the workplace/school context,there is no significant correlation between intimacy and FoMO.No matter what the context is,the " Reciprocity" is significantly positively related to FoMO and is also a positive influencing factor of FoMO.In terms of context factors,the degree of FoMO in the workplace/school context is significantly higher than in the social/leisure context.In addition,demographic factors and differences in users’ social media use behaviors are also significantly correlated with FoMO.