Facebook: online communication in society

Dissertation deals with relatively new phenomenon of social networking sites, particularly Facebook, and his potential in terms of information diffusion. Virtual community Facebook has become very popular in the last few years and number of its users is still increasing, especially among young people. It has become a common part of their social existence and therefore deserves attention from social scientists. The objectives of the research, which is this paper based on, are to find out differences between social communication online and offline and also to determine the role which offline communication plays in terms of information diffusion. Main difference appeared to be especially much lower transaction costs of the online communication, and also the fact, that Facebook users tend to communicate indirectly, rather than directly, using tools for self presentation and information search. Another goal of this study was to identify characteristics of the main information nodes in the online social network and their possible typology. Research outcomes lead to the hypothesis, that in case of correct identification of the main nodes with sufficient social capital, suitable position in the network and active usage of these attributes, one can find an information channel, through which can be information..