Email 1
College Students’ Use of Email to Maintain Long Distance and Geographically Close
Relationships: An Examination of Friend, Family, and Romantic Partner Email Correspondence
Much work has been done considering how relationships form over the Internet;
however, relatively few studies have examined how individuals use this channel to maintain
relationships that originally began face-to-face (Boneva, Kraut, & Frohlich, 2001; Stafford,
Kline, & Dimmick, 1999). Cummings and Kraut (2002) claim, “the growth in the number of
Americans online means that people can use the Internet to keep in touch with a larger
proportion of their friends and relationships” (p. 229). This exploration not only allows further
understanding of how the Internet is affecting interpersonal relationships, but it also expands
work on relational maintenance, which has focused almost exclusively on face-to-face
interaction (Dainton & Aylor, 2002). This study examines how college students maintain
interpersonal relationships utilizing email and makes three contributions to the literature on
computer-mediated and interpersonal communication: 1) it expands work on relational
maintenance beyond face-to-face interaction by examining how email is utilized to enact
maintenance behaviors, 2) it examines relationships that originated off-line, comparing email use
in long distance and geographically close family, friend, and romantic relationships, and 3) it
examines actual naturally occurring email content in interpersonal relationships rather than
relying solely on self-reported behavior.
College Students and Email
There are several reasons, besides convenience, for focusing on college students when
examining how email maintains interpersonal relationships. One is that college students tend to
have greater accessibility to and use the Internet more than the general public, as email access is
free on most college campuses (Odell, Korgen, Schumacher, & Delucci, 2000). Seventy-two
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Convention