Phatic Communication on Social Media

Abstract

Abstract

This paper argues that social mediated communication is essentially phatic communication, serving social purposes more than intellectual purposes. Also, social media contents are less informative, and users consume them frequently to satisfy their entertainment and social needs. This paper borrowed the concept of entropy from Wiener, Shannon, and Fiske and the idea of sociability from sociology to construct arguments for this position. At the core of the argument, the paper claims that lower entropic content is preferred by social media users because of its communicative convenience more than higher entropic content.