MITIGATING RAPPORT THREATS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Abstract

This study aims to find out the strategies applied by people on social media in mitigating rapport threat behaviors and tries to formulate the rapport building behaviors from the applied strategies. The research is done to see whether the strategies work well in rapport threatening atmosphere in various situations taken from social media interactions. The data for this study were obtained from a number of online chats and discussion on several social media apps such as, Facebook, Whatsapp, Youtube and Instagram. The interactions were some chats, comments, discussion and arguments in Bahasa Indonesia. The data were taken from the interactions that cause offenses or threat on the interpersonal rapport of the people chatting on the social media. The method applied for this study is descriptive qualitative to identify the people’s strategies on social media to mitigate some rapport threat behaviors in the social media interactions. The study shows that people apply a number of strategies to mitigate the threats to the interpersonal rapport. The strategies are apologizing, complimenting, expressing gratitude, using emoji, using honorifics to address others, choosing the appropriate words, choosing the relevant topic and organizing information to be told to others. It is clearly shown from the study that there are a number of rapport threat behaviors in social media interactions but the people interacting on the social media have certain strategies which in turn become the rapport building behaviors to mitigate the threat.