The quality of face-to-face and digitally mediated social
interactions: two experience sampling studies exploring
the moderating role of physical location, interaction
partner familiarity, and interaction purpose

The quality of face-to-face and digitally mediated social
interactions: two experience sampling studies exploring
the moderating role of physical location, interaction
partner familiarity, and interaction purpose

social interaction quality, modality, situation, interaction partner familiarity, interaction purpose.

This study examines how communication modality influences social interaction quality and its contingency on three other situational characteris-
tics: physical location, partner familiarity, and interaction purpose. Data from two experience sampling studies including 385 Spanish emerging

adults and 10,203 social interaction reports revealed that compared to face-to-face interactions, phone calls were rated higher, video calls showed
no significant difference, and text-based and social media interactions (e.g., commenting) were rated lower. However, other situational factors
mattered. For example, video calls at home were perceived as higher in quality than face-to-face, whereas face-to-face was superior outside the

home. For partner familiarity, social media interactions with weak (vs. strong) ties were of significantly lower quality. For interaction purpose, text-
ing was superior to face-to-face in leveraging social interaction quality when having negative (vs. maintenance) interactions. Combined, the results

thus plead for greater consideration of the situation when examining the effects of (mediated) interpersonal communication.

Aurelio Fernandez � 1,2,3,� , Timon Elmer4 , Charo Sadaba � 1,2 , Javier Garc�ıa-Manglano2 ,
and Mariek Vanden Abeele3

https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmaf004

Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association.

January 28, 2025

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