However, the construct has been discussed primarily in theoretical terms and described qualitatively, without being empirically assessed. Several scholars have considered ambient awareness, also referred to as peripheral or pervasive awareness, and its potential role in relational maintenance ( Lampe et al., 2006, Resnick, 2001, Zhao et al., 2011) and organizational knowledge exchange ( Dimicco et al., 2008, Leonardi and Meyer, 2014, Zhao et al., 2011). Prior research has looked into existing social networks, which afford directed communication (e.g., Facebook Lampe, Ellison, & Steinfield, 2006), making it difficult to single out the contribution of mere browsing. Central to this definition is that browsing social media is sufficient for awareness to develop, even in the absence of directed communication. “Ambient” emphasizes the idea that the awareness develops peripherally, not through deliberately attending to information, but rather as an artifact of social media activity. Ambient awareness can be defined as awareness of social others, arising from the frequent reception of fragmented personal information, such as status updates and various digital footprints, while browsing social media. Science writer Clive Thompson was the first to propose how ambient awareness can develop in the context of public social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter ( Thompson, 2013). One intriguing possibility is that even if individual updates are brief and mundane, continuously receiving fragments of personal information can result in ambient awareness of what is going on in the lives of people who post them. Closely linked to the ubiquity of social-networking sites and mobile devices that allow people to be permanently online and connected, such incessant mediated communication is unprecedented and scholars are yet to understand its interpersonal effects ( Vorderer & Kohring, 2013). This type of communication is perhaps best characterized by the incessant flow of brief and mundane bits of information. At the same time, people receive and skim through updates from friends, relatives, acquaintances, or even strangers. The typically brief answers are then broadcasted to large audiences, often a person's entire network on the given site. “What is happening right now?” is a question social media and networking sites constantly ask their users. We report the effects of demographics, media use, and network variables and discuss the implications of ambient awareness for relational and informational processes online. Our results indicate that ambient awareness can develop peripherally, from fragmented information and in the relative absence of extensive one-to-one communication. A diverse sample of participants reported experiencing awareness, both as a general feeling towards their network as a whole, and as knowledge of individual members of the network, whom they had not met in real life. We provide evidence for the occurrence of ambient awareness and examine key questions related to its content and functions. Despite its growing popularity and important implications for social media research, ambient awareness on public social media has not been studied empirically. Although each individual bit of information can seem like random noise, their incessant reception can amass to a coherent representation of social others.

Ambient awareness refers to the awareness social media users develop of their online network in result of being constantly exposed to social information, such as microblogging updates.

Study ambience