Today, the emergence of social networks stimulates the development of the virtual, online communication, which tends to substitute or complement conventional verbal communication. At the same time, social networks may be viewed as a combination of traditional, ritual model of communication and as a transmission model of communication. In this respect, both models can be applied to social networks, but still the ritual model is likely to be dominant, while the transmission model was probably the primary stimulus that encouraged the development of social networks.
First of all, the emergence of social networks was closely intertwined with the development of telecommunications and information technologies. The development of social networks opened larger opportunities for the communication but, above all, social networks were based on technologies which allowed the effective transmission of information, regardless of physical distance. At the same time, at the beginning of the development of social networks, they were not very popular among large masses of the population. Therefore, it was a relatively small number of people who used social networks and their primary goal was the transmission of date. Thus, at the beginning of the development of social networks, the transmission model of communication was dominant.
However, today, the ritual model prevails because social networks have already ceased to be an effective means of information transmission. Instead, modern social networks include virtual communities, where people maintain the ritual model of communication.
Obviously, transmission model of communication cannot satisfy all the communicational needs of people who are members of social networks. As a result, they extrapolate their traditional model of communication, i.e. ritual model of communication, which they use in the real life, on the virtual world.
Thus, the ritual model of communication is dominant in social networks.