| Summary: | This article discusses concept and measurement of online friendship in an Indonesian context. Online
friendship is considered to be superficial due to the lack of face-to-face interaction and emotional
intimacy. Based on grounded theory research, online friendship consists of five dimensions: caution,
voluntariness, companionship,sharing, and mutualsupport (Study 1). UGM’s Online Friendship Scale
was developed as measurement of online friendship (Study 2). Initial set of items was administered
to university students (N = 42) and resulted in 21 reliable items (r = .408-.687). Construct validity
testing was appropriately used for the data (Bartlett’s Test = 1174.1 (p<.05), KMO values = .837).
CFA confirms that the online friendship scale is multidimensional. The factor loads came up with
four dimensions: sharing (30.197%), voluntariness (8.576%), companionship (8.256%), and mutual
support (7.769%). Sharing (information and knowledge) wasthe dimension with highest contribution,
indicating online friendship serves more as means of networking between users rather than social
bonding.
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