Examining the Antecedents of Social Media user Gratification among High School and Undergraduate Students (original) (raw)
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Uses and gratifications theory as a way of understanding college students’ use of social media.
In recent years, social media usage has been rapidly increasing in Turkey and the reasons and motivations of consumers’ using social media have become frequently discussed topics. Reports about the social media usage in Turkey indicate that Facebook with more than 32 million users is the most popular social networking site (SNC) and Twitter with daily average 8 million tweets follows Facebook (TTNET, 2013). According to Socialbakers reports (2010), Turkey is in the fourth position of the top ten countries on Facebook and Ä°stanbul is the third city in the world among the top ten Facebook cities (Socialbakers, 2012). The largest age group of Facebook in Turkey is currently 18-24 (34%), followed by the users in the age of 25-34(30%). Even though the social media usage becomes an inevitable habit among the youths as it can be easily seen from the statistics, there is still not a systematic research about this topic. Therefore, in this research we attempt to identify why university students use the social media and which needs they try to fulfill by using social media. For this reason, uses and gratifications theory has been applied to explain the research question. This research has been carried out in Anadolu University which is in one of the most important student cities of Turkey, EskiĹźehir. The data has been collected from the 450 college students of Anadolu University by face to face questionnaires. There are nearly equal number of students from every faculty of Anadolu University and this students comes from different cities all around Turkey. The findings indicate that the college students mostly use Facebook and Twitter among the online social networking sites. By using SCNs, they mostly communicate with their friends who they have face to face contact with (93%), followed by class mates (78%), family members (59%), online friends that they only know each other from SCNs (23%), and strangers (13%) respectively. Furthermore, the research revealed students have 11 different reasons for use of social media. Students use social media primarily for socialization, entertainment, presenting their status, access and getting some material gains. The findings of this study shed light on why college students use and participate in SNSs. This study expands the use of uses-and-gratification theory to the social media by affirming the appropriateness of it in the social media. Practically, the findings of the study suggest that marketers using SNSs should apply strategies by taking the primary reasons of SNSs into consideration in order to attract young people. They use SNSs mostly for socialization, entertainment and status presentation, so marketers should develop strategies that address these reasons mostly. Future research may be related with older users of SNSs and their reasons and motivations of use. Moreover, effectiveness of marketing strategies targeted young people related with the reasons of use SNSs might be searched.
The Use of Facebook Among University Academicions to Enhance Gratification Level
2016
Gratification of Facebook is a central question among Social Networking Users (SNSs) because they need to be constantly connected. It is uncommon for an academician to have a pool of online friends or followers whom are their students, colleagues, friends, and so forth. This paper would like to propose motivation and gratification as key determiners of using Facebook and assess its significance in an empirical setting. Further, examine the gratification level of Facebook use among academicians, the purpose of using Facebook among academicians and provide a holistic view of the casual relationship between the gratification variables and purpose. The study was conducted using a five point survey questionnaire which focused on five motives such as social interaction motive, communication motive, passing time motive, entertainment motive and companionship. Data was collected from 208 academicians at a private university at Selangor. Based on the five motives tested in this study Social ...
University Students Usage of Facebook: The Case of Obtained Gratifications and Typology of Its Users
2017
This paper presents and discusses the results from the designed quantitative self-report questionnaire. It addresses two main research objectives: first, to contribute to the uses and gratifications research by exploring the gratifications that research participants who belong to a conservative Islamic culture obtain from using Facebook, and second, to inform theoretical and empirical media and communications research through proposing a typology of users based on their obtained gratifications, usage variables, and demographic variables. The findings showed that Saudi university students obtained 11 gratifications from using Facebook, including communicational, personal, recreational, and academic gratifications.
This study grounded in the user centered media theory of uses and gratification; it investigated on the usage and gratification of social media among international students pursuing higher education in Turkey, through a survey conducted on a sample of international students in Istanbul City, Turkey. The study was quantitative in nature in which structured questionnaires were used to get data on a randomly selected sample. Findings indicate that 68.2% of the respondents used social media for more than twice a week to interact with peers for studying outside classroom. Likewise, social media platform commonly used included YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google group and Twitter. As a gratification, the respondents used You Tube to watch educational video clips on lectures delivered from other universities, watched Turkish videos to improve on their Turkish language skills. Facebook and Whatsapp were used for instant messaging, sharing academic information with classmates and professors. Findings indicate that using Social Media positively influenced their lifestyles and helped them to excel academically as reflected in the responses. The study therefore concludes that Social Media is an essential communication tool among international students in Turkey in supporting their higher education.
PAKISTAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT & LIBRARIES, 2017
Students' engagement of Social Networking Sites (SNS) has substantially influenced their social, personal, and academic lives. However whether students in Pakistani universities are aware of its roles and its respective influence has rarely been investigated. The aim of this study is to evaluate students' behavioral attitude (perceptions, gratification, awareness, usage patterns etc.) towards SNS. Using self-administered survey questionnaires, data were collected from a sample of postgraduate students at the University of Peshawar, Pakistan. The findings revealed a significant level of awareness of the role of SNS, of which YouTube, Facebook, and Flicker are widely used sites by the study participants. However, generalized use of SNS specifically, Wiki, RSS, Twitter, and MySpace is not considered academic or for research purposes, but for sheer gratification, and sociability. Further, laptops and smartphones were found to be the primary tools of access to SNS at university and/or homes. Additionally, entertainment and friendship were specified as the foremost prompts for using SNS. A primary obstacle indicated by participants is power failure. This study has manifold implications such as: a) social implications-parents and teachers should educate students about the inventive, academic, and safe use of SNS. This will impede the ills of SNS that have resulted in the reduction of learning and research capabilities; b) practical implications-authorities should make more precise PAKISTAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT & LIBRARIES (PJIM&L) 13
Journal of Erciyes Communication, 2019
By the help of rapid developments in technology and new trends in social media platform, consumers' behavior on digital platform has started to change. Users adopted a wide range of digital technologies into their communication. It remains unclear why they adopt multiple forms of social media instead of traditional media. In this context, the main purpose of this study investigates factors that affect university students and academicians being on social media, by the context of uses and gratification theory. In this context, data were collected from 345 university students and 87 academicians, by the technique of "easy sampling method". Data management and analysis is performed by using SPSS 20.0 program. Results indicate that among the factors affecting the social media usage of the university students, there are differences between the genders in terms of the dimensions of socialization and obtaining information. In detail, the female participants are more satisfied than the female participants according to socializing and it is the vice versa for obtaining information. For academicians, there is a significant difference in terms of entertainment and information seeking dimensions, with the male participants having a higher average than the female participants.Keywords: Uses And Gratification, Social Media, University Students And Academicians. Öz Teknolojideki hızlı gelişmeler ve sosyal medya platformundaki yeni trendlerin yardımıyla, tüketicilerin dijital platformdaki davranışları değişmeye başladı. Kullanıcılar iletişim kurmada çok çeşitli dijital teknolojileri benimsemektedirler. Ancak bireylerin geleneksel medya yerine neden çeşitli sosyal medya araçlarını benimsedikleri konusu belirsizliğini hala korumaktadır. Bu çalışmanın temel amacı üniversite öğrencilerinin ve akademisyenlerin sosyal medya araçlarının kullanım nedenlerine etki eden faktörleri, kullanımlar ve doyumlar teorisine dayalı olarak ortaya çıkarmaktır. Bu bağlamda, kolayda örneklem yöntemi ile 345 üniversite öğrencisi ve 87 akademisyenden toplanan anket formları SPSS 20 programı aracılığıyla analiz edilmiştir. Öğrencilerin sosyal medya ve kullanımlarını etkileyen faktörlerden sosyalleşme (Kadın katılımcılar erkek katılımcılara göre daha fazla doyum elde etmektedir) ve bilgi sağlama (Erkek katılımcılar kadın katılımcılara göre daha fazla doyum elde etmektedir) boyutları cinsiyete göre farklılaşırken, akademisyenlerde ise eğlence ve bilgi arama boyutları için anlamlı farklılık olduğu, katılımcılardan erkeklerin kadınlara göre daha yüksek ortalamaya sahip olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Kullanımlar Ve Doyumlar, Sosyal Medya, Üniversite Öğrencileri ve Akademisyenler.
For decades, the Uses and Gratification (U&G) Theory has been the main theory of communication that explains what people do with the media. To many, the theory seems old. However, the emergence of social media breathes a new life into this aging theory. This paper seeks to explore the current functions of the U&G Theory in the students' use of social media. Survey and focus group discussion were used to elicit information from purposively selected 111 final year students of mass communication. The paper discovers that majority of the respondents (98.2%) used social media for communication, collaboration, news sharing, research, expression of opinion, maintaining a connection, and making friends from other countries. Facebook and WhatsApp were the most preferred social networks among the respondents. The paper confirms that social media platforms have revived the functions of the U&G Theory and provided a plethora of media uses that the traditional media never could. Very few of the respondents used social media for information, to investigate why, the paper suggests that the Media Information Utility theory should be thoroughly investigated.