Towards Understanding Social Media

Social networks are commonplace tools, accessed everyday by millions of users. However, despite their popularity, we still know relatively little about why they are so appealing and what specifically they are used for - what novel needs they meet. This paper presents two studies that extend work on applying Uses and Gratification theory to answer such questions. The first study explores motivations for using a content community on a social network service ? a music video sharing group on Facebook. In a two-stage experiment, 20 users generated words or phrases to describe how they used the group, and what they enjoyed about their use. These phrases were coded into 34 questionnaire items that were then completed by 57 new participants. Factor analysis on this data revealed four gratifications: contribution; discovery; social interaction and entertainment. These factors are interpreted and discussed. The second study explores the links between motives for using a social network service and numerical measures of that activity. Specifically, it identified motives for Facebook use and then investigated the extent to which these motives can be predicted through a range of usage and network metrics collected automatically collected via the Facebook API. Results showed that all three variable types in this expanded U&G frame of analysis (covering social antecedents, usage metrics, and personal network metrics) effectively predicted motives and highlighted interesting behaviours. Together these studies extend the methodological framework of Uses and Gratification theory and show how it can be effectively used to better understand and appreciate the complexity of online social behaviors.