Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how active Twitter use gratifies a need to connect with others
Introduction
When the social-networking site Twitter started in 2006 (Farhi, 2009), its first users answered the question on Twitter’s online interface: What are you doing right now? These responses became known as updates and later tweets, 140-character messages that people who opted to “follow” the user could read online or on their cell phone or mobile device. As Twitter use grew, some media bloggers argued Twitter was simply a haven for narcissistic bloviating about inane facts such as what one had for lunch (Ariens, 2009, February 28; Popkin, 2007, May 8; Sarno, 2009, March 11). Others argued Twitter was becoming a way to form connections in real time with thousands of people who shared your interests (Sarno, 2009, March 11) or a way to get to know strangers through the details of their lives (Thompson, 2008, September 5). Researchers began studying Twitter and found that people were using it to give and receive advice, gather and share information, and meet people (Johnson & Yang, 2009). People tweeted about a range of topics, including events of daily life, and linked to news stories (Java, Finin, Song, & Tseng, 2007). In time, Twitter evolved from an online application where users answered a simple question to a “new economy of info-sharing and connectivity” between people (Sarno, 2009, March 11). Research has found that this sharing of everyday experiences and chitchat online help people establish common ground and can bring people together through social media (Donath and boyd, 2004, Rheingold, 2000), but this idea has not been tested on Twitter.
This study’s main contribution to social-science research is to examine whether Twitter is just the chaotic noise that some say or has the potential to gratify the basic human need to connect with other people. This research asks: Does active use of Twitter gratify a need to feel connected to other people on Twitter? For this study, connection is defined as a type of informal camaraderie explained by Granovetter’s (1973) concept of weak ties between individuals or the distant connections that Littau (2009) found online. A need is defined as “an immediate outcome of internal and external occurrences” (Murray, 1953, p. 60) that moves from disequilibrium toward equilibrium. In other words, if people have a need to connect with other people, they will seek to gratify it. This study contends that selecting a medium, such as Twitter, and using it actively is one way people can gratify a need to connect with other people.
This study offers an exploratory look at Twitter, a medium researchers have had little time to study because it is so new, compared to traditional forms of media, such as newspapers, television, and film. Even among social networks, Twitter has received less study so far than larger and older applications, such as Facebook. Communication researchers have examined interactive media since the late 1990s, but their review has focused on how the audience uses these media (Singer, 1998), not whether people gratify a need to connect with each others users through the medium, as this current study suggests. Twitter is one of the fastest-growing social-networking sites, with unique visitors1 growing from 1 million in June 2008 to 21 million a year later (Nielsen Wire, 2009, July 27). Twitter’s membership has grown from 6 million in 2008 to triple that a year later (“US Twitter Usage,” 2009). In a marketing study, Zarella (2009) found that 90% of the 5.4 million Twitter users he studied had tweeted at least 11 times and had at least 11 followers. With so many people using Twitter, understanding whether people can gratify a need to connect with other people through Twitter is a meaningful addition to the body of knowledge about how people interact online.
A uses and gratifications (U&G) approach is beneficial to exploring these questions because its principle elements include people’s psychological and social needs as well as how media can gratify needs and motives to communicate (Rubin, 2009b). U&G holds that multiple media compete for users’ attention, and audience members select the medium that meets their needs, such as a desire for information, emotional connection, and status (Tan, 1985). It follows that people who are most active on Twitter would do so because they get something out of that experience. This theory was used since the 1940s and briefly fell out of favor but has experienced a resurgence in the study of the Internet and new media (Rubin, 2009a). People today must be even choosier than in the past to select a medium that meets their needs because they have more media choices (Ruggiero, 2000).
U&G has been successfully used in recent research on the web (Ko, 2000, Ko et al., 2005, LaRose and Eastin, 2004, LaRose et al., 2001). It has also been used to study blogging (Chung and Kim, 2008, Hollenbaugh, 2010, Kaye, 2005); online games (Wu, Wang, & Tsai, 2010); and social-networking sites such as Twitter (Johnson & Yang, 2009), Facebook (Bumgarner, 2007, Joinson, 2008), and MySpace (Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008). This theory is particularly suitable for studying Twitter, which offers the potential for both mass and interpersonal communication (Johnson & Yang, 2009), because U&G asks what people do with media, not what media do to people (Swanson, 1979). It assumes that media have little or no impact on those who do not use it, but that people select a particular medium because it is meaningful (Johnstone, 1974) and gratifies one or more needs (Katz et al., 1974, Rubin, 2009a).
The purpose of this current study is to apply the principles of U&G to Twitter to see how people who seek out this medium and use it actively gratify a need to connect with other people on Twitter through the medium. For this study, I examine how use of Twitter relates to satisfaction of needs of individuals, relying on Weibull’s (1985) structural model of media use as utilized by Wu et al. (2010). Weibull argued that individual needs lead people to use media to satisfy those needs, which in turn leads them to use that medium again because using it was gratifying. Media use that becomes habitual reinforces this relationship because people return to a medium they find gratifies their needs (Weibull, 1985). Cutler and Danowski (1980) conceptualized two main categories of media gratifications, content gratifications where people derive value from the information in the media message, and process gratifications, where people gain from the experience of using media. For this study, I am focusing on Twitter serving as a process gratification. I argue Twitter allows people to gratify their intrinsic need to form relationships with other people through the habitual process of using Twitter by sending tweets and direct messages, retweeting, following people, and gaining followers. Gratification of the need to connect with others through the process of using Twitter is a para-social gratification, where people form “ritualized social relationships” (Wenner, 1985, p. 175) through media use. It is important to note that Wenner defined para-social gratifications as relationships with media actors, such as television newscasters or newspaper columnists, because he was writing about traditional media. In a social media environment such as Twitter, I argue people form social relationships with media actors who are other people on the social network. Taken together, Weibull’s (1985) model of uses and gratification, along with Wenner’s (1985) understanding of ritualized social relationships, and Cutler and Danowski’s (1980) idea that media gratify process needs form a framework to relate U&G to this study’s premise that habitual Twitter use can gratify people’s need to connect with other people on Twitter.
Before expanding on the theoretical foundation of this study, it makes sense to understand the history and meaning of social networks on the Internet. Before the Internet was called the world wide web in the early 1990s, people formed personal connections with each other through computer-conferencing systems, such as the WELL, short for Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (Rheingold, 2000). WELL members conversed via computer, shared alliances, formed bonds, and, in some cases, met in real life. As computer interactivity became more sophisticated, more robust and easier to use social networks developed. Social networks are defined as online environments where people create profiles about themselves and make links to other people on the site, creating a web of personal connections (boyd and Ellison, 2007, Donath and boyd, 2004). As such, Twitter fits this definition of an online social-networking site.
The first recognizable social network, SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997, and a rash of sites followed, including Ryze, MySpace, and then Facebook in 2004 (boyd & Ellison, 2007) and finally Twitter 2 years later. Twitter is seeing more growth than either MySpace or Facebook, according to figures from Alexa.com, the web-traffic ranking site2. Those figures show that for June 28, 2010, 6.45% of global Internet users visited Twitter, 2.52% visited MySpace, and 33.56% visited Facebook. Twitter’s percentage of global Internet visitors for that day was an increase of 25.79% since April 2010, compared with an increase of 10.04% for Facebook, and a drop of 16.7% for MySpace. While social networks tend to flourish and then flounder, at least at the moment, Twitter seems to have strong appeal.
Section snippets
Connection
Both Murray (1953) and Maslow (1987) defined needs as forces that push people in a certain direction to gratify those needs. They both identified a need to affiliate (Murray, 1953) or feel a sense of belonging (Maslow, 1987) that relate directly to this study’s concept of the need to connect with other people on Twitter. The need for connection with other people examined in this study relates to the broader idea of face-to-face sense of community (SOC), defined as “a feeling that members have
Survey design
A 21-question survey was designed using the free online SurveyGizmo program for use in this study. While online surveys have been found to have some weaknesses (Kaplowitz et al., 2004, Sheehan, 2001, Thompson et al., 2003), online surveys offer the advantage of reaching people who regularly use the Internet, a population vital to this study. Additionally, U&G research has found that self-reports are an accurate way for people to provide data about their media use and communication motives (
Results
H1 predicted that people who seek out Twitter most actively would gratify a need to connect with others on Twitter to a greater extent than other users, mediated by use of Twitter functions, while controlling for demographic variables. First bivariate relationships were assessed using Pearson’s r correlation coefficients. Results show a moderate positive relationship between active Twitter use (active months, r = .48, p < .01; hours per week, r = .44, p < .01) and gratification of the need to connect
Discussion
The U&G approach has been found to be a useful framework for Internet research (Bumgarner, 2007, Chung and Kim, 2008, Hollenbaugh, 2010, Johnson and Yang, 2009, Joinson, 2008, Kaye, 2005, Ko, 2000, Ko et al., 2005, LaRose and Eastin, 2004, LaRose et al., 2001, Raacke and Bonds-Raacke, 2008, Wu et al., 2010). U&G has been used more frequently in recent years to examine needs gratified through use of online applications, such as social media.
The interpersonal aspect of a social media such as
Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Midwinter Conference in Norman, Oklahoma, in March, 2010. The author thanks Ki Arnould for assisting with that version.
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