Binary Characterization Of SNS Use

Since the Bulletin Board System there has been hundreds, and counting, of social networks created: most notably Twitter, Facebook, Kik, Snapchat, and Instagram. Today there are just over 3 billion active Internet users (45% of the world’s internet users), 2.1 billion of those people have social media accounts (Jeffbullas.com). People use social media for many numerous reasons. Most use social media to stay close to relatives and maintain social ties. Some of people’s most essential daily needs are accounted for by social media: whether it be interacting with friends or coworkers, following politics, or following the latest fashion trend set by the Kardashian

The Purpose of this article is to inform social media users of the types of media use that are frowned upon by other social media friends by entertaining readers with humorous anecdotes from personal, negative facebook experiences, with hopes to persuade users to avoid these facebook fails. The audience that the author is focusing on in the article is  facebook users. The author uses a topical pattern of organization in the article. The main subject was about facebook users and he broke down the different types of facebook users into

In fact, according to Alex York in his article written for the website, Sprout Social, Social Media Demographics to Inform a Better Segmentation Strategy, “76% of adults use Facebook daily. 51% of adults use Instagram daily. 42% of adults use Twitter daily” (York). Everytime we log onto social media we are bombarded with many different view points on a variety of topics. Social media is constantly telling us how we should look, how we should eat, how our relationships should be, and much more.

New innovations to technology have provided people easier and more frequent access to social media sites and apps. According to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority in 2014 social media was most commonly accessed via laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Social media is the number one thing Canadians do online. (CIRA, 2014). Every social media site posts the number of users that it has on a worldwide scale. Given this is a Canadian proposed study here are some statistics of Canadian social media use. According to a survey done by Canadian’s internet.com Business in 2015 about 56% use Facebook, 16% use instagram, 30% Linkedin and 25% use Twitter. (McKinnon, 2015)

The rapid growth of technology in our society has become more dominant than it was in the 17th and 18th century. Today, technology is used for almost everything in our day to day lives. But the most common usage of technology is for communication and industrialization. However, every good thing has its disadvantage if it is over used, and since technology has become very dominant, it is used by both young and older people but more predominant among the youth of the today. Even more, technology has brought about social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, my space, piazza.com, instagram, tango, and last but not the least texting. According to socialnetworking.procon.org, “47% of American adults used social networking sites like

Beer proposes three principles in which he discords with the definition of “social network sites”. He first underscores that the distinction between “network” and “networking” is unaccommodating and ambiguous, thus would cause the subtle differences of sites such as Youtube and Facebook to be blurry and inseparable. Defining sites simply by examining how people connects with each other overlooks the diverse functionality of SNSs nowadays. Second, Beer disagrees with the artificial segregation of both platforms, particularly concerning definitions of friends and social interactions as there are increasing online virtual relationships that are informing friendships in physical reality (Beer 520). With web 2.0, social media becomes the prime platform for communication, work and entertainment owing to its accessibility, permanence and mobility. Thirdly, Beers posits that the vague distinction between platforms enables and promotes online surveillance and anonymity, which leads to issues of physical safety, lack of authenticity and privacy. Consistent with other researcher who take on a capitalist perspective in studying SNS (Bigge 2006), Beer finally raises doubts with related to the software designs , the advertising techniques and claims for capitalist interests of SNSs. Overall, Beer places much emphasis on examining how the society is perpetuated through SNS. He renders a much

Edison Reasearch and The Arbitron Incorporation administered a survey in 2013 to provide statistics on behaviors and attitudes of people who access digital platforms. Their findings shed light on the use of social media networks and smartphones, which influence the quality of communication in society. This study found that six in ten Americans have a social profile on a SNS and that 71 million Americans show habitual use of social media. A thirty-eight percent increase in a five-year span of those who have a SNS, and a twenty-two percent increase of habitual users. The greatest growth rate is seen in people 55 and older, which is not surprising. People of this age group typically experience cultural lag, meaning it takes a bit more time

Being that social media is still fairly new to society, for some people it is easier to grasp than others. It seems to come easy for younger people who are now growing up in a society full of technology and social media. As for others, it can be hard to identify with social media as a tool. Caron and Light and Collins et al. had some participants of their studies that felt this way. Caron and Light’s and Collins et al.’s reports had an interesting commonality in recognizing how people may feel differently about the use of social media. Both reports expressed how social media is yet to be used by everyone, however, as of today, it is mostly accepted by

Zywica and Danowski studied two competing hypotheses in their 2008 study, social enhancement and social compensation, which parallel to Tsoa’s (1996) global use and deficiency paradigms respectively. Their study focused on the pattern of online and offline popularity on

* What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between "latent ties" (Haythornthwaite, 2005) who share some offline connection. On many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily "networking" or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. To emphasize this articulated social network as a critical organizing feature of these sites, we label them "social network sites."

Social network sites (SNSs) such as such as Friendster, CyWorld, and MySpace allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others (Ellison, 2007). These sites could be used for work related situation, romance, connecting with individuals with shared interest, or creating a connection amongst college students. Facebook enables its users to present themselves in an online profile, accumulate ‘‘friends’’ who can post comments on each other’s pages, and view each other’s profiles (Ellison, 2007). Individuals can write on the wall of friends, send private message, comment on posts, as well as chat via instant messaging. Much of the early research on online communities assumed that individuals using these systems would be connecting with others outside their pre-existing social group or location, liberating them to form communities around shared interests, as opposed to shared geography (Ellison, 2007).

Over the past few years something has taken a toll in most people’s lives, we use it, love it, talk about it, and check it almost every hour of every day: this thing is called social networks. It was only a few years back, in 2003, when MySpace was discovered, and in 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg established Facebook, and soon after in 2006 Twitter followed. These sites became more than just an online destination, but a way of life. Notifications, follower counts, friend requests, photo comments- all what might seem like silly things that teenagers and adults alike await the moment they come home to check. We scroll unconsciously through feeds and pictures of people we barely know, from the inquisitive human nature. At school everyone is

You are invited to participate in a research study on the uses of social network sites. This study is being carried out as part of my doctoral research for the DPhil in Information, Communication and the Social Sciences at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a leading research centre for the multidisciplinary study of the Internet and society at the University of Oxford. You can find out more on www.oii.ox.ac.uk

The article this review will discuss is Zhang Wang’s ‘A dynamic longitudinal examination of social media use, needs, and gratifications among college students’. Its main topic of discussion is the use, needs and gratifications of social media in college students, and he discusses the four ‘new’ media use behavioural patterns and their underlying motivation – emotional needs, cognitive needs, social needs, and habitual needs . Some basic questions the study aims to answer include: What needs drive individuals social media use? Are they fulfilled? How are the fluctuations in the needs and their fulfilment - or lack thereof - changing users’ behaviour over time?

Even though gratification structures that arise from the use of multiple SNSs are merely imagined, it is posited that they are not arbitrary. As Nagy and Neff (2015, p.6) note: “The perceptions of affordances are as much socially constructed for users as they are technologically configured.” This rationale explains why there were so many common themes and shared perceptions among interview participants about the gratifications of each site, despite the many possible interpretations of SNS affordances. By way of example, Facebook was overwhelmingly seen as a social space, while Twitter was overwhelmingly seen as an informational space. As has been argued previously, user perceptions are grounded in the socio-technological realities of SNSs and their perceptual cues, which are both socially and technologically configured. This is what creates shared beliefs, interpretations and similarities in SNS use patterns.