Welcome to Social Media, Volume 1
- Introduction
Defining Social Media and its relevance
- The Breakdown
Analyzing and Evaluating Social Media Technology
- Discussions
Featured Recommendations, Observations, and Inspiration
- Personal Best Practices
Utilizing Social Media for Personal Growth
- Professional Best Practices
Social Media in the Workplace
- Technology and Applications
The Power and Possibilities of Social Media
- Alphabetical Index
- Download Welcome to Social Media, Volume 1 (.pdf)
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Using Social Media to Better Meet Your Needs
May 30th, 2009
JD Drake
Why are people wasting time on Facebook/Twitter/Flickr/Ning, etc. when they should be talking to people face to face? This type of question is asked a lot by people who don’t yet “get” social media. Socializing with others is only one of the reasons to use social media. People are turning away from newspapers and television and turning to social media to obtain news, learn new things, and entertain each other with pictures, videos, music, and games. The reason this shift has begun is simple: social media can gratify certain needs better than older forms of media.
The uses and gratifications theory of communications uses the media consumer rather than the media message as its starting point, and explores a person’s communication behavior in terms of their direct experience with the media. Individuals are not acted upon by media and its message, they make a conscious choice of what medium to use and what messages to receive depending on how certain needs are met. These needs can be broken into four different categories:
- The need for entertainment and escapism
- The need to develop personal relationships
- The need to affirm or further develop a personal identity through knowledge and interests
- The need of surveillance, or the understanding of the surrounding world
We all use media to gratify these four needs. The type of media we choose to use depends on whether or not we feel our need is gratified by that media. The more gratification we receive from a particular medium, the more likely we are to return to that medium time and time again. Some people are content using the newspaper to obtain information about their community, escape, and develop an identity. Others develop a personal identity through the television shows they watch, and the personal relationships they feel they have developed with television personalities.
Ask anyone who regularly uses social media why they do so, and every reason they give can be attributed to one of the four needs. By using the Internet and mobile devices, social media has the advantage of utilizing four concepts that that are unique to the Internet, making it a medium that better gratifies the needs of the user:
Interactivity
The more the consumer has the ability to customize and interact with social media to better meet their needs, the more gratifications will be obtained, and the more the user will be dependent on that social media in the future. Obtaining news through television or the newspaper does not give one the ability to immediately interact with those that produce the news. Social media outlets such as Twitter, however, allow the user to immediately respond to a reporter and their audience directly and hopefully receive a response.
Demassification
No longer are we limited to socializing with those in our immediate surroundings. Through social media, similar interests, not geographic space, defines who we socialize with. Ning is a social media site designed specifically to bring people together based on their similar interests. There is a Ning community for almost every type of interest. Being active in an online community about something you are interested in is much more gratifying than passively watching a television program that you are only somewhat interested in. Additionally, interests define who we are, and social media allows us to further express and develop our personality with others.
Asynchroneity
The Internet has given the consumer more control over how and when to receive their news & entertainment. Consumers now control when they decide to consume media. This, of course, includes social media. If you are busy, do what you need to do, your social media friends will be there when you have a free moment. It is easy to catch up on the news of the day, respond to tweets, or comment on a friends’ picture when you have the free time. Socializing and consuming media on YOUR watch is far more gratifying than rearranging your entire day to fit a predetermined schedule.
Hypertextuality
Hypertextuality refers to the ability to create links to other web sites through pictures, words, graphs, and keywords. This can create a non-linear way of obtaining information online, like channel surfing on the Internet. Social media allows you to share links easily with anyone you want. Likewise, you are able to quickly see what several friends are interested in by following links they have posted. Once again, you and your friends are now in control over what media you consume and when you consume it.
These four concepts are ways that the Internet has made all of our lives a little easier, whether it’s by obtaining news, being entertained, socializing with friends, or expressing our personality. These are needs we all seek to gratify on a daily basis. Social media has proven to gratify all of these needs in a greater way than older forms of media. That is reason enough to believe that social media will continue to grow as it meets the needs of more and more people.
References
Littlejohn, S.W. (1999). Theories of Human Communication (6th edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company. Ruggiero, T.E. (2000). Uses and gratifications theory in the 21st century. Mass Communication & Society, 3, 3-37.
Topics: The Breakdown
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