STUDY OF MOTIVATION, USER BEHAVIOR, AND EFFECT OF RENREN ONLINE AMONG CHINESE INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

MENGYUAN LI

LEWIS DEPARTMENT OF HUNMANITIES

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Definition and Brief History of Social Network Services

In the work “Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship” by D. M. Boyd, and N. B.

Ellison, (2008), social network sites were defined as web-based services that allow individuals to

(1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2)

articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3)

view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the

system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site

to site.[1]

The social network service is an Internet platform to make individuals become the information sender. The individual becomes the ontology in the Internet. And individuals can spread information in forms of peer-to- peer or peer-to-desired-group. First social network service “SixDegree.com” was established in 1997. From 1997 to 2001, some social network opened for a limited group of people for special reasons such as working or research connections.

They provide services like creating a user profiles and sharing the profiles with users‟ permission. Ryze.com is one of them. It is for business connections of IT people in the San Francisco area. In 2002, a complement of

Ryze.com, became one of the successful social network services at that time. However, due to the limitation of technology, social collisions, and a rupture of trust between users and the site, [2]

Friendster failed to maintain its user group. Daily visits deduced and the influence of Friendster gradually faded for the Internet. After 2003, the social network service boomed. MySpace became one of the most competitive ones. MySpace targeted early users of

Friendster. It was not limited to a specific group of users. Some music bands came to set up their personal page on MySpace; and their fans followed them. MySpace has gained its popularity through this attractive feature.

Then in 2005, the social network became a world phenomenon because of which was launched in 2004.

The simple social network spread its influence all over the world in 2006, when they opened registration to anyone who was over 13 years old and had a valid Email address. Almost at the same time, Renren has rapidly gained its Chinese university student users. From 2007 to now, Facebook, Renren and other social network services were able to increasingly add new features to attract users. More and more people open their accounts on these social network sites.

1.2 Brief History of Renren Social Network Services

Renren, formally known as Xiaonei, is a social network service (SNS) which started in 1999. However, based on the Internet environment at that time, other investors were not optimizing social networks in .

The website temporally closed in 2001. In 2005, China

InterActive Corp took charge of Xiaonei. Xiaonei‟s target users were university students at first. It is very similar to Facebook. But it only allows users‟ email in a college or university on the Chinese mainland at first which was to make sure that all of their users were university students. Today‟s Xiaonei allows university students to upload photos, write blogs, and leave messages. It encourages students to use their real names and avatars. In 2006, Xiaonei opened its registration to high school students and professionals. In July 2007,

Xiaonei officially facilitated its Open Platform, allowing third party companies or individuals to integrate with platforms by rendering modifications and adding functionalities. [3] The APIs Xiaonei listed are quite similar with those Facebook provides, and some of the developers of Xiaonei are developing based on the SDK of Facebook. After that, Xiaonei provides a lot of applications like games and chatting tools with third party companies and individuals. In 2009, Xiaonei officially changed its name to Renren and linked to several video and document sharing websites to provide more convenient information sharing procedures to users.

As is the success of Facebook in North America and

European countries, the Renren network is popular among

Chinese university students and spread its influences to high school students and university graduates. The popularity of Renren network resulted from the intensive from 2005 to 2007 in leading Chinese universities. The network has spread to other groups of people with its high popularity especially after 2008, when the Chinese government blocked Facebook in mainland

China for lack of a censorship agreement with Facebook.

There is no doubt that Renren found its best time to become the top social network service in China. Renren announced that in April 2011, there were 31 million monthly active users and 160 million users in total.

However, compared to Facebook, the coverage of

Renren does not rank in the absolute first place among

Chinese social networks. Its competitors like QQzone (based on QQ online chatting tools like MSN), Kaixin social network service (which first opened to public, and targets at all age users), social network service

(which is established by the same company with QQzone, also targets university students) and Weibo (the Chinese version of ) are sharing the market of Chinese online social network services.

1.3 The Chinese International Students Group Situation

The Chinese international students group is a very special one in Renren SNS user groups. Because they are away from the Chinese mainland, and their information (or news) of Chinese society are mostly come from the

Internet. With the help of developing Internet, information travels faster than any time before. Renren is a platform that with information shared from people the students have already known in China and newly met at

Illinois Institute of Technology. Chinese international students also have their groups in offline lives, but it seems like the groups are isolated from the urban south

Chicago communities. So the SNS is more likely important to students‟ lives because the methods of transferring information are limited by circumstances. The other ways of getting information are traditional media like newspapers (mostly from the Chinese newspapers that students can get in Chinatown) and new media like portal

Internet websites.

I had conducted a study in relationships between

Renren users who are studying at Illinois Institute of

Technology in spring semester, 2011. The study indicates that the “entry year” of Illinois Institute of Technology has more influence in Chinese international grouping online relationships. There are several reasons for the result:

1) The students entered Illinois Institute of

Technology in each year have connected to each

other through online chatting rooms;

2) They share the same information for the same

year; the situation for living information

would be different from year to year;

3) Most student enter in the same year has the

similar age, the communication between students

in the same age are easier.

As the social network services developing, the information transfer rate is also getting increasingly faster. Users are able to experience this development through everyday use. When users review the postings from friends, related users‟ personal living situations and information which they concern about would be also learned by other users. For most of the social network active users, this information was taken as a “benefit” from the sharing information. However, if take every user who posts information on the social network websites as an sender unit, the social network websites turned every posting as a piece of information which would spread from one user to his or her desired peer groups. Users‟ function in the social networks has been divided into two sides. One is the receiver of this kind of media; the other one is the communicator. So every user has their friends as media sources on social network.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The motivation of users of online social network services, user behavior on social network services, and effect of social network services are very attractive research problems for communication researchers.

Previously, some American researchers have studied the

Facebook and its users.

Motivation and User Behavior

Adam N. Joinson conducted the first study of 137 participants, 53 males and 88 females with mean age of

26.3. 37.9% of the respondents indicate that they are using Facebook to keep in touch with old friends. And the ordering of the factors that affect people using Facebook from important to not so important is: “keeping in touch”,

“passive contact, social surveillance”, “re-acquiring lost contacts”, “communication”, “photographs”, “design related”, “perpetual contact” and “making new contacts”.

This result explains why the problem users need to use

Facebook. [4]

The second study had investigated 241 Facebook users,

80 males and 161 females with mean age of 25.97. Half of the participants have registered in Facebook for less than six months. 38.8% of the total participants visited the website daily and 27.5% of the total for more than once a day. 22.5% of the participants visited Facebook several times a week. Only 10.9 % of the participants visit Facebook once a week or even less frequent. In the second study, the result presented that “finding people you haven‟t seen for a while”, “joining groups”, “tagging photos”, “using applications within Facebook”, “stalking other people”, “viewing other people‟s friends” and

“seeing what people have put as their status” are the most used functions in Facebook. The author also has found out younger users have more social connection, photographs, usage levels, friends, and more privacy on their profile. And if someone wants to know more new people, he or she is suggested to change their profile privacy lower.

Danah Boyd had written a paper to record her interviews with group of teenagers who are between the ages of fourteen to eighteen. Her investigate target is MySpace, which is a very large social network since 2003.

[6]

Her most important finding in the paper is how the relationship between teenagers and the public was promoted by the social networks. She collected the data to find the reason that why teenagers love social network so much. From the long term interviews with teenagers, she found out that the teenagers learned to adjust to public through meeting unfamiliar others. Besides exchange information, people still want to keep privacy.

When the Internet plays role as a media, technology was finally able to meet the needs of human rapid transmission of information. Users can control the privacy level of their communication by using the

Internet. When teenagers have to face the reality, many problems will be obstacles to their cognition of the society. Because the social network is a platform that make the communication from individual to individual, the communication between teenagers through the social network service will become a benefit for the communication online is joined together with the whole society. Social network services make the communications less different between youth and other part of the society. So the social network definitely helped the teenagers to integrate into the society. That is the explanation to why youth love the social network. In 2007, F. Fu, et al. had written an empirical analysis of statistical properties of two Chinese online social networks, one is Sina blogging and the other is Renren

(it was Xiaonei at that time). [9]

They first tracked sub-community users‟ relationships in the Sina blogging group with 200,292 nodes, and then they collected user relationship between

396,836 nodes in Renren. Renren has the feature as an undirected friend‟s relationship, which means users establish relationship on both side. But Sina blogging has a directed relationship, like one user can only follow others. This relationship does not require the other one follow back.

The researchers justified that both websites are small-world and scale-free social networks, investigated the distribution of topological distance of both sites, and respectively studied the degrees of all in and out features. They finally came to the conclusion that the

Sina blogging network showed to be a disassortative mixing pattern, and Renren is assertive one. While combined with the conclusion “network are often disassortatively mixed” from M. E. J. Newman, (Phys. Rev.

Lett. 89, 208701 (2002)), [10] the author gets the conclusion that Renren is partially different with the general networks. The author analyzed the reason is because the undirected relationships in Renren. However, the other reason seemed that Renren also kept offline connections between users. That means, because some of the relationship online is based on the connection in real life, the Renren social network is more assortative than other networks.

Another study of the using patterns of Chinese social network service platforms has been conducted by

J.Wu and Z. Fu in Tsinghua University. They desired to study the publishing on the website by observing users‟ postings and interviewing users. The observation is conducted by sorting the postings to specific categories and timeline. [11] Researchers tracked 80 users of social network services they studied. And then they collect interview data from 25 randomly selected of the users they had tracked.

The methods of analyzing using patterns of social network platforms have two advantages: (1) the tracking of posts are not affected by other users‟ ideas of what they have done on the Internet; (2) as an additional material of tracking postings, interviewing will be able to obtain information about users‟ reasons and other influences as well.

The result of this research indicated that Sina

Weibo had been a service to control most users close friendship than Renren. But Renren still take care of strong ties of communications between users and their friends who they have known each other in every level of education. The result also shows that Chinese people consider social network seriously, they take care about the notification time to time rather than keep looking at it through the day. Kaixin social network service provides a game named “happy farm” is the most attracting point of the website. Some users admitted that they use

Kaixin only for that online game.

H. Wang and A. Chin from Nokia Research Center in

Beijing have done a research of users. Because of the development of mobile devices like smart phones, the social networks began to provide the platform on mobile devices. [15]

The researchers tracked 34980 mobile social network users in an 11-months period. They have found out that user activities influence their popularity. The more users update their profile, status, or other information, the more popularity they will gained.

Effects from the Social Network

Anne Hewitt and Andrea Forte had done some researches in finding how Facebook have influenced the relationship between students and their professors in university. In their studies, there is no significant difference between students who have shared friends profile with the professor. However, 73% male students take this survey like to have professor on Facebook and

65% female students said “No” to their professors. [5]

From this paper, the author presents that there are many seasons to affect the research result. The study sample number is relatively small. Despite the ratings to the professors, students took the survey reported that they think there are positive effect from Facebook to their professors. However, I am expecting to see social network services will have some impact between students.

This is hard to predict because the private lives of each individuals are different and the attitudes from each other will be influenced by the social network services.

In this study, the effect of Facebook is measured from one group of people to one specific person who has a

Facebook profile and the other one who does not. I designed my research based on users‟ general impression about how much Renren had promoted their relationship with other groups of friend.

Nicole B. Ellison et al. had conducted a research in

Facebook to analysis how social network brings the social capital to college students. [7]

They conducted a survey of 286 undergraduate students in Michigan State University to get their desired result for explaining the relationship between social capital and the social network services. The research is demand to find out the social capital implications of the social network services. From their survey results, the researchers had concluded their findings as the Facebook appears to be a significant tool of forming and maintaining social capital. And the social capital is generally as all three kinds of social capital that they mentioned in the paper: bridging, bonding, and maintained social capital. Students had confirmed that they use the social network for friends‟ offline connection. The functions of Facebook were able to keep the connections with friends in other cities which you lived before, and also connect to the new friends that living in the same area. Also the intensity of using

Facebook has effect on the users‟ cognition to their friends, lives, and the Michigan State University.

From the researches that presented by American researchers, the Facebook and other social network services help the communication between youth to peers and older people. The social network certainly worked well among users. And this is probably the reason that why social network is rapidly developing in the United

States.

Another survey conducted by J. Ye from Georgia State

University. [14] The author‟s target was to find out the acculturative stress, interpersonal social support, and use of online ethnic social groups among Chinese international student. The participants from the survey are 112 Chinese international students from two large diverse universities in southeastern United States. The survey consulted two other works for measuring the acculturative stress and the assessment of interpersonal support networks in the United States. And participants were also asked what kinds of online tools to promote their communication.

The conclusion from the survey showed that male and older students report a higher level of stress caused by acculturation, in contrast, female and younger students were more satisfied with the interpersonal support networks.

The survey did not find negative impact from the communication with social groups. And the result suggested that online ethnic groups can be an effective resource for reducing acculturative stress. The communication will help international student find belongings and sharing information with the people have same oriented culture background. Thus, international students would benefit from the online social groups and reduce loneliness in the other country.

Comparison of Renren and Other Social Networks

Lin Li investigated both Facebook and Renren for his study in 2011. [8] This case study is carried out with comparing the rankings of both sites in different facets. The author consulted the Alex Web Traffic rankings to analyzing the difference of the two sites. Facebook has the second busiest website all over the world, and Renren ranked102 in the mean time. Then the author studied the data of user behavior on visiting pages, searching social network services through search engines, and demographics of users for both site. Renren users are mostly students, which affect the traffic of the website for different time of year.

The conclusion of this paper has presented a clear comparison result from the case study:

Table 2.1 Comparison Result of Facebook and Renren [8]

Facebook Renren

Diversity of sources Diversify the sources Single source

Age group Various to all age groups Mainly 18-34

Sex ratio Men-to-Women Mostly women

The conclusion has provided some distinctions between Facebook and Renren. However, these results will be different in the Chinese international students group.

Because the Chinese international student group is a special one in user groups of Renren. The situation of studying, living, and working are different between the whole groups of users and international student users.

Also in 2011, Y. Li from Harbin Normal University have conducted a survey to 308 randomly picked students with most of them between 19 to 25 years old. Her survey is to find out the status of social network services in

Chinese mainland. [12]

To evaluate the status, the author developed the survey to three parts. Survey participants were asked about which social network they have registered and how frequent they use, what functions of the social network services they use, and how users think about the effect from the social network to their daily life.

Results of this survey have showed that QQzone and

Renren are the most popular Chinese social network services for university students. Chinese university students demand entertaining, making friends, and multimedia leisure from social network services. However, the Chinese social network cannot fulfill the demands of users according to the survey. Chinese students also have the tendency of keeping their communication range to the people they have known through their schools. The phenomenon of unwilling to contact strangers were discovered by the survey.

They previous researches from both Chinese and

American scholars covered a lot of conclusions about motivation, user behavior, and effect of social networks, which provide reference of this paper. The methods of survey and tracking users‟ postings are delivered after consulting these literatures. METHODS

The project goals are to study (1) users‟1 motivation of using Renren social network service; (2) users‟ behavior on Renren social network service; (3) whether

Renren social network service really helps users‟ relationship with the other users they connected.

To investigate my results, two methods were used to collect data from users of Renren and the actions of user groups on the website. They are survey and tracking postings. The sample groups of the two methods were different Renren users that were the Chinese international students. These two methods of collecting data made the results were possible to be directly concluded from the users‟ survey results and their behavior on Renren. What users thought about Renren will be examined in the result of the survey. In order to get more accurate measures of their performance on Renren, the postings also reveal their favorite function of

Renren or the function that they use most on Renren.

After the data was collected, the comparison analysis would be conducted to the survey result and the tracking posts to evaluate user behavior on Renren.

1 Users are Chinese international student in Illinois Institute of Technology 3.1 Online survey

This project included a user motivation, behavior and effect-evaluation survey of Renren. The target participants for this survey are Chinese international students in IIT. This survey was for collecting data for all three goals of the project. It is designed for every level of Chinese International student in IIT. Also, the survey is designed for students in different departments.

The survey was issued on September 13, 2011, and closed in October 13, 2011.

A total number of 113 users from Chinese

International student community (79 male users, 34 female users) in IIT participated in this survey. 42 from Armour

College of Engineering, 35 from College of Science and

Letters, 32 from Stuart School of Business, 1 from

College of Architecture, 1 from Institute of Food Safety and Health, 1 from School of Applied Technology, and 1 from the College of Psychology. None of Chicago Kent-law

School and Institute of Design students had participated in the survey. Chinese students are mostly studying in

Armour College of Engineering, College of Science and

Letters, and Stuart School of Business is the reason of the significant difference between the numbers of users in different schools.

In the survey, participants were asked to fill up a questionnaire included 16 questions. There were 2 questions about the motivations of user while using

Renren. Users‟ answers directly indicated their motivation of using Renren. The question like “What‟s the reason for you to use Renren?” could let the user choose their reasons to use Renren. There were some choices in this question about the issue. The reasons that listed are:

• Keep in touch with old friends • Making new contact in IIT • Passive contact, Social surveillance • Re-acquiring lost contacts • Uploading Photographs • Playing games in Renren2 • Sharing information

These choices were all functions of Renren and they were the selected from Adam N. Joinson‟ work. [3] In order not to limit participants‟ responses to the choices given in this question, the following one was an open question for participants to make the answer as specific as possible. Participants‟ responses were direct. So the results would clearly indicate the users‟ motivation. The answers to these two questions meet the requirement of our first desired goal.

Secondly, the following three other questions were about the users‟ self-evaluation of their own behavior on

Renren. Self-evaluation is one of the methods to judge user behavior in Renren. I asked the user to evaluate

2 third party applications their frequency for updating postings on Renren to share information both outside the Renren (videos and URLs) and inside Renren (blogs and photos). The frequency of using every function was a significant parameter of analyzing user behavior on social network services. Users need to recall their behavior online to answer these questions.

The behavior reflected what users like to do on Renren.

However, memories are not explicit choice descriptions will result in an inaccurate conclusion. So, this project also adapted the tracking postings as another method of evaluating behavior on Renren. Results from these two approaches could be inferred to the rules of user behavior.

The third part of the survey was a set of six questions that were designed to gauge what the users think about

Renren social network service. Renren social network may have influenced users‟ relationship with their friends.

As I had mentioned in introduction, users usually have an education background in their profiles. Renren encourages users find their friends and acquaintances in their elementary schools, high schools, and collages. The links between friends are strong ties; others between acquaintances are weak ties. In this survey, strong ties and weak ties were not separated. Participants were asked whether their relationships were promoted by Renren. The relationships were divided into three types: (1) relationship with old friends in China; (2) relationship with old friends who met in China but now in US; (3) relationship with new friends in IIT. Chinese international students usually go back to China once per year, some of the students have never returned to China since they come to US. Chinese international students are limited by the communication tools when they contact with their friends. Compare to the relationships with friends in China, users‟ relationships with their old friends in

US and the relatively new friend go to the same universities in US may be closer in offline lives.

Because they can see each other, some of the relationships are maintained offline. There is also considerable amount of information passing thought the group in and between the Chinese international students.

For the social network users, their information sharing behavior mutually restrains with the feature of social network. And these factors also determined users‟ satisfaction. In the third part of the survey, the questions contained inquiry of users‟ attitude of the information they had got from Renren. In the Internet environment nowadays, the information transmission rate is more than users‟ expectation. As information sharing is one of the most important functions in Renren, which passed the information from individual to individual, the users‟ satisfaction toward the information quantity and quality is also very important.

After collecting results from the survey, data analysis had been processed to a conclusion. For analyzing users‟ motivation of Renren, the choice which was chosen most frequently and participants‟ explanation will be considered as the significant reference. The biggest number in percentage of each choice would be a key motivation. The user behavior and effects from Renren analysis will be focus on the means, median, and standard deviation on the data.

3.2 Tracking users behavior on Renren

This approach was designed to analysis user behaviors in another method. When considering the data of users‟ self-evaluation on their own behavior on Renren, I was asking user about evaluations on their own performance. The survey contains 4 self-evaluation questions to get the data from participants. However, only self-evaluation could not accurately measure user behavior on Renren. There is another approach to evaluate user behavior on Renren. That is to tracking what they are posting (or doing) on their personal pages.

The method of tracking of users‟ postings has been a traditional method of evaluating user behavior on website and services. The amount of the postings (which classified as “new ” in Facebook and Renren) of different people can be compared. I may find interesting differences when we compare the postings behaviors across user demographics.

3.2.1 Procedures

The postings of selected users were tracked day by day from September 13, 2011 to October 13, 2011. Same as

Facebook, Renren has all friends‟ new postings are showed in the column of “most recent stories”. Renren has the function to categorize your friends into groups. However, the new stories cannot be automatically separated as the users group. So when tracking users‟ postings, I need to refresh the postings every day. The postings which collected for this method are in forms of changing status, sharing information, uploading photos, and writing blogs.

These four features are the key features in Renren. In addition to find the relationship between users‟ popularity and the number of postings, the numbers of history visitors are recorded. The popularity was measured by numbers of the visitors because the more visitors had seen user‟s profile and updates, the more people one can influence.

When tracking the users‟ performance, classification of content of all pieces of the information is also important. User posts for a reason. The contents of the postings are keys of the users‟ concerns. The postings were classified into categories of “life”, “news”,

“education”, “technology”, “art”, “fun”, “emotion”,

“sports”, “technology”, “history and politics”.3 To avoid duplicated classification, I put every posting in only one category. For those postings that fall into more than one content category, I consider the first motivation of the posting. For example, the new posting of changing status to “I watched movie called „summer war‟ tonight, it‟s so fantastic!” will be classified to category “art”, not “life”, because the motivation of this status focus on the comment to the movie. If user says “I would go to see „summer war‟ tonight. Who would like to go with me?”

That status falls in the category of “life” because this status is stating one thing that could happen in our daily life.

To examine how user behavior will affect the popularity of user, the number of postings will be put into diagrams. The means of postings for comparing groups of users would also be taken as significant information for user behavior.

3.2.2 Measure Criteria

Users‟ postings appear on Renren every day. And the postings have various attributes (topics, length, and so

3 This method of classification was first use in this paper. The categories are chosen from the topics in other media like newspapers and portal websites. on). The key factor to receivers to view the postings is the senders‟ motivation. Postings are listed in “new stories” for browse.

Based on this user behavior of looking at the postings, the measurement of postings can be sort into content of information. Then calculate the means of postings in each content category in each gender in every major. In this way, the postings can be measured in numbers from demographics in different topics. The pages of each user‟s new postings could reflect their amount of postings during September 13 to October 13. In order to find out relationships between the numbers of postings and numbers of visiting friends, which means the popularity of users the comparison of numbers of less active users and more active users will be conducted. In this way, how user behavior affect the popularity will be studied.

RESULTS

4.1 Demographics

113 users have taken the survey, 31% of them are female, and 69% of them are male. This number is disproportionate with the gender balance of my IIT

Chinese friends who have Renren account. For tracking the postings from the randomly selected 142 users, 44% of them are female. The gender ratio is more balancing in the method of tracking users‟ behavior, which may due to the low level of activity of female users. The survey was posted as a “new event” in Renren. The group of low activity users had less possibility to see the survey online. Both investigated users for survey and tracking covered all colleges and majors of IIT.

4.2 Motivation of Using Renren

In the survey, users directly selected their motivation. According to the proportion distribution,

“keeping in touch with old friends” was the most frequently reported reason. 86% of the participated users selected this choice. Renren has a huge number of users, which is an advantage for user to keep in touch with their friends. Users are always trying to use one convenient method to contact as many friends as possible.

Renren is one of the first five popular social network services in China. And Renren major target users are still students. Chinese international students have their old friends mostly went to same school when they were in

China. Although Renren started its service in 2005, users can find many of their friends have known each other before 2005 on Renren. That made users can find their non-contact school mate by searching for people in the same school. 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

percentage

Figure 4.1 Distribution of User’s Motivation for Using Renren

“Sharing information” was the second most important reason for users to use Renren. In the data of tracked postings, the number of sharing postings was the largest of any other numbers of postings. The information that shared by users are various. And users‟ sharing postings were in forms of photos, blogs, and videos.

In the diagram, the percentages of user which choose other reasons are in 25% to 33% except “playing games in

Renren” and “others”, which meant that around one quarter of participants had various reasons to use Renren including “making new contacts in IIT”, “passive contact, social surveillance”, “re-acquiring lost contacts”, and

“uploading photos”.

Some of the participants explained their reasons to use Renren in the following open question. But after investigating the reasons that participants provided in the open question, 83% of the answers still focused on the information that their friends shared on Renren; 17% believe that the information on Renren is fascinating to browse as a source of information from peers.

4.3 User Behavior Evaluation

4.3.1 The findings from the survey

In the survey, participants were asked about their everyday use of Renren. Renren have several key features:

1. writing comments on friends‟ message board, 2. sharing information, 3. adding friends on friends list, 4. writing blogs, 5. uploading photos, 6. looking at friends‟ profiles.

When analyzing the data from the survey, users‟ evaluation choices were measured on a scale from 1 to 5.

The more users use the function of Renren, the larger number they selected in the survey result. For example, 5 referred to “several times a day”, 4 referred “nearly every day”, 3 referred to “a few times a week”, 2 referred to “less than once a week”, and 1 referred to

“never”.

Table 4.1 Mean, Median and Standard Deviation of User Behavior Self-evaluation Median Mean Standard Deviation Writing comments on photos and message board of your old 3 3.03 0.90981 friends in China Writing comments on photos and message board of your old 3 2.97 0.81014 friends in US Writing comments on photos and message board of your old 3 2.94 0.826105 friends in IIT Finding old friends who you known in China that not on your 2 2.26 0.839825 friends list Finding old friends in US that not on your friends list 2 2.23 0.897161

Adding new people in IIT in your friends list 2 2.29 0.880631

Looking at profile, blogs and photo updates of old friends in 3 3.31 1.007725 China Looking at profile, blogs and photo updates of old friends in US 3 3.34 0.983953

Looking at profile, blogs and photo updates of new friends in IIT 3 3.23 0.988092

Uploading and tagging Photographs 2 2.34 0.714857

Changing status on Renren 3 2.77 0.928462

Sharing URLs, Videos, and pictures on Renren 3 3.06 1.067517

From the survey result, the top three frequently

user behaviors in the survey were all looking at the

profiles and updates of their friends. The behaviors are

used to get updated information from users friends, which

is a one-way communication. While users‟ friends updated

information on the social network, the information was

sent. Whether users accept the information is depending

on they look at the postings or not. The actions of

information senders and receivers do not influence each

other. Friends spend time and effort to convey the

conversation when they contact offline. This passive method of retrieving information does not need the communicator a specific period of time. Although senders could know who have seen the information, users‟ behaviors are independent to each other. This passive method of accepting information can avoid the embarrassment of demanding for information. The embarrassment of communication face to face is one of the problems solved by social networks. [15] The disadvantage of this method is the information and feedback cannot be preceded to receiver immediately. If communicators need immediate feedback, he or she needs to choose other media for communication.

4.3.2 Result and analysis from tracking the postings.

From September 13, 2011 to October, 2011, all 142 selected users in Renren SNS from Chinese international student group of IIT posted 2691 updates in total. All postings are divided into categories in forms of changing status, sharing information (videos from the outside websites, photos, and blogs from other Renren users), uploading photos, and writing blogs. Each posting has one topic. The postings had already been classified into topics categories about “life”, “news”, “education”,

“technology”, “art”, “fun”, “emotion”, “sports”,

“technology”, “history and politics”. To evaluate how users distinctively perform on the social network, the comparison of numbers of postings had been analyzed.

1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

Total Male Female

Figure 4.1 Distributions of Postings for Tracked Users

Figure 4.1 showed the total number of postings of male and female in each college and school of IIT. Male users in Armour College of Engineering had posted most new stories on Renren. Only in College of Architecture, female students have more postings than male users.

(There are no data from male users from College of

Psychology and Institute for Food Safety and Health, so the two colleges were not taken into account.) The means of postings were shown in the following table 4.2. All data sets have indicated that males are more active than females in the social network. 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 total 400 male 200 0 female

Figure 4.2 Distributions of Postings in Each Category

12

10

8

6

4 total

2 male female 0

Figure 4.3 Averages of Postings in Each Category

From figure 4.2 and 4.3, the result clearly showed that the most attractive information for Chinese international student was concern about the everyday life.

Follow that, funny things and arts are also common topics of users‟ posts, which were both related to entertainment.

Male students had shared more postings related to sports, news, and funny things. These results were probably due to the motivation of users. Chinese international students like to share information on Renren which has abundant resources of the living information. Some of the information was directly provided by friends through status, blogs, and photos. Others were provided by the sharing of others status, blogs, and photos. Besides keeping in touch with friend, they also used Renren for entertaining, so funny things and arts were popular information among investigated users.

Table 4.2 Mean of Postings and Numbers of Visitors

postings of postings of numbers of numbers of male female visitors of visitors of male female 23.8 16.7 4279 4579 Armour College of Engineering 18.4 9 3189 3774 College of Science and Letters 41 5 17692 4022 School of Applied Technology* 28 61.3 2196 4243 College of Architecture* 30.5 5978 College of Psychology* 6.6 3418 Institute for Food Safety and Health 16 16.6 3757 6895 Stuart School of Business The categories with “*” in the table had no more than five samples. So the mean numbers were not comparable with the other numbers. The result of the comparison indicated that the Armour College of

Engineering student updates their new stories most frequent; however, the frequency of updating information did not help the popularity of the user. Female users of

Stuart School of Business had the largest number of visitors with their updating frequency was on only the fourth place among the all group of users. However, the other interesting result revealed that the male got fewer visitors than female users, no matter their updates are more or less. L. Li‟s work had already analysis the reason of this phenomenon. The Renren social network is based on female users. Females have their own connection, and males look for females in Renren. [8]

4.4 Evaluation of Effect

This project adapted the method of analyzing survey result to find the benefits that Renren brings to users.

In the survey, participants were asked to rate the effect of Renren to their communication with friends. The data was measured in scales from 1 to 5. The more users agreed with the statement and the more users desired the information, the more score they give.

Table 4.3 Medians, Means, and Standard Deviation of Effect and Demographics of Users

Median Mean Standard Deviation Do you agree that using Renren gives you more 4 4.26 0.805086 information about old friends in China? Do you agree that using Renren gives you more 4 4.11 1.007725 information about old friends in US? Do you agree that using Renren gives you more 4 4.34 0.790763 information about new friends in IIT? Do you agree that using Renren gives you more 4 3.97 0.970588 information about life surrounding IIT, Chicago? Do you agree that using Renren gives you more 4 3.87 1.099165 information about the international news and events? Would you like to receive more information of old friends 4 4.26 0.730669 in China? Would you like to receive more information of old friends 4 4.14 0.989743 in US? Would you like to receive more information of current 4 4.09 0.967218 friends in IIT? Would you like to receive more information about life 4 4.03 0.94069 surrounding IIT, Chicago? Would you like to receive more information about the 4 4 1.014185 international news and events? From the data set, users‟ responses indicated that

Renren had helped their communication with all friends not only in China but also in United States. Nevertheless, users still want to get more information about their friends. This may due to the motivation of users. They want to keep in touch with their friends on Renren, so they need their friends‟ information as much as possible.

In contrast, users felt Renren has given them less information for living and international news and events. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS

5.1 Conclusions

After analyzed the survey and tracking records of user behavior online, the answer to the proposed question had been discovered. Different from the Chinese mainland students‟ motivation of getting entertained by social networks, Chinese international students use Renren mostly for the reason of keeping in touch with the old friend. This is mainly because they are away from home.

Renren is one of the communication tools for Chinese international student maintaining their social capital in

China.

Second, although male users were more active than female users on Renren, female users are still more popular than male users. The information user are mostly interesting in is about living information and entertainment. User like passive accepting method of retrieving information because of the method does not embarrassing information senders and receivers.

Third, generally speaking, users are satisfied with the help of Renren have given to their communication with friends. Especially with the friend that users have known in China and has been separated now. 5.2 Future Works

(1) More user experience test could be conducted to

Renren. The result of test can give suggestions about the information sorting in Renren. If Renren has some functions like tagging postings and classify the information to categories. Users can only retrieve information that they interested in. It can solve the problem of information redundancy.

(2) Researchers can design a detailed experiment of analyzing whether active users can have more popularity or not. There are many factors to influence the popularity of users, such as number of friends and the characteristic of the person. The research can be conducted with several groups with different factors.

Examination the popularity of each group will give a reliable result of this question.

(3) More user behavior research can be conducted with international student. And analyzing the results of the posting needs to be related with their majors, sex, and education levels. Interviews can also be combined into the research. It is a good method to study the individual cases in online social network.

APPENDIX A

SURVEY INSRUMENT

This is a survey that helps researchers working on analysis of Renren relationship. For

Chinese IIT students, please notify that in some of those questions, your old friend in

US means you know your friend before you are admitted by IIT, like your senior high school classmates, who are now in other parts of US. There are 16 questions in this survey. The question with "*" are require to answer.

* Required

1. How long have you have been using Renren? *

A. more than 5 years B. 3 to 4 years C. 1 to 2 years D. less than 1 year E. I don't remember

2. How many hours do you spend on Renren per week? *

A. more than 50 hours B. 35 to 50 hours C. 10 to 35 hours D. less than 10 hours E. I just get on RENREN once per week or even less

3. Why do you use Renren? *

A. Keep in touch with old friends B. Making new contact in IIT C. Passive contact, Social surveillance D. Re-acquiring lost contacts E. Uploading Photographs F. Playing games in Renren (third party application) G. Sharing information (videos, pictures, etc.) H. Others, please specify in the next question

4. What other reasons for you to use Renren?

5. How frequently do you use these features? *

several nearly a few less than never times a everyday times a once a week day week Writing comments on photos and message board of your old friends in China Writing comments on photos and message board of your old friends in US Writing comments on photos and message board of your old friends in IIT Finding old friends who you known in China that not on your friends list Finding old friends in US that not on your friends list Adding new people in IIT in your friends list Looking at profile, blogs and photo updates of old friends in China Looking at profile, blogs and photo updates of old friends in US Looking at profile, blogs and photo updates of new friends in IIT Uploading and tagging

Photographs Changing status on Renren

Sharing URLs, Videos, and pictures on Renren

6. Which function do you like best of Renren? *

A. Updating status B. Sharing blogs and photos C. Upload photos and tagging people D. Writing blogs E. Writing comments on status, sharings, blogs, and photos F. Other, please specify on the next question

7 If you like the other functions of Renren, please specify it here and explain in a few words why you like the function you like best. *

8. How do you look at the information about your friends that from Renren? *

A. There are too many messages. I don’t always take a look at each of them. B. I sometimes look at the updates for pleasure, but I do not like to spend too much time to look at them. C. The information is just what I want to know, I like to check the updates with some of my best friends and share my information. D. I don’t like any of the information. I just playing games/chatting with my friends on Renren. E. Other, please specify in the next question.

9. What other thoughts about the information your friends shared in Renren? 10. Do you agree that using Renren gives you more information in the features below than not using it? *

Very much Somewhat Somewhat Disagree I don't agree disagree at all know The information of old friends in China The information of old friends in US The information of current friends in IIT The information about life surrounding IIT, Chicago The information about the international news and events

11. Would you like to receive more of the following types of information from friends in Renren? *

As much as Somewhat likely I don't I don't possible to know care know The information of old friends in China The information of old friends in US The information of current friends in IIT The information about life surrounding IIT, Chicago The information about the international news and events

Demographic

These questions is for identify your groups of student. It can help us to know whether your ideas are the same with people who have same demographic with you.

12. How old are you? *

A. 28 and above B. 25 to 27 C. 22 to 24 D. 19 to 21 E. 18 and below

13 How long have you been to US? *

A. 4 years or longer B. 3 years C. 2 years D. 1 year E. 18 and below

14 What’s your department? *

A. Electrical and Computer Engineering B. Chemical and Biology Engineering C. Finance Engineering D. Applied Mathematics E. Chemistry F. Biology G. Physics H. Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering I. Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering J. Biomedical Engineering K. Law L. Architecture M. Psychology N. Computer Science O. Humanity P. Mathematics and Science Education Q. Social Science R. Design S. Institute of Food Safety and Health T. School of Applied Technology

15 What is your gender? *

A. female B. male C. I don't want to tell you

16 How many friends do you have on Renren? *

A. below 100 B. 101 to 300 C. 301 to 600 D. 601 to 900 E. 901 and above

APPENDIX B

POSTING RECORDS

status life education history and politics sports news fun art male Armour 220 25 4 17 32 59 11 CSL 129 22 5 8 9 15 5 Apply 8 0 0 0 5 7 0 Arch 0 0 1 12 2 3 0 Stuart 57 12 6 6 18 23 1 female Armour 133 16 0 1 1 8 9 CSL 20 10 0 0 0 1 0 Apply 4 0 0 3 0 0 0 Arch 51 18 0 1 2 2 1 Psychology 17 0 0 0 0 1 0 Food 12 0 0 0 2 0 4 Stuart 79 11 2 1 8 7 5 total 730 114 18 25 79 126 36

sharing photos life education fun art history and politics sports male Armour 44 5 53 27 2 3 CSL 10 2 31 10 3 1 Apply 2 0 3 1 0 0 Arch 0 0 2 0 0 1 Stuart 13 7 17 15 2 0 female Armour 19 2 14 16 0 2 CSL 3 0 0 2 0 0 Apply 0 0 0 0 0 0 Arch 39 2 11 19 1 0 Psychology 5 1 2 3 1 0 Food 2 1 2 3 1 1 Stuart 15 2 11 10 7 0 total 152 22 146 106 17 8

sharing videos life education sports fun art science male Armour 5 4 11 45 46 8 CSL 1 5 1 19 9 1 Apply 0 0 0 1 0 0 Arch 0 0 0 2 0 0 Stuart 7 3 6 23 25 4 female Armour 2 1 0 9 11 2 CSL 1 1 0 0 1 0 Apply 0 0 0 0 0 0 Arch 0 2 0 2 6 0 Psychology 3 2 0 2 3 0 Food 0 1 0 3 2 0 Stuart 19 4 2 7 17 3 total 38 23 20 113 120 18

sharing blogs life fun history and politics education art emotion sports male Armour 62 46 22 13 12 6 3 CSL 21 11 5 10 6 1 1 Apply 2 4 2 0 0 0 0 Arch 3 1 6 2 0 0 0 Stuart 39 17 9 13 3 2 3 female Armour 36 18 1 4 5 4 0 CSL 19 2 3 7 1 1 0 Apply 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Arch 10 1 1 2 1 1 0 Psychology 11 0 0 3 0 1 0 Food 3 1 2 1 1 0 0 Stuart 35 7 5 11 5 4 0 total 241 108 56 66 34 20 7

blogs photos life education life history and politics fun art technology male Armour 2 9 48 0 9 1 4 CSL 0 2 23 0 4 1 4 Apply 0 0 6 0 0 0 0 Arch 2 0 3 0 0 0 0 Stuart 1 0 16 3 0 2 0 female Armour 0 0 32 1 3 1 0 CSL 0 0 8 0 0 0 1 Apply 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 Arch 0 0 10 0 1 1 0 Psychology 1 0 5 0 0 0 0 Food 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 Stuart 0 0 39 0 0 0 0 total 6 11 195 4 17 6 9

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