Why Use Facebook?
A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK
by Christopher Munns
Media & Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media & Creative Industries Master’s Programme (One-Year) Thesis (Course Code: KK644B) Supervisor: Erin E. Cory, PhD Date: November 2018 Document Version: 2.1 (Final Archive Edition) Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the use of the social networking site, Facebook, by the Generation X cohort (those born 1966-1980 inclusive) currently living in the United Kingdom (identified as a somewhat under-studied group to date). Utilising a ‘Uses & Gratifications Theory’ and ‘(Media) Dependency Theory’ approach and the quantitative empirical data collection method of an extensive online ‘self-fill’ questionnaire, a total of 233 individuals from this cohort voluntarily provided the sought-after information, with data collected during early September 2018.
An expanded version of Denis McQuail, Jay G. Blumler and J.R. Brown’s 1972 media gratifications groups/descriptors is proposed and used for this paper’s analysis of results (see section 6.2.4) while a new single media term,‘online collaborative network’, is recommended by the author as an alternative to current myriad of ‘social media’, ‘social networking [site]’ and ‘collaborative media’ all used for the likes of Facebook (see section 9.2.2).
Key project results suggest that the UK Generation X cohort spend an average of 75 minutes per day using Facebook; that the most-utilised access method is via a mobile phone (89.7%); that the top two ‘uses’ of the social network are both passive ones (‘Scrolling through the homepage News Feed’ and ‘Spending time viewing Photos/Videos uploaded by others’) and that the top three gratifications obtained from Facebook use are ‘Contact with Friends’, ‘Contact with Family’ and (to) ‘Pass Time’.
Additionally, results provide an interesting and potentially shocking overview of exclusive dependency upon Facebook for the satisfaction of particular media needs, including the maintenance of contact with certain friends (87.6%) and certain family members (61.4%) and, worryingly, as an only source of news (15%).
Keywords: Facebook, Social Media, Collaborative Media, Social Networking, Uses & Gratifications Theory, (Media) Dependency Theory, Generation X, UK.
Countable Words: 16,998 (#) Pages: 119 Sources: 95 (# Introduction to Conclusions, excluding Tables/Captions)
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CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...... 2
CONTENTS...... 3
LIST OF TABLES...... 4
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...... 5
PREFACE...... 6
1. Introduction...... 7
2. Research Questions...... 12
3. Background...... 13
4. Literature Review...... 30
5. Theoretical Framework...... 40
6. Methodology & Method...... 46
7. Ethics...... 52
8. Results & Analysis...... 54
9. Conclusions...... 86
REFERENCES...... 92
APPENDICES...... 106
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Key Academic and Research Organisation Definitions of the Generations...... 9
Table 2: Final Online Questionnaire Design...... 48
Table 3: Newly-Developed 'Gratifications Obtained' Measurement System for SNSs...... 50
Table 4: Birth Year of Research Participants...... 54
Table 5: Home Computer Availability as a Child...... 55
Table 6: Reasons for Initially Joining Facebook (Gratifications Sought)...... 57
Table 7: Facebook Usage Compared to 12 Months Previous...... 60
Table 8: Technology Used to Access Facebook...... 61
Table 9: Facebook Activities Engaged In (Facebook ‘Uses’)...... 63
Table 10: Gratifications Obtained from Facebook Use...... 67
Table 11: Gratifications Obtained from Facebook Use by Gratifications Group...... 68
Table 12: Top Reasons for Continued Facebook Use (Gratifications Sought/Obtained)...... 69
Table 13: Top Reasons for Continued Facebook Use by Gratifications Group...... 70
Table 14: Exclusive Dependency on Facebook for certain Tasks/Activities...... 72
Table 15: Social Media Used (in addition to Facebook)...... 75
Table 16: Facebook Activities/Uses (Heavy/Light + Male/Female Users)...... 80
Table 17: Gratifications Obtained from Facebook Use (Heavy/Light + Male/Female Users).....82
Table 18: Exclusive Dependency on Facebook (Heavy/Light + Male/Female Users)...... 83
Table 19: Other Key Categories (Heavy/Light + Male/Female Users)...... 84
Table 20: Facebook Development, Milestones & Registered Monthly Users: 2003-2018...... 107
Table 21: Key Historical Media Dates for 'Generation X' Individuals in the UK...... 108
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Illustration 1: Generational Characteristics & Life Influencers...... 14
Illustration 2: Profile of an Average/Example ‘Generation X’ Individual in the UK...... 15
Illustration 3: The 'ZX Spectrum' Personal Computer, launched in 1982...... 16
Illustration 4: The look of ‘Prestel’...... 18
Illustration 5: Percentage of UK Households with Internet Access by Year...... 20
Illustration 6: Launch Dates of Major Global Social Networking Sites, 1997-2006...... 23
Illustration 7: The early look of Friends Reunited...... 24
Illustration 8: How 'TheFacebook' looked in its early days...... 25
Illustration 9: Facebook's Welcome Screen in 2018...... 27
Illustration 10: Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs...... 41
Illustration 11: Duration of Facebook Membership...... 56
Illustration 12: Reported Facebook Usage Frequency...... 59
Illustration 13: Interest in Facebook's Forthcoming Semi-Confidential 'Dating' Service...... 71
Illustration 14: Past Consideration of Facebook Account Deletion due to Privacy Concerns.....73
Illustration 15: Previous Friends Reunited Social Network Membership...... 76
Illustration 16: Gender Split of Research Respondents...... 77
Illustration 17: Reported Relationship Status of Research Respondents...... 78
Illustration 18: Summary of Research Questions and Findings/Results...... 87
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PREFACE
At exactly 13:20 hours – on 22 August 2015 – I was sat in my car in stationary traffic near Shoreham-by-Sea, England, waiting at the Sussex Pad traffic lights. The clock changed to 13:21, the lights to green and I was on my way. 60 seconds later a plane crashed down on the next set of cars queued at those traffic lights. 11 people were killed instantly, including a member of my extended family. Many others seriously injured.
Reflecting upon this personal near miss made me realise – not just how lucky I had been – but also that there were still many things I could achieve in my life. After some online research, I decided to apply to study at Malmö University and was subsequently offered a place on the Media and Communication Studies master’s programme, commencing in September 2016. I knew it wouldn’t be an easy challenge. I had been suffering from myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) since 2005, a chronic fatigue and pain illness that was only getting worse with time. However, this thesis is the last module of that programme and, while it has taken longer than initially planned, one that will hopefully lead to me achieving my master’s degree.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank those people who have helped me to get this far, sometimes through teaching me new skills or sharing their wisdom, sometimes through motivation when times felt tough, sometimes by the photocopying of selected academic articles and other times simply by helping me with essential household chores such as food shopping when my health hit a particularly bad patch. In particular (but not limited to) I would like to thank Darren Bridger, Mark Le-Faye, Jo Makowski, Ian Oliver and Mike Spooner, along with the staff and my fellow students at Malmö University.
IN MEMORY OF THE SHOREHAM AIR CRASH ELEVEN
and
MIKE SPOONER
– Rest In Peace –
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1. Introduction
1.1 Aims of this Project This paper aims to consider and identify ‘how’ and ‘why’ those currently ‘middle-aged’, residing in the United Kingdom use the social networking site, Facebook. Utilising a ‘uses and gratifications theory’ and ‘(media) dependency theory’ approach, the use of Facebook by the ‘Generation X’ cohort in the UK is investigated through empirical research.
1.2 The Research ‘Problem’ While a fair amount of previous academic research exists exploring the uses and gratifications of various forms of social media, most has focused exclusively on the ‘young’ or ‘elderly’ in society. This has lead to a fairly good understanding of how and why these cohorts use social media, but has resulted in a ‘knowledge-void’ in-between. This paper aims to readdress the balance and focus exclusively on the ‘middle-aged’ UK Generation X cohort (UK-GenXc) and their use of the social networking site, Facebook.
This group of individuals is of particular interest because:
i. They are generally the youngest generational cohort not to have had internet access during their childhood (but are the first to have had widespread access to early ‘unconnected’ home computers).
ii. Little previous research has been carried out investigating the use of social media/social networking sites by the ‘middle-aged’.
iii. Much of the past academic research investigating the use of social media has focused exclusively upon the USA (or, occasionally, specific other countries beyond the UK) where cultural/historical differences will potentially lead to different uses of – and gratifications sought/obtained from – that social media.
iv. Today’s ‘middle-aged’ cohorts are tomorrow’s ‘older-aged’ cohorts. Understanding how people live and use technology/services now, can help civilisation and communities plan and prepare better for the future.
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Furthermore, consideration of exclusive ‘dependency’ upon Facebook for the satisfaction of certain needs, adds an additional element to this research, not found in the papers of many other social media researchers. This issue matters because:
i. A high level of exclusive dependency upon a third-party service/medium results in high levels of power/influence that service/medium holds over its users and society in general.
ii. A sudden, unexpected loss of a media service, upon which a user relies exclusively for the satisfaction of certain needs, could, potentially lead to future medical problems (such as depression/loneliness) for individuals affected.
1.3 Defining ‘Generation X’ Clearly ‘middle-aged’ is quite a loose, open-ended, categorisation of age and not really suitable for identifying a specific group of individuals when it comes to academic research. In the past, various researchers/organisations have used specific terms to define age groups and human generations (such as ‘Generation X’, the focus of this paper). Unfortunately, with no single organisation in charge of the naming convention (or to decide exactly which period of time each generation name refers to) this has led to a number of variations/inconsistencies occurring over the years. Table 1 outlines the main differences in these names and time periods over the last 125 years:
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Table 1: Key Academic and Research Organisation Definitions of the Generations for the last 125 years (sources: as per column headers) Howe & McCrindle & Abrams & von Pew Research Intergenerational Strauss (2007) Wolfinger Frank (2014) Center (2015) Commission [USA] # (2010) [AUS] [USA] [USA] (2018) [UK] Lost 1881-1895 Lost Forgotten 1883-1900 1896-1910 GI Greatest Greatest 1901-1924 Before 1928 1911-1925 Silent Builders Traditionalists Silent Silent 1925-1942 1925-1945 1922-1943 1928-1945 1926-1945 Boom Boomers Baby Boomers Baby Boom Baby Boomers 1943-1960 1946-1964 1944-1964 1946-1964 1946-1965 Generation X Generation X Gen Xers Generation X Generation X 1961-1981 1965-1979 1965-1981 1965-1980 1966-1980 Millennial Generation Y Millennials Millennial Millennials 1982-2005 1980-1994 1982-2000 1981-1997 1981-2000 Homeland Generation Z Latest 2005-2025 1995-2009 2001 onwards Next 2010 onwards
# Also made use of in a UK House of Commons briefing paper titled ‘Millennials’ in 2017 (Brown et al., 2017)
One reason that can explain the lack of a co-ordinated worldwide system when it comes to naming/labelling/dating the different generations is that major events (such as war), technological advances and cultural changes in each region influence when a change of generation is assumed/felt to have taken place (Brosdahl & Carpenter, 2011, p.549), although this does not explain differences between rival classification systems used in the same country/region.
In Australia, McCrindle and Wolfinger propose that the definition/classification for each generation should be ‘defined sociologically rather than biologically’ but add an additional requirement that no generation today should be seen as lasting for more than 15 years because ‘cohorts are changing so quickly in response to new technologies,
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 9 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns changing career and study options and shifting societal values’ (McCrindle & Wolfinger, 2010, p.8).
Howe and Strauss state that ‘people do not “belong” to their age brackets. A woman of 40 today has less in common with 40-year-old women across the ages than with the rest of her generation, which is united by memories, language, habits, beliefs and life patterns’ (Howe & Strauss, 2007, p.42). This is why we label each specific generation. It ensures like is compared with like.
For this project, I am defining ‘Generation X’ as those born between 1966-1980 inclusive. This both mirrors the UK’s Intergenerational Commission’s definition (the last major research use of the term in the UK) and McCrindle and Wolfinger’s proposal/requirement that the period of a generation should span no more than 15 years.
1.4 Defining ‘United Kingdom Residency’ in relation to this Project Given that cultural differences may well lead to Facebook being used in different ways in different countries/regions, this project is limited to those living permanently in the United Kingdom.
No single, formal definition of ‘UK Residency’ exists. For taxation purposes, an individual is deemed to be ‘resident’ if they ‘spend 183 days or more in the UK in a tax year’ (PW Accountants Limited, 2018). Clearly 183 days alone is not long enough to become fully familiar/integrated with the culture of a (potentially new) country and hence this definition feels unsuitable for this research project.
‘Permanent Right of Residence’, however, only becomes available (to EEA citizens) once someone has resided in the UK for a period of five years (GOV.UK, 2013; Citizens Advice, 2018). I suggest this is a much more suitable definition in terms of the goals of this research paper as it provides enough time for an individual to have become integrated into local society and immersed into its cultures/customs. Hence, to be included as a research participant in this project, an individual needed to have been present/living in the UK (for a minimum of 183 days per year) for at least the last five years.
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By making this research exclusive to UK residents, it provides future researchers (repeating this research or investigating the Facebook use of Generation X in other countries/regions) with a useful set of results to use for comparative purposes.
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2. Research Questions
Taking into account the aims of this research project, the following three research questions (broken down into relevant sub-questions) have been developed:
RQ1) How do Generation X individuals in the UK use Facebook?
a) What technology does this cohort use to access Facebook?
b) How much time does this cohort spend using Facebook?
c) What are the main activities (uses) this cohort engages in when using Facebook?
RQ2) Why do Generation X individuals in the UK use Facebook?
a) What were the gratifications sought by this cohort when initially joining Facebook?
b) What are the current gratifications obtained by this cohort from using Facebook?
c) Is Facebook’s soon-to-be introduced semi-confidential dating service a potential new gratification for this cohort in using the social network?
d) Has this cohort ever considered leaving Facebook because of data/privacy concerns?
RQ3) Have Generation X individuals in the UK become ‘media dependent’ upon Facebook?
a) Does this cohort rely exclusively upon Facebook for the satisfaction of certain media needs?
b) What other forms of social media does this cohort use?
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3. Background
3.1 Introduction The following pages explore the background of the research problem and topic in general, beginning with a description of who Generation X individuals really are, before considering the history of the internet, social networking sites and, in particular, Facebook, itself.
3.2 Unmasking ‘Generation X’ Each generational cohort is shaped and influenced by shared experiences, local culture, current trends, world (and national) events and, of course, available technology. Numerous researchers and authors have attempted to pinpoint/pigeon-hole each generation along these lines.
In 2015, the research organisation, Nielsen, carried out an extensive worldwide survey investigating the differences between five generational cohorts, with Generation X at the centre. Key results showed the top leisure-time activities for Generation X individuals to be ‘watch TV’ (38%), ‘connect with family/friends’ (30%), ‘read’ (24%), ‘travel’ (22%) and ‘listen to music’ (21%). Both the Millennials and Boomers also rated ‘watch TV’ as their top leisure-time activity but, for the younger Generation Z cohort, this was ‘listen to music’ (Nielsen, 2015, p.10). Interestingly, the favourite source of news amongst Generation X individuals was also ‘television’ (53%), with 38% preferring to source their news online, via ‘search engine sites’. Over the five generational cohorts, 33% reported ‘social media sites’ as their preferred source of news (a figure that is almost double that of ‘printed newspapers’ at just 18%) (Nielsen, 2015, p.4).
When asked what field of work they would pursue if able, an interesting top answer for the Generation X cohort was ‘information technology’, the same as for Millennials (Nielsen, 2015, p.13) but Generation X is the generation that is the most worried about money, with 50% of research participants reporting that, while they save some money each month, they are not confident about their financial future (Nielsen, 2015, p.14).
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David Barnett states: ‘Boomers don’t understand the internet and Millennials were raised on it. Generation X created it.’ (Barnett, 2017). Although not ‘entirely’ true (see section 3.3), the point Barnett is presumably trying to make is that Generation X individuals are technologically aware and astute, feeling comfortable in both connected and unconnected environments.
Illustration 1 outlines the events/technological breakthroughs that shape Generation X plus neighbouring generations, revealing ‘work-life balance’ to be the key aspiration for the Generation X cohort, who were also the first generation to go truly ‘digital’ (Zaruba, 2017).
Illustration 1: Generational Characteristics & Life Influencers (edited image courtesy of: Zaruba, 2017) [Note: ‘Maturists’ is an alternative name for the ‘Silent’ generation shown on Table 1]
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Illustration 2 outlines some of the event/items/influences to shape today’s UK-GenXc.
Illustration 2: Profile of an Average/Example ‘Generation X’ Individual in the UK (self-created)
Key media and technological milestones/dates for Generation X are shown in Appendix 2.
3.3 Contextual History
3.3.1 Introduction Generation X individuals are of particular interest to media researchers because they were the final generation not to have had freely-available internet access during their childhood. Yet many would have had access to the first truly-affordable home computers, such as the ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64, both available from 1982 (Lean, 2016a, p.118/136). This means many Generation X individuals grew up being very knowledgable about computers without having a digital connection to the outside world.
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Illustration 3: The 'ZX Spectrum' Personal Computer, launched in 1982 (image courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.net, 2018)
Whether this means Generation X individuals will be particularly ‘savvy’ when it comes to computers, internet and social media use today is unclear. Of course Facebook, and other ‘social media’, have only been made possible by the earlier advent of the internet and world-wide-web, the history of which is explored below.
3.3.2 The Birth of the Internet In 1958, to ensure it stayed ahead of its rivals through new/innovative ideas the US- government created the ‘Advanced Research Projects Agency’ (ARPA) (Cohen- Almagor, 2011, p.46). Meanwhile, what we think of today as the ‘internet’ can trace its roots back to 1962 when J.C.R. Licklider (of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.)) proposed a global network of linked computers, dubbed the ‘Galactic Network’ (Leiner et al., 2009, p.23). Licklider soon became the head of the Information Processing Techniques Office at ARPA (The Computer Museum, 1997). He staying there just a year before returning to M.I.T. but links between the organisations, along with the seeds of the internet – had been planted (Kleinrock, 2008, p.10).
During the mid-1960s, as the first Generation X individuals were being born, parallel research work was carried out by Leonard Kleinrock at M.I.T., Donald Davies at the
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British National Physical Laboratory and Paul Baran of the RAND Corporation. Out of this work, in 1969, came ARPANET, the ‘world’s first advanced computer network using packet switching’ (Cohen-Almagor, 2011, p.49).
Despite competition from the likes of IBM and its networking products, ARPANET can be considered to be the beginnings of today’s ‘internet’ as its community installed a number of properly-defined ‘open’ standard protocols (such as Transmission Control Protocol, Internet Protocol and File Transfer Protocol) allowing for a smooth linking of private networks (Cohen-Almagor, 2011, p.49; Campbell-Kelly & Garcia-Swartz, 2013, p.25). The first commercial version of ARPANET, ‘TELNET’ arrived in 1972. Other networks followed, such as USENET in 1979, which initially linked Universities before going global and introducing the concept of message boards and newsgroups (Cohen- Almagor, 2011, p.51).
In the UK, an early ‘online’ interactive/information system called ‘Prestel’ was launched in 1979. Prestel never achieved commercial success (peaking at just 90,000 users) proving unpopular at the prices being charged to access and then use it (Lean, 2016b) but will have provided many of the UK-GenXc with their first online/interactive experience. Additionally, in the early 1980s, the Joint Academic Network (‘JANET’) was established, linking UK educational establishments and research organizations (Cohen-Almagor, 2011, p.51).
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Illustration 4: Launched in 1979, Prestel was often to be found in Schools or Public Libraries – and occasionally in UK Homes too (image courtesy of Goodwins, 2017)
3.3.3 The ‘World-Wide-Web’ In 1989, a British researcher at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee, proposed a global ‘hypertext’ project for linking together electronic documents on the internet, which he called the ‘world-wide-web’ (www). The benefit of such a system was it didn’t need a central directory to be navigated (which the rival ‘gopher’ system relied heavily upon) (Campbell-Kelly & Garcia-Swartz, 2013, pp.29-30). Berners-Lee went on to produce software allowing users to ‘access, link and create communications in a single global web of information’ (Cohen-Almagor, 2011, p.53).
Implementation of the world-wide-web began in 1990 (Tardini & Cantoni, 2013, p.715) with public access from 1991 (Edosomwan et al., 2011, p.80). In 1993, with the Generation X cohort now aged 12-27, the first ‘user-friendly’ web browser – Mosaic –
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 18 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns was launched leading to increased interest in the world-wide-web. Numerous commercial ‘internet service providers’ (ISPs) sprung up during the early-mid 1990s. In the UK, the first was business-orientated PIPEX in 1991 (GTNet, 2012) before the likes of CompuServe and AOL started providing home computer users with easy web access (Marshall, 2002).
It should be noted that the world-wide-web and the internet are not strictly the same thing. The internet is the infrastructure of networks linked together via agreed international protocols, while the world-wide-web is the huge amount of data and services stored on the internet as web pages which includes most social media services such as Facebook. Additional elements of the true internet includes the likes of email, direct file transfers, video conferencing, direct messaging and some streaming subscription services etc.
3.3.4 Moving on to ‘Web 2.0’ As new ideas and technologies allowed the internet and world-wide-web to develop further, so a new term – ‘web 2.0’ – was coined to depict the evolution and distinguish these developments from earlier innovations. Webopedia describes ‘web 2.0’ as a ‘second generation of the world-wide-web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online’ (Beal, 2018). In other words, areas of the world-wide-web where development has allowed the audience to move from being a mainly passive one, just reading information online, to a more interactive audience producing their own content in conjunction with others. Clearly this is where the likes of Facebook and other social networking sites sit today.
3.3.5 Internet Access in the United Kingdom The illustration below shows the percentage of households in the UK with internet access by year. The data shows an increase in the number of households with internet access every year over the 20-year period covered, from fewer than 1/10 households in 1998 (with the UK-GenXc aged 17-32) to 9/10 households by 2017.
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Illustration 5: Percentage of UK Households with Internet Access by Year (source: Office for National Statistics (UK), 2018 cited in Statista, 2018b) [No formal UK figures exist prior to 1998]
3.4 The Story of ‘Collaborating Socially via Media’
3.4.1 What are ‘Social Media’, ‘Social Networking’ & ‘Collaborative Media’? Most people will have come across the terms, ‘social media’ and ‘social networking’ and some readers may also be familiar with the term, ‘collaborative media’. But what do these really mean?
Edosomwan et al. suggest that the term, ‘social media’, far from being a new concept has ‘been evolving since the dawn of human evolution’. In essence, these authors suggest, that ‘social media’ is any form of media or ‘channel’ being used to communicate a message to a wider audience (Edosomwan et al., 2011, p.79). Therefore, for example, television (with its generally passive audience) could be said to be ‘social media’ as could an advertising poster or a town-crier reading out the day’s news.
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‘Social networking’, on the other hand, can be described as a ‘tool and a utility for connecting with others’ (Cohen, 2009; Stelzner, 2009 both cited in Edosomwan et al., 2011, p.83). This could apply, for example (digitally) to websites such as LinkedIn and Facebook or (non-digitally) to a private-members club or analogue telephone. Despite this, the Encyclopedia of Media and Communication simply describes ‘social networking’ as ‘the process of interacting through online websites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, […] and Bebo’ (Bockarova, 2013, p.612).
As Löwgren and Reimer point out, ‘from a media studies point of view, you would be hard pressed to find a medium that could not be characterised as social – and thus the label of “social media” is hardly a meaningful one’. Additionally, the authors note that websites such as Facebook are ‘unusual’ in that ‘all the content is created by users’ making Facebook a ‘collaborative medium’ in terms of ‘production, consumption’ and ‘interpretation’ of its ‘collaborative media’. However, the authors also go on to point out that this form of ‘collaborative media’ isn’t limited to today’s online digital world, and could previously be seen in the likes of ‘ham radio’ and ‘fanzines’ (Löwgren & Reimer, 2013, pp.3-4).
Today’s popular press tends to reserve the term ‘social media’ exclusively to describe the online digital world, often interchangeably with the terms, ‘social networking’, ‘social networking sites’ (SNSs) and ‘collaborative media’, citing the likes of Facebook and Twitter as examples. Hence most people probably assume an interactive, online requirement upon hearing any of these descriptions. However, as illustrated above, each of the terms do have their own specific meanings and can also all be applied to items or services in a non-digital setting, leading to a degree of confusion and inconsistency in their use. A potential solution to this issue is proposed in section 9.2.2.
3.4.2 A Brief History of Social Networking Sites The early internet provided users with limited networking and collaboration opportunities via ‘electronic’ bulletin boards on the Bulletin Board System and similar USENET system (Edosomwan, 2011, p.80), popular at many Universities. Additionally
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 21 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns the availability of ‘Internet Relay Chat’ allowed users to ‘talk’ in real time (Edosomwan, 2011, p.81).
Although some early commercial internet access services (CompuServe/AOL etc.) also provided unique software allowing customers/users to set up a personal profile, chat in real time and participate in forums, the era of true social networking sites began in 1997 with the launch of SixDegrees.com (Boyd & Ellison, 2008, p.214). However, the service closed after just three years, mainly because each individual user found they had too few online friends to make continued use of the service engaging and interesting (Bockarova, 2013, p.613). Other global social networking sites soon followed (see illustration 6), the most familiar of these being LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
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Illustration 6: Launch Dates of Major Global Social Networking Sites, 1997- 2006 (image courtesy of Boyd & Ellison, 2008, p.212)
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In the UK, a major early SNS was Friends Reunited. Launched in 2000 (an ideal time for the Generation X cohort, then aged 19-34) and based around reconnecting with old school/university friends, the service had eight million users by 2003 (Clark, 2003), eventually peaking at over 15 million in 2005 (Jowitt, 2017). However, the service ‘failed to keep pace with other social networks’ (Kleinman, 2016) and wasn’t entirely free of charge to the end user (who had to pay to send a message) (Jowitt, 2017). This resulted in it quickly losing market traction and eventually closing for good in 2016 (Kleinman, 2016).
Illustration 7: The early look of Friends Reunited, an extremely popular Social Networking Site in the UK from the year 2000 (image courtesy of Pankhurst, 2016)
Facebook itself was launched in 2004 to students and two years later to the general public while, more recent, successful social networks include Instagram and Snapchat.
3.5 A Closer Look at Facebook
3.5.1 From ‘Facemash’ to Global Domination In 2003, Harvard-fresher, Mark Zuckerberg created ‘Facemash’, a website allowing those at Harvard to rate the attractiveness of fellow students. Failing to gain permission to use other students’ photos, it was quickly closed down and Zuckerberg disciplined. However, the seeds for what would become Facebook had been sown (Boyd, 2018).
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 24 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Four months later, in February 2004, Zuckerberg launched ‘TheFacebook’, a social networking website, limited to those with a Harvard email address (Brügger, 2015).
Illustration 8: How 'TheFacebook' looked in its early days (image courtesy of Wikipedia, 2015 cited in Frazier, 2015)
TheFacebook was soon made available to students elsewhere, with an investment of over $500,000 from Peter Thiel (founder of PayPal) for a 10.2% share-holding being accepted by Zuckerberg (MyLife, 2013 cited in Visually, 2013), before TheFacebook became just ‘Facebook’ in September 2005.
On 26 September 2006 (Facebook Newsroom, 2018), with the UK-GenXc now aged 25-40, Facebook made registration available to anyone aged 13+ (MyLife, 2013, cited in Visually, 2013). On its welcome page, Facebook described itself as ‘a social utility that connects you with the people around you’ (Brügger, 2015).
By the end of 2007, 100,000+ businesses had signed up with Facebook for the newly- launched ‘Pages for Businesses’ scheme (Boyd, 2018). Although the website carried banner advertising from its early days, businesses had not been allowed to create profiles prior to this (Brügger, 2015). In 2009 Facebook surpassed MySpace (MyLife,
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2013 cited in Visually, 2013) to officially became the world’s most popular social platform. By the end of 2010, Facebook had become the third-largest web company in the US (behind Google/Apple) and was valued at $41 billion (Boyd, 2018).
2012 was a big year for Facebook as a company. In April it purchased Instagram for a reported $1 billion; before [financially] going ‘public’ – a move that saw the company initially valued at $104 billion (Boyd, 2018). Then, in October, Facebook.com saw its one billionth user register before, in 2014, Facebook purchased messaging service, ‘WhatsApp’ (Facebook Newsroom, 2018).
2015 saw Facebook attempting to tackle the spiralling ‘fake news’ problem on its network by giving users the ability to report fake news stories – with a study from the Pew Research Center discovering that ‘63% of Americans on the site got their news from the platform’ (Boyd, 2018).
The period from 2016 to mid-2018 proved to be quite a sticky one for Facebook as a company. Firstly there were accusations that misinformation, spread via the social network, had directly influenced the way people voted in the 2016 US presidential election (Boyd, 2018). Then, in early-2018, it was revealed that more than 50 million Facebook user accounts had been ‘harvested’ by British company, Cambridge Analytica, with private Facebook user data having been accessed and potentially used for the creation of targeted advertising on a personal/individual level that, ultimately, may have influenced both the US presidential election and UK ‘Brexit’ referendum in 2016 (Cadwalladr & Graham-Harrison, 2018).
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Illustration 9: Facebook's Welcome Screen in 2018 (image courtesy of Facebook, 2018)
Although these issues led to Zuckerberg being hauled in front of both US and UK government officials, it did not stop the company from recording impressive profits of over $10 billion in 2016 and over $15 billion in 2017 (Boyd, 2018). The overall number of registered users on Facebook’s social networking service also rose from 1.49 billion in 2015 (Boyd, 2018) to over 2.23 billion by June 2018 (Facebook Newsroom, 2018).
What the future holds for Facebook and registered Facebook users remains to be seen, although it appears the next major innovation to come to the social network will be a semi-confidential ‘opt-in’ dating service. Speaking at the annual F8 developer conference in 2018, Zuckerberg said, ‘There are 200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as single. So clearly there’s something to do here...’ (CNBC, 2018).
Further details of Facebook’s development are outlined in Appendix 1.
3.5.2 Understanding How Facebook Works Visit the Facebook.com homepage and (assuming you are not already logged into your own Facebook account) you will be greeted with the welcoming message, ‘Facebook
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 27 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns helps you connect and share with people in your life’ (Facebook, 2018). This is an updated, but still similar version of the original Facebook.com greeting of ‘a social utility that connects you with the people around you’ (Brügger, 2015). Registered Facebook users don’t pay Facebook any cash to use the social networking site, making users ‘feel’ that the service is ‘free’. All of which may well make people believe that Facebook is a social utility, built by the people for the people, and nothing more.
This, of course, isn’t entirely the case. Facebook didn’t make profits of over $25 billion across 2016-17 by providing an altruistic gift to the citizens of the world and giving away their service for free. The truth is, if a service or product seems free to the end user, it generally means that the user(s) themselves are, in fact, the product being sold. The huge amount of data generated by Facebook users when adding personal details to their profile and ‘liking’ pages, products and posts across the social network actually provides a wealth of unique information that is extremely valuable to advertisers (who pay money to Facebook directly) and for the targeting of specific adverts to a particular demographic or selected groups of individuals.
Indeed, digital media expert Douglas Rushkoff, speaking at a conference in Berlin in 2011, said:
‘Ask a kid what Facebook is for and they’ll answer “it’s there to help me make friends”. Facebook's boardroom isn't talking about how to make Johnny more friends. It's talking about how to monetise Johnny's social graph. […] Ask yourself who is paying for Facebook. Usually the people who are paying are the customers. Advertisers are the ones who are paying. If you don't know who the customer of the product you are using is, you don't know what the product is for. We are not the customers of Facebook, we are the product. Facebook is selling us to advertisers.’ (Rushkoff, 2011 cited in Solon, 2011.)
Facebook is even able to track a user’s online behaviour beyond its own social networking site, when a Facebook user remains logged into Facebook (as most people generally do) and then visits other websites containing the ‘Facebook Pixel’ tracking code (Facebook Business, 2018). This provides even more accurate, valuable/useful
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 28 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns information and targeting ability for Facebook’s advertising customers/partners – all of which, ultimately, leads to even larger profits for Facebook themselves.
For as long as Facebook manages to keep billions of users returning to its social network on a regular basis, advertisers will continue to throw business at Facebook, who will remain highly profitable. Ultimately, this is why the fake news and data/privacy breach issues that have affected Facebook in recent years are areas the company is now aggressively prioritising to fix. Facebook clearly understands that any loss of confidence in its service (leading to users deleting accounts) could negatively affect company profits (with advertisers either reducing their spend or abandoning Facebook altogether). With all of this in mind, ‘Facebook Dating’ would seem to be yet another great Zuckerberg innovation, not to make the world fall in love, but to maintain healthy user numbers/growth for Facebook and, hence, keep company profits soaring.
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4. Literature Review
4.1 Introduction A comprehensive search for previous research papers specifically investigating how/why ‘Generation X individuals resident in the UK’ use Facebook drew a blank, seemingly making the research findings of this thesis unique at the time of writing. Below I review the most relevant papers that research/investigate the uses and gratifications of Facebook, social media use and social media dependency.
4.2 Uses and Gratifications of Facebook The earliest research paper discovered investigating the uses and gratifications of Facebook was written in 2007. Published online by First Monday, Brett A. Bumgarner conducted a large-scale online survey of students (whose ages are unspecified) at the University of North Carolina and found that the top reported reason for using Facebook was as a group activity in conjunction with other friends to ‘view and discuss other people’s profiles’. Bumgarner reached the conclusion that Facebook ‘appears to operate primarily as a tool for the facilitation of gossip’ with the top motivator for using the social network being as a ‘social utility’ (Bumgarner, 2007). This is, perhaps, not that surprising given that Facebook was still in its infancy and the amount users were able to do on the network remained limited.
A year later, John Raacke and Jennifer Bonds-Raacke also used university students (with a mean age of 19.7 years) in the US as their research subjects whilst investigating the uses and gratifications of the social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook. The results revealed that users spent an average of 1.46 hours/day on their accounts, logging in an average of 4.19 times/day (at a time when logging on and off of the internet altogether was far more common – with broadband connections in their infancy) and had an average of 235.51 ‘friends’ linked to each account. Interestingly, only 51.5% of users turned on privacy options for the personal information they published. One suspects this figure would be much higher now, in 2018. The top uses and gratifications identified from this research were: ‘to keep in touch with old friends’ (96%), ‘to keep in
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 30 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns touch with current friends’ (91.1%), ‘to post/look at pictures’ (57.4%), ‘to make new friends’ (56.4%), ‘to locate old friends’ (54.5%), ‘to learn about events’ (33.7%), ‘to post social functions’ (21.8%), ‘to feel connected’ (19.8%), ‘to share information about yourself’ (13.9%), ‘for academic purposes’ (10.9%) and ‘for dating purposes’ (7.9%) (Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008, p.171). Ultimately, like Bumgarner before them, Raacke and Bonds-Raacke had identified that Facebook was being mostly used as a social utility to retain/regain/gain contact with – or follow – others.
Also in 2008, the first British-based study emerged with Adam N. Joinson investigating the motives of Facebook users, and included data from both student and non-student users alike. Initially 137 participants with a mean age of 26.3 years were recruited to take part in the first part of a two-stage investigation. Being asked what they enjoyed about using Facebook (and what was important to them), the responses from these participants helped produce a list of uses and gratifications for stage 2 of the study. This time 241 Facebook users with an average age of 25.97 years (30.7% of whom were in full-time work and didn’t class themselves as a student) were asked to rate 46 different uses and gratifications via a 7-point Likert scale. Descriptive groups were developed from the results which were: ‘social connection’, ‘shared identities’, ‘photographs’, ‘content’, ‘social investigation’, ‘social network surfing’ and ‘status updates’ (Joinson, 2008, pp.1027-1032). Interestingly the average number of friends linked to each participants’ Facebook profile was 124 (only just over half the number identified by the Raacke and Bonds-Raacke study). This can most likely be explained by the introduction of non-students into the study and the fact that Facebook had been active longer in the US than in the UK.
In 2009, Tiffany A. Pempek et al. investigated how US university students used Facebook. Results revealed the students saw ‘communicating with friends’ as the most important reason for use of the social network. However, the most common activity undertaken by the research group subjects when using Facebook was ‘looking at/reading other people’s profiles’ (Tiffany A. Pempek et al., 2009, pp.231-235).
In another 2009 research paper, Mark A. Urista, Qingwen Dong and Kenneth D. Day once again looked at the reasons young adults used MySpace and Facebook using a
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‘grounded theory approach and a uses and gratifications framework’ in which the authors opted to use a qualitative method, with 50 individuals placed across six focus groups. All participants were undergraduates at a US university. Results suggested that the five main themes for why the students used the two social networks were: ‘efficient communication’, ‘convenient communication’, ‘curiosity about others’, ‘popularity’ and ‘relationship and reinforcement’ (Urista et al., 2009, pp.216-221) which, while given different titles, still bear a similar resemblance to the results of previous studies discussed here.
With Facebook now the most popular social network, a 2010 research paper from Anabel Quan-Haase and Alyson L. Young investigated the uses and gratifications of two different (but clearly related) forms of social media – Facebook and Instant Messaging. Noting that most previous social media-orientated uses and gratifications research had only focused on those gratifications obtained and not those initially sought, the authors looked to remedy this issue by asking their research subjects (Canadian university students) not only what gratifications they obtain by continued use of the media, but also what motivated them to join Facebook in the first place. Results from initial questionnaires identified ‘friend suggested it’ and ‘everyone I know is on Facebook’ as the top two gratifications sought (Quan-Haase & Young, 2010, pp.354-355). However, I would question whether these two descriptors are really ‘sought gratifications’ in themselves? Reasons for joining Facebook, yes, but perhaps they could/should be labelled as ‘satisfying curiosity’ and ‘not missing out’ for classification purposes? In terms of gratifications obtained from using Facebook, Quan-Haase and Young’s initial results produced six gratification groups comprising of ‘pastime’, ‘affection’, ‘fashion’, ‘share problems’, ‘sociability’ and ‘social information’. The authors then moved on to further research via interviews. These revealed the top motivators for joining Facebook to be: ‘peer pressure’, ‘social connectivity’, ‘curiosity’ and to satisfy a ‘utilitarian need’ with the top gratifications obtained being reported as ‘social connectivity’ and ‘social information’ (Quan-Haase & Young, 2010, pp.355-358).
A university thesis by Aimee Valentine in 2011 investigated the uses and gratifications of Facebook users 35+ years of age, resident in the US. (In 2011, Generation X
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 32 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns individuals would have been aged 30-45.) Gathering data via an online questionnaire, Valentine’s results suggested that adults 35+ spent ‘a substantial amount of time’ (an average of 4 hours 53 minutes per day) using Facebook, often for ‘passive activities of surveillance rather than participation’ but ‘most often for communication with people in their network’ with the gratification factors most important to this older audience being: ‘interpersonal habitual entertainment’, ‘passing time’ and ‘self expression’ (Valentine, 2011, pp.27-44). It is perhaps not surprising that older adults report a greater passive surveillance use of the social network compared to younger users given that many will be parents, potentially concerned about their children.
The following year saw Monica Ancu investigate the motives for using Facebook of those aged 50+ and found that this older cohort used the site mainly for ‘mood management’ and ‘social action’. Interestingly the ‘most popular activity among the sample was playing games and using other entertainment Facebook apps’ while ‘content creation’ and ‘communication’ were activities only 30% of the group participated in (Ancu, 2012). As with Valentine (2011) before, these results tend to suggest older audiences are more likely to be fairly passive when it comes to Facebook use.
Research by Francis T. McAndrew and Hye Sun Jeong in 2012 produced similar results when considering the relationship of age to Facebook use. These authors discovered that older people ‘spent less time’ on the social network, ‘had fewer Facebook friends’ and ‘generally did less of everything on Facebook’ but that when those older individuals are using the site they are ‘more likely to be interacting with individuals directly, more likely to be looking at their own page and more likely to be looking at family pictures than their younger counterparts’ while also finding that ‘females engaged in far more Facebook activity than did males’ (McAndrew & Jeong, 2012, p.2364).
In 2013, Mine Y. Alemdar and Nahit E. Köker completed a study looking at Facebook usage of generations X and Y in Turkey. In their introduction the authors note that ‘it is thought that research related to determining the motivations of Generation X are not sufficient’ before predicting different usage motivations between the generations. Using a qualitative research method of in-depth interviews held over four months, the authors found that both generations share the following themes for using Facebook (but in ways
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 33 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns specific to their generation): ‘social surveillance’, ‘recognition’, ‘emotional support’, ‘social connect’, ‘entertainment’, ‘narcissism and self expression’ and ‘ease of use’. However, two additional motivations/themes were uncovered: ‘freedom and courage’ (being unique to Generation Y individuals) and ‘adapt to new challenges’ (being unique to Generation X individuals) (Alemdar & Köker, 2013, pp.242-248).
Also in 2013, Caroline Bell et al. examined social media use amongst adults aged 52-92 (with an average age of 72) in the US. While those in the research group who were Facebook users (42%) scored higher on social satisfaction and confidence with technology than the non-Facebook users, the authors were surprised to discover no measurable difference in loneliness levels between users and non-users. Research participants reported their key motivators for Facebook use to be ‘to stay connected with friends and family’ (88.1%) and ‘to stay connected with colleagues or groups’ (37%) – results that suggest a more proactive use of Facebook by this particular older group than identified by Valentine (2011) or Ancu (2012). However, only a small number (13.6%) ‘were interested in meeting new people’ on the social network (Bell et al., 2013, pp.161-162).
Although not exclusively limited to Facebook, Anita Whiting and David Williams completed a 2013 uses and gratifications study looking at why people use social media using a qualitative data gathering approach. Analysis of 25 in-depth interviews identified ten uses and gratifications of social media use to be (in order of frequency reported): ‘social interaction’, ‘information seeking’, ‘pass time’, ‘entertainment’, ‘relaxation’, ‘communicatory utility’, ‘convenience utility’, ‘expression of opinion’, ‘information sharing’ and ‘surveillance/knowledge about others’ (Whiting & Williams, 2013, pp.366-367).
In 2016, Phillip Ozimek and Hans-Werner Bierhoff’s investigated how Facebook usage changes with age. Results from 335 active users, aged 16-56, seemed to confirm the authors’ hypothesis that ‘age is negatively associated with Facebook use’ across many Facebook activities, including ‘social comparisons’, ‘photo activities’, ‘group interaction’, ‘seeking personal information’ and ‘impression management’. In particular, results suggested that this reduction of Facebook use with age was due to a lessening
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 34 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns need for individuals to carry out online social comparisons (Ozimek & Bierhoff, 2016, pp.275-276).
Also in 2016, Amandeep Dhir and Chin-Chung Tsai focused their research on adolescents and young adults (aged 13-21), investigating the relationship between intensity and gratifications of Facebook use. The authors identified ‘18 items representing five different uses and gratifications of Facebook use’: ‘escape’, ‘entertainment’, ‘information seeking’, ‘social influence’ and ‘exposure’. The study found that adolescents (13-18) seek a higher exposure gratification than their young adult (19-21) counterparts and that the ‘strongest predictor of intensity of Facebook use’ across the age groups studied was the ‘entertainment’ gratification (Dhir & Tsai, 2016, pp.357-360).
Finally, in 2017 Eun Hwa Jung et al. published a paper investigating why older adults use or avoid Facebook. 46 volunteers aged 65-95 (with an average age of 80.4 years) were interviewed, all of whom were educated to at least degree level. Results revealed that 20/46 were Facebook users (a similar percentage to the Bell et al., 2013 study of older adults) whose motivations for use were: ‘keeping in touch with inaccessible people’, ‘sharing photos’, ‘social surveillance’, ‘responding to family member requests to join’, ‘communicating conveniently’ and ‘curiosity’. The 26 non-users listed the following reasons for not joining the site: ‘privacy concerns’, ‘need for media richness’, ‘preference for familiarity’, ‘triviality of communication’, ‘time commitment’ and ‘frustration with limited site skills’ (Eun Hwa Jung et al., 2017, pp.1073-1078). In essence it could be said the non-users felt happier doing things the way they’d always done them – communicating face-to-face and not needing to use new technologies – while the Facebook users were often encouraged and (potentially) taught how to participate by younger family members.
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4.3 Other Key Investigations of Social Media Use UK governmental research in 2016 revealed that 70.4% of UK adults used social media in the previous 12 months (57.5% for Facebook) with over two-thirds doing so at least once a day. Interestingly, this paper concluded that the most common reason for social media use was ‘to find out what’s happening in the local area’ (Department for Culture, Media & Sport, 2016).
Also in 2016, research organisation ‘Nielsen’ found that, on average, Generation X individuals spend more time (almost 7 hours/week) using social media than any other cohort. Millennials were second with just over 6 hours use (Nielsen, 2016 cited in MediaReach, 2017).
More state-sponsored research investigating internet access in the UK took place in 2017. This discovered that sending/reading emails was the most common internet activity with 82% of the population doing so during the previous year, while use of social networking sites was revealed to decline by age-group (Office for National Statistics, 2017a).
Meanwhile, ‘Think Digital First’ suggests the average time spent using social media in the UK in 2018 to be 133 minutes per day (80% of which being via a mobile phone) while 84% of UK adults use social media (a significant increase on the 2016 figure revealed by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport above). Research results also show that 60% of the UK population have a Facebook account in 2018 (51% of whom are female) while 76% of Facebook users visit the site daily (Think Digital First, 2018).
Finally, a 2018 audience report focusing exclusively on Generation X, found that this cohort ‘have an average of seven social media accounts’ (with 81% having a Facebook account). News is also now accessed more online than via the physical press, with 21% of Generation X spending at least an hour accessing news digitally (Mander & Valentine, 2018).
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4.4 Social Media Dependency While much has previously been written about social media ‘addiction’, few academic papers appear to exist exploring dependency on social media for the physical/mental satisfaction of particular media needs (such as maintaining contacts or receiving news).
Shaojing Sun, Alan M. Rubin and Paul M. Haridakis’ 2008 paper goes some way to explaining why this might be:
‘To date, researchers have not precisely clarified how to measure internet dependency. A review of prior research suggests disagreement in constructing such a measure. One reason is that researchers differ in their understanding of internet dependency. For example, researchers often interchange terms such as internet dependence, heavy use, and addiction without referring to their conceptual differences. In addition, research has seldom examined whether it is possible to apply relevant measures of assessing traditional media dependency to the newer media context.’ (Sun et al., 2008, pp.419-420.)
The authors own findings go on to suggest that ‘younger people were more likely to exhibit internet dependency’ (Sun et al., 2008, p.426) which, I suspect, will come as no surprise to most readers.
Louisa Ha, Kisung Yoon and Xiaoqun Zhang’s 2013 paper adds more evidence, finding that young college students spend more time on social networking sites than the general population, often using these as their only source of news, instead of more ‘traditional “authoritative” news outlets such as broadcast network news, cable news channels or daily newspapers’. The authors express particular concern that this has lead to shielded exposure, with news stories viewed often originating exclusively from those friends/outlets sharing the interests, backgrounds and views of the reader and ultimately resulting in a lack of ‘hard news’ being consumed (Ha et al., 2013, p.11).
Finally, in 2018, Amber L. Ferris and Erin E. Hollenbaugh found ‘some’ evidence to back-up an Alan Rubin (2002) argument that ‘the media is one method of satisfying one’s needs and fulfilling communicative goals, and that when options are limited, dependency is more likely to occur’ with the exception of ‘the need for companionship’ (Ferris & Hollenbaugh, 2018, p.65). It should be noted that physical alternatives do not
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 37 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns necessarily equal plentiful options. For example, social networks other than Facebook exist. However, if your friends and family members are not members of those social networks, it is not possible to use those alternatives to contact them.
4.5 In Conclusion... Taking into account all of the previous papers and research discussed in this literature review, it is possible to identify patterns amongst the findings of the various authors and reach a number of overall conclusions:
• Facebook is seen primarily as a tool for easy and effective communication and is used this way across the age cohorts with ‘contact with friends’ and ‘family’ being key ‘gratifications obtained’ that seem to satisfy individual needs well enough to keep users returning to the social network (Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008; Urista et al, 2009; Quan-Haase & Young, 2010; Valentine, 2011; Bell et al., 2013; Eun Hwa Jung et al, 2017).
• ‘Passing Time’ is another key gratification obtained from Facebook use across the age-cohorts (Quan-Haase & Young, 2010; Valentine, 2011; Whiting & Williams, 2013).
• Older Facebook users (including Generation X) tend to use the social network in a more passive ‘surveillance-type’ manner than younger users (Valentine, 2011; Ancu, 2012).
• Facebook use tends to reduce with age (McAndrew & Jeong, 2012; Ozimek & Bierhoff, 2016) albeit the most recent research suggests that Generation X individuals use the network more than any other generational cohort (Nielsen, 2016 cited in MediaReach, 2017).
• As of 2018, around 8/10 of the UK-GenXc have a Facebook account. Based upon 20% of the overall population being Generation X (Zaruba, 2017) and a total UK population of 65,648,054 (Office for National Statistics, 2017b) we can estimate the UK Generation X population to be 13,129,611 and the number of UK Generation X Facebook users to be 10,503,689.
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• Media dependency can occur where options are limited (Ferris & Hollenbaugh, 2018).
• News obtained from social networking sites is not necessarily objective or balanced as it will have passed through the ‘filter bubble’ of one’s friends, family and ‘liked’ organisations, along with the social network’s own algorithms (Ha et al., 2013).
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5. Theoretical Framework
5.1 Introduction To investigate how/why the UK-GenXc use Facebook, I have primarily taken a ‘uses and gratifications theory’ approach. Additionally, as a secondary arm to my framework, I have utilised a ‘(media) dependency theory’ approach to investigate whether the UK- GenXc have become exclusively dependent upon Facebook for the satisfaction of certain basic needs.
5.2 Uses and Gratifications Theory Uses and gratifications research can trace its roots back to the early days of mass communication research in the 1940s (Katz et al., 1973a, p.509) before becoming popular during the late 1950s/early 1960s as a method of understanding ‘audience involvement in mass communications’. Unlike ‘effects research’, which sees media audiences as purely passive, uses and gratifications theory assumes media audiences to be active (Blumler, 1979, p.10). No longer are individuals seen as just absorbing the output of the mass media, they are recognised as interacting with the resources they choose to use.
Uses and gratifications theory suggests that individuals choose to interact with a chosen form of media to satisfy basic human needs (and, in particular, ‘social and psychological needs’ (Cantril, 1942 cited in Ruggiero, 2000, p.3)). However, the term ‘uses and gratification theory’ is, perhaps, a misleading one. No single ‘theory’ exists (Blumler, 1979, p.11) that explains how and why individuals choose to use the media they do; it is merely a method/framework that acts as a catalyst for further academic research into specific media outlets/formats and population cohorts.
Unlike the ‘hypodermic needle theory’ that ‘claims the mass media can directly influence the human mind’ (Danesi, 2013, p.343), Elihu Katz, ‘a pioneer of uses and gratifications research, argues that more attention needs to be devoted to what people do with the media rather than the influence or impact of the media on the individual’. Katz proposes that ‘people’s individual values, interests, social roles and life circumstances
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 40 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns are important factors in shaping how and which media are consumed’ (Quan-Haase and Brown, 2013, p.688).
When considering human needs, a number of classification systems have been proposed over the years. Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of human needs’ (see illustration 10 below) is one such system of classification that is still useful today, over 60 years after its initial release (Katz et al., 1973a, p.513). It would probably be fair to suggest that media gratifications sought and obtained would (mostly) belong to the upper three levels/categories of Maslow’s model of needs (‘love/belonging’, ‘esteem’ and ‘self- actualization’).
Illustration 10: Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs (image courtesy of Shaw, 2014)
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In 1973, Elihu Katz, Michael Gurevitch and Hadassah Haas proposed five categories for grouping mass media audience needs in their paper, ‘On the Use of the Mass Media for Important Things’:
1. Cognitive Needs: Strengthening of information, knowledge and understanding
2. Affective Needs: Strengthening of aesthetic, pleasurable and emotional experiences
3. Integrative Needs: Strengthening of credibility, confidence, stability and status
4. Contact Needs: Strengthening of contact with friends, family and the world
5. Escapism Needs: Weakening of contact with self and one’s social roles (a release/outlet for tension and stress)
(Katz et al., 1973b)
A useful system of classification for media gratifications can be found in a 1972 research paper from Denis McQuail, Jay G. Blumler and J.R. Brown. The authors propose the reasons people seek out such media can be explained by attempting to satisfy four basic needs:
1. Diversion: A pleasurable escape from everyday life and its problems (an emotional release from stress)
2. Personal Relationships: A way to socialise and stay in contact with friends and family (a provision for finding company when feeling lonely)
3. Personal Identity: Learning about one’s self and society (a personal comparison to other individuals)
4. Surveillance: Keeping up-to-date with news and events (a ‘watchdog’ function)
(McQuail et al., 1972 cited in Quan-Haase & Brown, 2013, p.690)
‘Gratifications’ can be considered as a two-part process on behalf of an individual: gratifications sought (potential solutions to needs an individual is looking to satisfy) and
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 42 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns gratifications obtained (those needs successfully satisfied through use of specific media).
• Where gratifications sought = gratifications obtained, media users will generally be satisfied by their experience and continue using that media/medium.
• Where gratifications sought ≠ gratifications obtained, media users will generally be dissatisfied by their experience of that media/medium and are less likely to continue using it (seeking out alternatives to satisfy their needs).
Therefore, whether gratifications sought are – or are not – obtained by a media user is a good (albeit not perfect) predictor of future use of that media/medium.
Although uses and gratifications theory is not without its detractors for being ‘too focused on the individual’ (Elliott, 1974 cited in Ruggiero, 2000, p.12), for using non- standardised concepts, categorisations and definitions leading to inconsistent use (Ruggiero, 2000, pp.11-12), for not operating from the point of view of a singular theory, but a number of theoretical ideas (Blumler, 1979, p.11), for assuming audiences always have full control and choice over the media they use (Quan-Haase & Brown, 2013, p.691) and for assuming audience members are able to accurately recall and report their past and current media usage (Ruggiero, 2000, p.12), it continues to be a widely used framework for researchers, producing a wide array of varied papers and results to consider.
With the advent of new media, ‘web 2.0’, social media services and social networking sites, uses and gratifications research is, perhaps, more relevant than ever given that so many of the new media opportunities available are built around interactivity, requiring an active audience. Social networking sites such as Facebook produce very little of their own content – if any at all – and the media audience or ‘users’ have become ‘prosumers’, producing and consuming the content amongst themselves (Toffler, 1980, p.283). This – along with the mass of personal data accrued and used for financial gain by the likes of Facebook – has greatly assisted social media companies to turn huge profits given that little production work by the company itself is ever required,
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 43 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns something that has led to claims that users are possibly being exploited for free ‘digital labour’ (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010; Nixon, 2014).
S. Shyam Sundar and Anthony M. Limperos believe ‘that technological innovations have given rise to new affordances, which in turn have cultivated in users new needs that they seek to gratify from their media experiences’ (Sundar & Limperos, 2013, p.521). Indeed, it is clear that the advent of new media has led to new gratifications being sought and obtained by users, something identified by the various uses and gratifications researchers/authors whose work has been discussed in the literature review section of this paper.
My own system for classifying ‘gratifications obtained’, a modification and 21st century update of Denis McQuail, Jay G. Blumler and J.R. Brown’s 1972 scheme, is described in section 6.2.4.
5.3 (Media) Dependency Theory (Media) dependency theory is closely related to uses and gratifications theory and suggests that the more needs an individual has satisfied by a particular media form/outlet, the more the individual then depends on that medium (which ultimately results in greater influence and power that medium holds over the individual).
According to Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur, ‘dependency is defined as a relationship in which the satisfaction of needs or the attainment of goals by one party is contingent upon the resources of another party’ (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976. p.6).
Kevin Pearce suggests that ‘individuals become more dependent on available media if their access to media alternatives is limited’ (Pearce, 2009, p.980). This could potentially be because of financial constraints, lack of physical resources or because one medium is offering so much, other media formats/outlets have been abandoned by users. Facebook fits into this latter category. The social network now allows users to do so many different things that it is alarmingly easy for users to become dependent upon it for satisfying certain needs.
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Additionally, there have been recent concerns that the use of social networking sites (and Facebook in particular) has led to some users becoming addicted to media (Ryan et al., 2014). This, in essence means that for some users, Facebook has become a ‘medical dependency’ – in the same way that a drug addict depends on their drugs – and has even led to the creation of a ‘Facebook addiction scale’ (Andreassen et al., 2012).
My own definition of ‘media dependency’ is ‘exclusive reliance upon a single medium for the satisfaction of certain needs’.
5.4 In Conclusion… The proposed framework provides an important theoretical perspective with which to consider and utilise for the analysis of this project’s research findings. In particular, the application of a uses and gratifications theoretical approach (utilising a uniquely- updated version of McQuail/Blumler/Brown’s 1972 ‘gratifications obtained’ classification system, described in section 6.2.4) allows me to consider ‘how’ and ‘why’ the UK-GenXc – as an active audience – use Facebook, along with the ability to measure these motivations and satisfied needs for the cohort as a single entity.
In addition, the introduction of a linked (media) dependency theoretical approach provides a tool and direction for considering the level of reliance users now place upon Facebook – and hence the potential power Facebook holds over its users (both as individuals and as a population).
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6. Methodology & Method
6.1 Introduction
6.1.1 Overview With three research questions (split into sub-questions) having been specified, a quantitative data collection method was employed via the use of a self-fill online questionnaire. Results were then analysed, taking into consideration the project goals/research questions, previous research and theoretical framework.
6.1.2 Research Approach An abductive research strategy (Blaikie, 2010, pp.81-92) was applied to the project. According to Norman Blaikie, an abductive research strategy is used ‘to describe and understand social life in terms of social actors’ meanings and motives’ (Blaikie, 2010, p.84) and ‘used with a combination of “idealist” ontological assumptions and the epistemology of “constructionism”’ (Blaikie, 2010, p.96).
An abductive research strategy is particularly useful when wanting to answer a combination of ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions (Blaikie, 2010, p.105) and ‘incorporates what the inductive and deductive research strategies ignore – the meanings and interpretations, the motives and intentions, that people use in their everyday lives, and which direct their behaviour’ (Blaikie, 2010, p.89).
6.2 Procedures and Sampling
6.2.1 Introduction As noted by Thomas E. Ruggiero, both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods are suitable and widely used in the uses and gratifications research field and he suggests that ‘the U&G approach may serve as the vanguard of an eventual thorough quantitative and qualitative analysis of new media technologies’ (Ruggiero, 2000, p.24). Indeed, it was evident from my own exploration of recent work by uses and gratifications researchers that both quantitative and qualitative methods are widely used
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For my own research, I adopted a quantitative data collection method, using an online questionnaire, allowing me to reach a large number of individuals within the relatively short amount of time available for this project.
6.2.2 Survey Design and Testing An online questionnaire was designed/created using Google Forms. As recommended by the likes of Jo Tacchi et al. and Hilary Collins, a small pilot group (Tacchi et al., 2003, p.90; Collins, 2010, p.131) consisting of five volunteers was formed to test the questionnaire and provide feedback. Alterations incorporated on the advice of this group included cutting the Facebook activities list from 42 to 32 options, re-naming the selection categories on the second Likert-type scale question, adding an additional question and increasing the reported amount of time needed to complete the full questionnaire from 10 to 12 minutes. (In my opinion, 12 minutes is the maximum amount of time for retaining the interest and focus of participants for an online questionnaire. Other authors have their own ideas about this. For example, Jo Tacchi et al., recommend a limit of 15 minutes (Tacchi et al., 2003, p.90).)
The final questionnaire (see Appendix 3) was then made available to all and consisted of 22 questions as outlined below. Questions were designed to gather data and either relate directly to a project research question, or to provide additional relevant information that could be useful to future researchers investigating the same subject. (More detailed information about the design of the two Likert-type scale questions can be found in the following sections.)
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Table 2: Final Online Questionnaire Design (key: Q = Questionnaire Question; RQ = Relevant Research Question; # = voluntary question; ^ = not included in results)
Q Subject Type Investigating/Measuring RQ 1 UK residential status Select single option Research eligibility All 2 Generation X status/year of birth Select single option Research eligibility All 3 Childhood computer availability Select all that apply Life influence Info 4 Length of Facebook membership Select single option Facebook experience Info 5 Main reason for joining Facebook Open answer Initial gratifications sought 2(a) 6 Facebook usage regularity Select single option Facebook experience 1(b) 7 Time spent using Facebook Number input Facebook experience 1(b) 8 Usage compared to a year ago Select single option Change in behaviour 1(b) 9 How Facebook is accessed Select all that apply Technology usage 1(a) 10 Number of Facebook friends Number input Range of number of friends Info 11 Facebook activities 5-point Likert-type Uses of Facebook 1(c) 12 Facebook activities (additional) Open answer # Uses of Facebook 1(c) 13 Reasons for Facebook use 5-point Likert-type Gratifications obtained 2(b) 14 Top reason for continued use Open answer Key gratification 2(b) 15 Facebook Dating popularity Select single option Potential new use/gratification 2(c) 16 Reliance on Facebook for tasks Select all that apply Facebook dependency 3(a) 17 Consideration of deleting Facebook Select single option Level of data/privacy concerns 2(d) 18 Other social media used Select all that apply Potential Facebook alternatives 3(b) 19 Friends Reunited past usage Select single option Social networking background Info 20 Gender Select single option Demographic information Info 21 Relationship status Select single option Demographic information Info 22 Email address ^ Open answer # Prize draw entry method n/a
6.2.3 First Likert-Type Scale Question (Q11): Facebook Activities (Uses) It was decided that simply using a list of Facebook activities/uses from previous research work was inappropriate for this question. While it can be useful to mirror categories used in past research papers, the way Facebook is continuously developing over time means that activities/uses lists need to be updated for each new project. Hence Facebook was extensively studied throughout August 2018 and a list of 42 possible activities/uses created.
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Following pilot group testing and feedback, the list was reduced to 32 activities/uses but with the option for research participants to list ‘other’ activities (on the following question).
Research participants were asked to score their frequency of engagement in each Facebook activity on a 5-point scale, ranging from ‘every time I use Facebook’ through to ‘never’. The full list of activities/uses reported (and their mean frequency) can be found in the results section of this paper.
6.2.4 Second Likert-Type Scale Question (Q13): Gratifications Obtained To measure gratifications obtained, I chose to extend and further develop the classification system originally created by McQuail/Blumler/Brown (introduced in section 5.2). Although now over 40 years old (McQuail et al., 1972 cited in Quan-Haase & Brown, 2013, p.690), I believe the basis of the categories created by these authors remains relevant today. However, to ‘diversion’, ‘personal relationships’, ‘personal identity’ and ‘surveillance’, I have introduced two new gratification categories of ‘belonging’ and ‘community’ which I feel are key in the current age of web 2.0 and social networking sites in particular.
Furthermore, I have introduced five sub-categories to each of these six umbrella categories/groupings, making a total of 30 gratifications (shown on the table below) to measure with my questionnaire. This was done via a second Likert-type scale question (Q13) with participants asked how much they agreed/disagreed with 30 statements about their own use of Facebook. Ideally, I would have used 60 or 90 statements to measure and cross-reference the 30 gratifications, but it was felt this would be too off- putting to those filling in the online form and result in an extremely low completion rate. Hence the 30 statement system was seen as a sensible compromise with a follow- up question asking research participants to state the most important reason for their continued use of Facebook (in attempt to pick-up on any potential gratifications missed in the development of the 30 gratification system).
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Table 3: Newly-Developed 'Gratifications Obtained' Measurement System for Social Networking Sites Personal Personal Diversion Relationships Identity Surveillance Belonging Community ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ Pass Time Contact with Self-Image Information Membership Activism Friends Habit Contact with Self- News Emotional Recommend- Family Comparison Support ations Escapism Reconnecting Outdoing Crisis Alerts Not Missing Fundraising with Old Others Out Friends Entertainment Meeting New Being Heard Protection of Trend Events People Friends/ Family Games Dating Photo-Sharing Jobs Not Being Business Alone Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5 Group 6
6.3 Data Collection and Analysis
6.3.1 Overview Data was collected by a quantitative method using an online questionnaire for a period of seven days during early September 2018 (following a two-day pilot group testing stage). Appeals for research participants were posted via this author’s own Facebook and Twitter accounts and then allowed to spread via a snowball ‘sharing’ technique (see section 6.3.2).
To encourage active participation, two £10 Amazon gift cards were offered via prize draws, the first for those completing the questionnaire and then choosing to add their email address (which was a voluntary option) and the second for those sharing the original Facebook post about (and the link to) the research questionnaire.
These measures resulted in a total of 233 completed questionnaires (of which 117 individuals (50.2%) chose to leave their email address for entry into the first prize draw) and 34 Facebook post shares.
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Questionnaire responses were automatically transferred to a spreadsheet and then analysed using Libre Office software.
6.3.2 Use of the Snowball Sampling Technique for Data Collection Data was collected and analysed via an ‘exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling’ (Dudovskiy, 2018) sharing technique, originating from the author’s own Facebook/Twitter accounts. This form of snowball sampling technique is where each new research participant randomly invites numerous others to participate, with all (valid) responses being analysed and contributing to the project results.
Using a ‘snowball’ sampling technique has a number of advantages and disadvantages for social science researchers.
Advantages include:
• The ability to reach unknown individuals
• Being a cost-effective and fast way to collect primary data
• Little requirement in terms of pre-planning
• Data will usually keep flowing in until the desired sample size is reached
However, disadvantages include:
• Bias can occur from oversampling a particular network of individuals
• Some individuals may not be keen to ask others to take part in the research
• The data collected may not be representative of the wider population due to a lack of absolute randomness in sample selections (meaning accurate statistical inferences may not be possible)
• Sampling error cannot be calculated
(Dudovskiy, 2018)
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7. Ethics
Adhering to a moral and responsible code of ethics is important for all researchers (Collins, 2010, pp.82-85). According to Blaikie (2010, p.31) the following points are particularly important to consider:
• ‘Voluntary Participation’
• ‘Obtaining Informed Consent of Research Participants’
• ‘Protecting the Interests of the Research Participants’
• ‘Researching with Integrity’
Although the quantitative methods used during this project somewhat limit ethical concerns by design, I can confirm that this research work has adhered to the above requirements and has been managed in an ethical manner throughout.
To participate in this project, prospective research subjects had to actively follow a link themselves to the online data collection questionnaire. There, a welcome section provided comprehensive information/details explaining why research data was being collected and that filling in the questionnaire (and becoming a research subject) was entirely voluntary and a process any individual could choose to leave at any time. A personal email address was provided allowing anybody wanting more information (or having any concerns) about the project to directly contact me. I can confirm that no such emails were received (either during the data collection period or since).
Prospective participants were also reassured that no personally identifiable data was being collected (with the exception of the option to leave an email address at the end of the survey to enter one of the two prize draws).
Therefore, by choosing to then fill in the questionnaire, participants were clearly providing their consent to be a part of the project. I can confirm that no personal data was sourced directly from Facebook itself and that the only data collected/recorded throughout the project was that input by the participants themselves via the online questionnaire.
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The interests of the research participants were protected by ensuring strong password control of the data responses and ensuring nobody but myself had access to any results. Other than aggregated results displayed in this paper, data has not (and will not) be shared with anyone else.
The entire project has been carried out with research integrity in mind. I can confirm that all results recorded in this paper are a true reflection of the data collected, that the two £10 Amazon gift card prize draws were made fairly, and that both winners have received their prizes.
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8. Results & Analysis
8.1 Introduction The following is a comprehensive record of the aggregated results from the 233 valid responses received via the project’s online research questionnaire. All data was collected during a one-week period during early September 2018. (Percentages are rounded.)
8.2 Analysis of Aggregated Research Results
8.2.1 – UK Residence
Question 1: Have you lived in the UK for the last 5 years?
• Yes: 233 (100%)
• No: 0 (0%)
This question was included to ensure participation validity.
8.2.2 – Year of Birth
Question 2: When were you born?
Included primarily to ensure participation validity, results also reveal a fairly even balance of research participants across the full 15 years of the UK-GenXc.
Table 4: Birth Year of Research Participants Year Participants Percentage Year Participants Percentage 1966 16 6.9% 1974 20 8.6% 1967 18 7.7% 1975 19 8.2% 1968 8 3.4% 1976 9 3.9% 1969 10 4.3% 1977 15 6.4% 1970 14 6.0% 1978 8 3.4% 1971 19 8.2% 1979 11 4.7% 1972 21 9.0% 1980 25 10.7% 1973 20 8.6% Total 233 100%
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8.2.3 – Home Computer Availability as a Child
Question 3: As a child, did you have a computer available for your use at home?
Generation X was very much the first generation to have the opportunity of a home computer as a child (albeit the purchase of such would almost certainly have been made by a member of the previous generation(s) for the benefiting Generation X individual). This question was included to consider the influence having access to a home computer as a child might have on use of Facebook now (with a theory that those who didn’t have a computer at home in their childhood, may use Facebook less).
Table 5: Home Computer Availability as a Child Computer Available As A Child Number Percentage Sinclair (ZX 80/81/Spectrum) 75 32.2% Commodore (Pet/VIC-20/64/128) 48 20.6% BBC Micro (A/B/Master) 22 9.4% A Windows PC 13 5.6% A ‘connected’ Prestel terminal 1 0.4% Other computer types 32 13.7% No computer available 85 36.5% Total 276 n/a
Of the 233 research participants, results reveal that just over one-third (85) had no home computer access as a child. Interestingly, however, far from this resulting in a lower amount of Facebook use today, the average amount of time spent using Facebook for those who had no computer at home as a child (563 mins/week) is actually more than for those who did (500 mins/week), suggesting no link (or addictive dependency) between home computer use as a child and Facebook use now. (See sections 8.2.7 and 8.3.5 for more information relating to time spent using Facebook by the UK-GenXc).
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8.2.4 – Length of Facebook Membership?
Question 4: When did you join Facebook?
Nearly two-thirds (151/64.8%) of participants joined Facebook 10+ years ago. This concurs with research expectations; Facebook having first been made available to all in 2006 and quickly attracting members. Of the remaining number, 67/28.8% joined 6-9 years ago; 13/5.6% joined 2-5 years ago while the remaining two individuals (0.9%) joined within the last two years.
Illustration 11: Duration of Facebook Membership
There is some evidence in the research data to suggest that longevity of Facebook membership leads to greater use of the social network (and potential dependency/addiction as outlined by Ryan et al., 2014). For those who have been a Facebook member for 10 or more years, the average time spent using the service is 82 minutes per day, while for those who have been a member a shorter time that this, the average is just 61 minutes per day.
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8.2.5 – Initial Gratifications Sought
Question 5: What was your main reason for joining Facebook?
This open question led to over 200 (out of 233) different, but often similar, answers. Analysis of these has enabled me to group the gratifications sought (by the Generation X cohort in the UK) from initially joining Facebook as follows:
Table 6: Reasons for Initially Joining Facebook (Gratifications Sought)
Gratification Sought (Gratification Group #) Number (Total) Total (%) Adjusted % Contact with Friends Personal Relationships 124 53.2% 35.1% Contact with Family Personal Relationships 57 24.5% 16.2% Reconnecting with Old Friends Personal Relationships 34 14.6% 9.6% Trend Belonging 29 12.5% 8.2% Curiosity n/a 28 12.0% 7.9% Membership Belonging 17 7.3% 4.8% Peer Pressure n/a 15 6.4% 4.3% Not Being Alone Belonging 9 3.9% 2.6% Protection of Friends/Family Surveillance 6 2.6% 1.7% Not Missing Out Belonging 5 2.2% 1.4% Events Community 4 1.7% 1.1% Business Community 3 1.3% 0.9% Entertainment Diversion 3 1.3% 0.9% Information Surveillance 3 1.3% 0.9% Photo-Sharing Personal Identity 3 1.3% 0.9% Self-Comparison Personal Identity 3 1.3% 0.9% Dating Personal Relationships 2 0.9% 0.6% Emotional Support Belonging 2 0.9% 0.6% Games Diversion 2 0.9% 0.6% Meeting New People Personal Relationships 2 0.9% 0.6% Jobs Surveillance 1 0.4% 0.3% Recommendations Community 1 0.4% 0.3% Total 353 n/a 100%
# Gratification Group on the above table refers to the classification system of gratifications obtained, developed for this project, for analysis of questionnaire questions 13 and 14. It is shown here for reference/interest only as initial gratifications sought are somewhat different in nature (‘curiosity’ and ‘peer pressure’ being two good examples of initial gratifications sought that do not appear in the ‘gratifications obtained’ results now). Although participants were asked to state their main reason for initially joining Facebook, several gave more than one answer. An adjusted percentage column has been added to the results table above to illustrate what the percentages ‘may’ have looked like if participants had only entered a single reason/gratification. However, it must be stressed that the adjusted percentage cannot be guaranteed as accurate given the way it was calculated (dividing the total number of responses by the total number of participants). It is purely shown as an aid to understanding.
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Results from this question provide an answer to Research Question 2(a). According to this research, the top three gratifications sought when initially joining Facebook by current Facebook users of the Generation X cohort in the UK were ‘Contact with Friends’, ‘Contact with Family’ and ‘Reconnecting with Old Friends’. It seems when joining Facebook, individuals were very much looking for something to help them stay in contact with important people in their life (social media needs that may have previously been satisfied by the likes of Friends Reunited or MySpace). Interestingly, however, these results differ considerably from the findings of Quan-Haase and Young (2010) who also specifically considered ‘gratifications sought’ in their research paper. These authors found ‘friend suggested it’ [satisfying curiosity] and ‘everyone I know is on Facebook’ [not missing out] to be the top two gratifications sought from Facebook use (albeit amongst Canadian university students).
8.2.6 – Frequency of Facebook Use
Question 6: On average, how often do you use Facebook?
A sizeable majority (184/79%) of the research participants reported using Facebook several times a day. This is not surprising given the current popularity of ‘always- connected’ smartphones/apps that deliver push-notifications 24/7.
32 participants (13.7%) reported using Facebook an average of once a day, while 13 individuals (5.6%) use it 4-6 times/week. Of the low-usage groups, 3 research participants (1.3%) use Facebook 1-3 times/week, with just one participant (0.4%) using Facebook less than once a week.
Of course, it should be remembered that this research project exclusively studied current Facebook users and so the data gathered does not indicate the proportion of the UK- GenXc that do/don’t use Facebook. Determination of this data would require a new project. However, a 2017 study found that 61.2% of those aged 35-54 in the UK use some form of social networking site (Ofcom, 2017, p.10). While this is not a direct comparison on the age groups studied, or just Facebook itself, it perhaps acts as a pointer towards the percentage of the UK-GenXc (aged 36-51 in 2017) who ‘may’ be
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 58 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns using Facebook (a figure I personally find surprisingly low). Worldwide, Mander & Valentine (2018) found that 81% of Generation X individuals use Facebook in 2018.
Illustration 12: Reported Facebook Usage Frequency
8.2.7 – Time Spent Using Facebook
Question 7: How long do you spend using Facebook each WEEK?
Participants self-reported time spent using Facebook each week ranging from 10 minutes to 70 hours (4,200 minutes). The average (mean) time spent using Facebook each week works out at 8 hours 44 minutes (524 minutes) with a standard deviation is 9 hours 5 minutes (545 minutes) giving a coefficient of variation of 104%. Worked out as daily usage, this results in a rounded average of 1 hour 15 minutes (75 minutes).
The wide range of answers provided suggests that either (a) individuals use Facebook in very different manners; or (b) that self-estimating past media usage duration (particularly with a service that can push notifications to a smart device 24/7) is particularly difficult (something identified by Ruggiero (2000) as a potential weakness of the uses and gratifications research approach).
Other published papers report daily Facebook/social media usage to be 88 minutes (Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008), 293 minutes (Valentine, 2011), ‘almost 60 minutes’ (Nielsen, 2016 cited in MediaReach, 2017) and 133 minutes (Think Digital First, 2018) – albeit amongst varying age cohorts.
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These results provide an answer to Research Question 1(b).
8.2.8 – Facebook Usage Compared to a Year Ago
Question 8: Compared to a year ago, how much time do you now spend using Facebook?
2018 has been a tough year for Facebook, with revelations of data and privacy breaches (Cadwalladr & Graham-Harrison, 2018) and a wide-spread suggestion (amongst my own Facebook contacts at least) that people were reducing their Facebook use as a result. This question was asked, therefore, to investigate this theory. However, while results suggest a minor reduction in the amount of time the UK-GenXc spend using Facebook now, there is movement in both directions compared to a year ago and clear evidence that many users (41.2%) have not altered their usage habits.
Table 7: Facebook Usage Compared to 12 Months Previous Time Using Facebook Number Percentage A lot more (5) 16 6.9% A little more (4) 28 12.0% About the same amount (3) 96 41.2% A little less (2) 66 28.3% A lot less (1) 27 11.6% Total 233 100%
Using a scale of 1-5 to represent the time descriptors as shown in the table above (where ‘3’ is the midpoint and represents time spent using Facebook a year ago) the reported average now is 2.74 (91.3%). Possible reasons for this small overall decrease could include privacy concerns, a natural decrease in usage as the age of users increases (supporting the findings of McAndrew & Jeong (2012) and Ozimek & Bierhoff (2016)) or that Facebook is no longer satisfying needs to the same level it used to. Further research would be needed to test these theories.
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8.2.9 – Technology Used to Access Facebook
Question 9: How do you access Facebook?
Results suggest that 89.7% of Facebook users (amongst the UK-GenXc) use a mobile phone to access the social network, while just 53.2% access it using a PC/Laptop. Although no identical previous data exists to compare this to, before the advent of the ‘always connected’ smartphone I suggest these figures may well have been reversed. And, of course, a change in access methods could well lead to changes in uses of Facebook, gratifications sought/obtained and dependency upon the service.
Table 8: Technology Used to Access Facebook Technology Number Percentage Mobile Phone 209 89.7% PC/Laptop 124 53.2% Tablet 86 36.9% Games Console 1 0.4% Smart TV 1 0.4% Total 421 n/a
This data provides an answer for Research Question 1(a).
8.2.10 – Number of Facebook ‘Friends’
Question 10: How many Facebook ‘friends’ do you currently have?
Study participants reported a wide range in the number of ‘friends’ each has on the social network, from 3 to 3000.
The average (mean) number of Facebook ‘friends’ reported was 320.3 with a standard deviation of 364.2, giving a coefficient of variation of 113.7%.
The wide range reported in the number of contacts maintained on the social network is likely to depend less on the number of real-life friends an individual has and more upon how they use Facebook itself (although, according to the data collected, no correlation
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 61 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns seems to exist between the number of Facebook ‘friends’ an individual has and how long they spend using the social network).
Interestingly, it has been suggested by researchers such as anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, that an individual ‘can only maintain 150 or so social friendships with any degree of stability’ and a ‘mere five close friendships at a time’ (Nield, 2016). With the average number of ‘Facebook’ friends amongst the UK-GenXc being over 300, this would suggest that the average user is physically and mentally unable to pay sufficient attention to over 50% of their ‘friends’.
8.2.11 – Facebook Activities (Uses)
Question 11: How often do you engage in the following Facebook activities?
This question was asked to uncover how the UK-GenXc actually use Facebook on a day-to-day basis (with selections made from a list of 32 possible activities). Utilising a Likert-type 5-point scale, results reveal the top two activities/uses to be ‘passive’ ones in nature, with users reading/viewing rather than actively collaborating and adding to the content. This could, potentially, be explained by the high use of mobile phones to access Facebook (see section 8.2.9) which offers users a constant opportunity to quickly ‘flick’ through their network feed whenever a few spare seconds arise (such as during advertising breaks in television shows) or, equally, could indicate a correlation between increasing age and increasing ‘passive’/decreasing ‘interactive’ use of Facebook, as suggested by the research work of Valentine (2011) and Ancu (2012).
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Table 9: Facebook Activities Engaged In (Facebook ‘Uses’)
Facebook Activity Every Most Occasion- Rarely Never Average (Uses by Facebook visits) Time [5] Times [4] ally [3] [2] [1] [5-1 scale] Scroll through the homepage 49.8% 35.6% 8.2% 3.0% 3.4% 4.25 ‘News Feed’ Spend time viewing 15.5% 38.2% 34.8% 9.9% 1.7% 3.56 ‘Photos/Videos’ uploaded by others Comment on/React to posts on 18.0% 32.2% 37.3% 9.4% 3.0% 3.53 the ‘News Feed’ Comment on/React to 13.3% 34.8% 40.8% 10.7% 0.4% 3.50 ‘Photos/Videos’ uploaded by others Send/Read ‘Private Messages’ 14.2% 36.9% 32.6% 14.6% 1.7% 3.47 to/from ‘Friends’ or ‘Family Members’ Look at/Interact with ‘Groups’ 20.2% 28.8% 29.6% 15.0% 6.4% 3.41 I am a member of Comment on/React to ‘Posts’ 6.0% 24.9% 30.5% 30.9% 7.7% 2.91 on the ‘Profile Pages’ of ‘Friends & Family’ Upload ‘Photos’ and/or 2.6% 14.2% 56.2% 20.6% 6.4% 2.86 ‘Videos’ Write on the ‘Wall’ of a 1.3% 13.7% 48.9% 30.0% 6.0% 2.74 ‘Friend’ or ‘Family Member’ Post a ‘Status Update’ 1.7% 9.0% 54.5% 28.8% 6.0% 2.72 Look through my ‘Facebook 7.7% 18.0% 30.9% 24.5% 18.9% 2.71 Memories’ Look at the ‘Profile Pages’ of 3.0% 11.2% 40.3% 36.5% 9.0% 2.63 ‘Friends & Family’ Look at my own ‘Profile Page’ 2.6% 4.3% 42.9% 43.3% 6.9% 2.52 Respond to ‘Event Invitations’ 0.0% 7.3% 37.3% 42.1% 13.3% 2.39 Update my ‘Profile Photo’ 0.9% 0.4% 36.9% 55.8% 6.0% 2.34 and/or ‘Cover Photo’ Look through the ‘Friends 0.4% 5.2% 27.5% 49.8% 17.2% 2.22 Lists’ of Facebook ‘Friends/Family’ Look at/Interact with 2.6% 8.2% 19.7% 29.6% 39.9% 2.04 ‘Business/Organisation Pages’ I follow Carry out admin duties for a 6.4% 11.2% 9.9% 17.2% 55.4% 1.96 ‘Group’ I manage (or help to manage)
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Watch a ‘Facebook Live Video’ 0.0% 3.4% 17.6% 44.2% 34.8% 1.90 as broadcast Post links to ‘Third Party’ 1.7% 5.2% 21.5% 24.0% 47.6% 1.89 websites Use the ‘Marketplace’ to 2.1% 8.6% 16.3% 21.5% 51.5% 1.88 Buy/Sell/Browse Update the personal 0.4% 0.0% 10.7% 64.4% 24.5% 1.88 information on my ‘Profile Page’ Ask for/Respond to 0.4% 4.7% 16.7% 29.6% 48.5% 1.79 ‘Recommendations’ Look through the ‘Stories’ 1.3% 4.3% 14.6% 29.2% 50.6% 1.76 section Create ‘Events’ 0.0% 3.0% 14.2% 29.2% 53.6% 1.67 Play ‘Games’ 3.4% 6.4% 9.0% 12.4% 68.7% 1.64 Manage a ‘Page/Advertising’ 3.9% 8.2% 6.0% 9.0% 73.0% 1.61 for a ‘Business/Organisation’ Use the ‘Discover People’ 0.4% 0.9% 12.9% 27.0% 58.8% 1.57 facility Add a post to ‘Your Story’ 0.9% 0.9% 9.9% 24.9% 63.5% 1.51 Create/Manage a ‘Fundraiser’ 0.0% 0.4% 5.2% 12.9% 81.5% 1.24 Look through the ‘Facebook 0.9% 2.6% 2.6% 6.4% 87.6% 1.23 Jobs’ section Broadcast a ‘Facebook Live 0.4% 1.3% 3.4% 10.7% 84.1% 1.23 Video’
With the top two identified ‘uses’ of Facebook being passive in nature, and the fourth most popular use being ‘private communication’, these results echo similar findings of other academic authors, including Valentine (2011) who found passive surveillance use and private communication to be key uses amongst those aged 35+; Ancu (2012) who notes ‘passive use’ amongst older Facebook audiences; and Ozimek & Bierhoff (2016) who suggest that ‘age is negatively associated with Facebook use’ across many activities.
This data provides an answer for Research Question 1(c).
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8.2.12 – Additional Facebook Activities (Uses)
Question 12: Please list any additional activities (not listed in the previous question) you engage in when using Facebook.
This voluntary, open question led to 20 responses from the 233 research participants. However, upon closer inspection, it was clear that all bar three of these were just repeated items from the activities/uses listed in question 11.
The three additional/new activities/uses (each listed by just one person) were:
• Academic research
• Creating/managing sub-lists of different friends
• Reading the Crisis Response page
Adding this information to that of section 8.2.11 reveals a full list of 35 activities/uses engaged in by UK Generation X Facebook users.
8.2.13 – Gratifications Obtained from Facebook Use
Question 13: Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements about YOUR USE of Facebook.
This question was used to uncover the current gratifications obtained by the UK-GenXc using a Likert-type 5-point scale. An average (mean) in excess of 3 indicates an overall gratification obtained and, below 3, something not really deemed a gratification obtained by the research group (although the results of any one individual may, of course, differ significantly from the overall group averages).
Gratifications have been classified, recorded and grouped as per my unique adaptation and expansion of McQuail/Blumler/Brown’s 1972 classification system, as outlined in the theoretical framework (section 5.2) and methodology/method (section 6.2.4).
The top two gratifications, both scoring above 4 on the 5-point scale are ‘Contact with Friends’ and ‘Contact with Family’, suggesting that Facebook is very much used as a ‘social network’ that retains its user-base by providing a convenient way for individuals to stay in touch with others personally known to them.
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‘Jobs’ and ‘Dating’ are the least obtained gratifications from Facebook use by the UK- GenXc. One potential explanation for this could be that the ‘middle-aged’ are generally just more settled in good jobs and relationships that other generational cohorts (although additional research would be needed to test this theory).
In the theoretical framework section, I outlined how if gratifications sought = gratifications obtained, media users will generally be satisfied by their experience and continue using that media. With the top two gratifications obtained from Facebook use amongst the UK-GenXc (‘Contact with Friends’ and ‘Contact with Family’) being the same as the top two gratifications initially sought upon joining the social network, this is a fine example of this theoretical correlation in practise.
Top gratifications obtained findings echo those of numerous other authors, including Raacke & Bonds-Raacke (2008), Pempek et al. (2009), Urista et al. (2009), McAndrew & Jeong (2012), Bell et al., 2013 and Eun Hwa Jung et al. (2017).
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Table 10: Gratifications Obtained from Facebook Use (see Table 11 for Gratifications Groups information)
Group Gratification Obtained Overall Average Standard Group Rank (Mean) Deviation Rank 2 Contact with Friends 1 4.54 0.75 1 2 Contact with Family 2 4.11 1.14 2 1 Pass Time 3 3.88 1.07 1 4 Information 4 3.75 1.13 1 1 Escapism 5 3.68 1.15 2 1 Entertainment 6 3.64 0.87 3 2 Reconnecting with Old Friends 7 3.61 1.18 3 3 Photo-Sharing 8 3.55 1.18 1 1 Habit 9 3.43 1.22 4 5 Membership 10 3.36 1.36 1 4 News 11 3.27 1.23 2 4 Crisis Alerts 12 2.91 1.31 3 5 Not Being Alone 13 2.60 1.39 2 3 Being Heard 14 2.58 1.41 2 2 Meeting New People 15 2.53 1.29 4 3 Self-Image 16 2.52 1.31 3 4 Protection of Friends/Family 17 2.50 1.28 4 6 Events 18 2.45 1.45 1 5 Not Missing Out 19 2.42 1.29 3 6 Business 20 2.36 1.45 2 6 Recommendations 21 2.34 1.35 3 5 Emotional Support 22 2.33 1.28 4 6 Activism 23 2.24 1.36 4 3 Self-Comparison 24 2.09 1.21 4 6 Fundraising 25 1.97 1.22 5 3 Outdoing Others 26 1.91 1.14 5 1 Games 27= 1.81 1.20 5 5 Trend 27= 1.81 1.08 5 4 Jobs 29 1.43 0.85 5 2 Dating 30 1.15 0.49 5
Although the top two gratifications obtained both come from the ‘Personal Relationships’ gratifications group introduced and described earlier in this paper, when
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 67 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns all individual gratifications are placed into their groups, it is actually ‘Diversion’ that comes out as the top gratification group (with ‘Pass Time’, ‘Escapism’ and ‘Entertainment’ all finding a place in the top six gratifications obtained overall).
Table 11: Gratifications Obtained from Facebook Use by Gratifications Group Group Gratifications Group Average Standard Coefficient of Rank [+ Group Number] (Mean) Deviation (SD) Variation (CV) 1 Diversion [1] 3.29 1.34 40.73% 2 Personal Relationships [2] 3.19 1.59 49.77% 3 Surveillance [4] 2.77 1.41 50.80% 4 Personal Identity [3] 2.53 1.37 54.37% 5 Belonging [5] 2.50 1.38 55.10% 6 Community [6] 2.27 1.37 60.55%
‘Diversion’ (or similar) is also identified as a significant obtained gratification by a number of previous researchers, including Quan-Haase & Young (2010), Valentine (2011), Ancu (2012), Whiting & Williams (2013) and Dhir & Tsai (2016).
This data provides an answer for Research Question 2(b).
8.2.14 – Top Reason for Continued Use of Facebook
Question 14: In your own words, what is the most important reason for your continued use of Facebook?
This question was asked to allow for cross-referencing of (and also to potentially uncover any additional gratifications not previously identified by) the data gathered and analysed for the previous question.
Limited to choosing a single top reason for continued use of Facebook, ‘Contact with Friends’ topped the list once again. Surprisingly, ‘Membership’ (not a gratification that features highly in the findings of other Facebook/social media researchers) jumps up to the second most important factor/gratification, pushing ‘Contact with Family’ down to third place.
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22 of the 30 previous ‘obtained gratifications’ were provided as answers to this ‘open’ style question by research participants (with no new/unexpected gratifications being included).
Table 12: Top Reasons for Continued Facebook Use (Gratifications Sought/Obtained) Gratification Gratification Group Mentions Percentage Contact with Friends Personal Relationships 106 45.5% Membership Belonging 24 10.3% Contact with Family Personal Relationships 19 8.2% Information Surveillance 10 4.3% Emotional Support Belonging 8 3.4% Habit Diversion 8 3.4% Not Being Alone Belonging 8 3.4% Business Community 7 3.0% Events Community 7 3.0% News Surveillance 7 3.0% Entertainment Diversion 6 2.6% Trend Belonging 5 2.1% Pass Time Diversion 4 1.7% Escapism Diversion 3 1.3% Not Missing Out Belonging 3 1.3% Recommendations Community 2 0.9% Activism Community 1 0.4% Games Diversion 1 0.4% Meeting New People Personal Relationships 1 0.4% Photo-Sharing Personal Identity 1 0.4% Reconnecting with Old Friends Personal Relationships 1 0.4% Self-Comparison Personal Identity 1 0.4% Total 233 100.0%
When grouped by my own adaptation of McQuail/Blumler/Brown’s 1972 classification system, we see an even bigger change. This time ‘Personal Relationships’ tops the list
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(despite no longer retaining the top two individual gratifications) and ‘Belonging’ also jumps above previously first-placed ‘Diversion’ (as identified in the previous question).
I would suggest that a potential explanation for this is quite possibly that few people want to think of ‘Diversion’ (and its individual gratifications such as ‘Pass Time’ which could be translated as ‘wasting time’) as a good reason for continuing to use Facebook, whereas maintaining ‘Personal Relationships’ and ‘Belonging’ to common-interest groups etc. seem more useful outcomes. However, as with previous theories thrown up as a result of this project’s findings, more detailed research would be needed to properly investigate this.
Table 13: Top Reasons for Continued Facebook Use by Gratifications Group Group Gratifications Group Total Percentage Group Rank [+ Group Number] Mentions Gratifications Totals [Max=5] 1 Personal Relationships [2] 127 54.5% 4/5 2 Belonging [5] 48 20.6% 5/5 3 Diversion [1] 22 9.4% 5/5 4= Community [6] 17 7.3% 4/5 4= Surveillance [4] 17 7.3% 2/5 6 Personal Identity [3] 2 0.9% 2/5 Total 233 100.0% 22/30
8.2.15 – Potential Impact of ‘Facebook Dating’
Question 15: Facebook has announced it will soon introduce a semi-confidential dating service to the network. Would you use this?
Asked to investigate whether or not Facebook’s plan to introduce a dating service to the network would potentially be a new use of Facebook (and whether or not its impact could become a new gratification) for the UK-GenXc, over three-quarters (76%) of research participants reported that they would not use it. This is, perhaps, not surprising given that this research is considering the ‘middle-aged’ Generation X cohort; less than a quarter of whom class themselves as ‘single’ (see section 8.2.21).
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Of the remaining 24% of respondents, 14.2% stated that they would ‘probably not’ use the new dating service, 6.4% responded ‘maybe’, 2.6% ‘probably’ and just 0.9% ‘yes’.
It may well be that interest in ‘Facebook Dating’ decreases as age increases. However, to strengthen (or dispel) this theory, the same question would need to be asked of younger and older generations by future researchers.
Illustration 13: Interest in Facebook's Forthcoming Semi-Confidential 'Dating' Service
Reassuringly, nobody who answered ‘yes’ or ‘probably’ to this question then also reported themselves as ‘married’ when answering question 21.
This data provides an answer for Research Question 2(c).
8.2.16 – Facebook Dependency
Question 16: Do you rely EXCLUSIVELY on Facebook for any of the following tasks/activities?
This question was asked to test a personal theory that users may be becoming media dependent upon Facebook and the results are quite stunning and alarming in equal measure. A remarkable 87.6% of research subjects admitted to relying exclusively on Facebook to stay in touch with certain friends, and 61.8% to stay in touch with certain family members, meaning that if Facebook was to disappear overnight, an awful lot of
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 71 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns friendships and family connections could potentially be lost for ever. Both Pearce (2009) and Ferris & Hollenbaugh (2018) suggest that media dependency is more likely to occur where alternative options are limited and, while other options to stay in touch with friends and family members clearly do exist, perhaps it is the ease and convenience of Facebook’s messaging system (and being a single medium that a high number of one’s friends and family generally use) that has led to ‘communicatory dependence’ in this case?
Also of interest is that 15% of research participants admitted to Facebook being their only source for remaining up-to-date with the news. Given the issues around fake news and fake sources of news posted on social media, this figure is surprisingly high (particularly for a ‘middle-aged’ cohort who one might expect to be more ‘world-wise’). It also raises concerns about shielded exposure to ‘hard news’ and/or opposing views as previously outlined in the literature review (Ha et al., 2013).
Only 6 of the 233 study participants (2.6%) stated that they didn’t rely exclusively upon Facebook for any task/activity at all.
Table 14: Exclusive Dependency on Facebook for certain Tasks/Activities Task/Activity Yes (Total) Percentage To stay in touch with certain friends 204 87.6% To stay in touch with certain family members 144 61.8% To engage with a club or society 107 45.9% To find out about events 63 27.0% To keep up-to-date with the latest news 35 15.0% To back-up photos and/or videos 32 13.7% To advertise a product or business 25 10.7% Other: ‘Keeping motivated to stay fit’ 1 0.4% Other: ‘Politics’ 1 0.4% Other: ‘Study related information & connections’ 1 0.4% Total 613 n/a
This data provides an answer for Research Question 3(a).
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8.2.17 – Consideration of Facebook Account Deletion
Question 17: Have you ever seriously considered deleting your Facebook account because of data and privacy concerns?
With Facebook having suffered a raft of bad publicity in 2018, I decided it was worth investigating whether or not the UK-GenXc had seriously considered deleting their Facebook accounts because of data/privacy concerns.
Interestingly, nearly two-thirds (62.2%) of research subjects stated that they had not seriously considered deleting their account. Possible reasons for this include that as an audience/user of media, we are now used to – and accepting of – large organisations using our data in return for seemingly ‘free’ services; and/or the fact that (as revealed by the previous question) such a high percentage of the UK-GenXc seem to be exclusively dependent upon Facebook to maintain key contacts (effectively handing Facebook great power over its users and society at large).
Illustration 14: Past Consideration of Facebook Account Deletion due to Data/Privacy Concerns
Of course, the 37.8% who reported that they had seriously considered deleting their account is still a significant number which, if it were to happen, could lead to lost contacts for individuals and reduced profits for Facebook.
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Additionally, as this research focused only on those with a current/active Facebook account, it is not possible to calculate the number UK Generation X individuals who previously had a Facebook account that they subsequently deleted.
This information provides an answer for Research Question 2(d).
8.2.18 – Other Social Media Use
Question 18: What other social media do you use?
Asked to see what social media usage patterns exist with the UK-GenXc who use Facebook (and to consider what alternatives to Facebook individuals may choose if ever shutting down their Facebook account), the most popular other social media used is, by far, WhatsApp (being used by 70.8% of the Facebook users who took part in the research). With WhatsApp primarily being an encrypted messaging system – and with contact with friends and family being key uses of Facebook for the UK-GenXc – it would suggest that a ready-made Facebook alternative already exists and is being heavily used in this regard, if Facebook users wanted to ‘jump ship’. Ironically, however, WhatsApp has been owned by Facebook since 2014 (BBC News, 2014).
Although Twitter and YouTube came second and third in the poll, it is – perhaps – surprising that both are reportedly used by fewer than 50% of UK Generation X Facebook users.
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Table 15: Social Media Used (in addition to Facebook) (Other) Social Media Used Number Used By (%) WhatsApp 165 70.8% Twitter 116 49.8% YouTube 107 45.9% Instagram 106 45.5% Snapchat 32 13.7% Google+ 28 12.0% Tumblr 7 3.0% Pinterest 6 2.6% LinkedIn 5 2.1% MySpace 3 1.3% Other (total of; single response each) 10 4.3% Total 585 n/a
10 research subjects (4.3%) reported using no social media other than Facebook.
This data provides an answer for Research Question 3(b).
8.2.19 – Previous Friends Reunited Membership
Question 19: Were you a user of Friends Reunited before that social network closed?
Before Facebook, the big UK player in the social networking market was Friends Reunited which, in 2005 (a year before Facebook became available to all) had an impressive 15 million members (something that equates to almost 25% of the entire UK population). Friends Reunited charged members to send messages until 2008 (Jowitt, 2017) which was, perhaps, its downfall. After all, who would choose to pay Friends Reunited for something Facebook was seemingly offering for ‘free’.
To investigate the social networking background/history of the research participants, I decided to find out how many had previously been a member of Friends Reunited. Perhaps, not surprisingly, 73.8% reported that they had – a figure not so dissimilar to the 64.8% who have been a Facebook member for ten or more years.
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Illustration 15: Previous Friends Reunited Social Network Membership
While this doesn’t prove any correlation, it is nevertheless interesting to consider whether or not Facebook would have been such an instant hit in the UK had Friends Reunited been (financially) free to use in 2006.
8.2.20 – Gender
Question 20: I am ______[gender].
Asked as a demographic indicator of the research group participants, more females (65.2%) completed the online questionnaire than males (34.3%) with one research subject (0.4%) opting out from stating their gender, suggesting that more females than males use Facebook amongst the UK-GenXc. This result is not unexpected and reassuringly mirrors the findings of numerous other researchers (examples being Joinson (2008, p.1029) – 66.8% female; Valentine (2011, p.26) – 69.4% female; Ozimek & Bierhoff (2016, p.273) – 70.4% female; Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2016, p.8) – 53.4% and Think Digital First (2018) – 51% female).
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Illustration 16: Gender Split of Research Respondents
8.2.21 – Relationship Status
Question 21: Relationship Status ______[relationship options].
Asked as a second demographic indicator of the research group participants, 48.5% of respondents stated that they were married (something that goes part-way to potentially explaining why the idea of a ‘Facebook Dating’ service is, seemingly, not popular with the UK-GenXc).
A further 22.3% of research subjects stated that they were ‘in a relationship (but not married)’; 24.9% regard themselves as ‘single’ and 2.1% as ‘other’. Additionally, 2.1% of participants opted out from reporting their relationship status.
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Illustration 17: Reported Relationship Status of Research Respondents
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8.3 Cross-Tabulated Analysis
8.3.1 Introduction Below, I probe some of the key project findings revealed in the previous sections, cross- tabulating the data, in search of correlations, patterns and meanings. Tables 16-19 show the differences between heavy/light plus male/female Facebook users amongst the UK- GenXc. (For the purposes of this analysis, heavy users are defined as those using the service more than the average duration of 524 minutes/week; and light users as those using the service less than this average.)
8.3.2 Facebook Activities/Uses (Heavy v Light + Male v Female Users) Table 16 revisits the Facebook activities/uses revealed in section 8.2.11 and splits the results between heavy and light Facebook users and then male and female Facebook users amongst the UK-GenXc.
Not surprisingly, heavy users do more of almost everything, with the exception of four of the least popular Facebook activities/uses (see table 16). Perhaps the only unexpected finding here is that light users do more of anything at all.
When considering the gender, we find that female users engage more often in twice as many Facebook activities (and significantly, it is not until the 12th most popular activity overall that we see more male than female usage). Given that more females than males use Facebook (as highlighted by this research plus that of Joinson, 2008; Valentine, 2011; Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2016; Ozimek & Bierhoff, 2016 and Think Digital First, 2018) which suggests a higher level of gratifications satisfaction amongst female users (a theory supported by table 17 data) and that UK Generation X females use Facebook for longer than their male counterparts (see table 19), it is only logical that females would engage in most activities on a more regular basis that would males – a logic this project’s data supports. Activities that males engage in more often than females include looking at the profile pages and friends lists of friends and family members, carrying out admin duties for groups, posting links to third-party websites and broadcasting live videos.
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Table 16: Cross-Tabulated Results Table A: Facebook Activities/Uses (Heavy v Light + Male v Female UK Generation X Facebook Users)
Facebook Activity (Uses by Facebook visits) Average of Heavy Light Male Female Likert-Type 5-Point Scale: Every Time[5], Most Times[4], Total Users Users Users Users Users Occasionally[3], Rarely[2], Never[1] [5-1 scale] (33.9%) (66.1%) (34.3%) (65.2%) Scroll through the homepage ‘News Feed’ 4.25 4.56 4.10 4.06 4.36 Spend time viewing ‘Photos/Videos’ uploaded by others 3.56 3.73 3.47 3.51 3.59 Comment on/React to posts on the ‘News Feed’ 3.53 3.67 3.45 3.28 3.66 Comment on/React to ‘Photos/Videos’ uploaded by others 3.50 3.67 3.41 3.40 3.55 Send/Read ‘Private Messages’ to/from ‘Friends’ or ‘Family 3.47 3.80 3.31 3.43 3.50 Members’ Look at/Interact with ‘Groups’ I am a member of 3.41 3.80 3.21 3.18 3.53 Comment on/React to ‘Posts’ on the ‘Profile Pages’ of 2.91 3.20 2.75 2.88 2.93 ‘Friends & Family’ Upload ‘Photos’ and/or ‘Videos’ 2.86 2.96 2.81 2.86 2.86 Write on the ‘Wall’ of a ‘Friend’ or ‘Family Member’ 2.74 2.84 2.69 2.64 2.80 Post a ‘Status Update’ 2.72 2.99 2.58 2.70 2.73 Look through my ‘Facebook Memories’ 2.71 2.96 2.58 2.45 2.86 Look at the ‘Profile Pages’ of ‘Friends & Family’ 2.63 2.87 2.50 2.69 2.61 Look at my own ‘Profile Page’ 2.52 2.72 2.42 2.38 2.61 Respond to ‘Event Invitations’ 2.39 2.49 2.33 2.30 2.43 Update my ‘Profile Photo’ and/or ‘Cover Photo’ 2.34 2.46 2.29 2.28 2.38 Look through the ‘Friends Lists’ of Facebook 2.22 2.47 2.09 2.30 2.18 ‘Friends/Family’ Look at/Interact with ‘Business/Organisation Pages’ I follow 2.04 2.28 1.92 1.90 2.12 Carry out admin duties for a ‘Group’ I manage (or help to 1.96 2.39 1.74 2.05 1.92 manage) Watch a ‘Facebook Live Video’ as broadcast 1.90 2.18 1.75 1.78 1.96 Post links to ‘Third Party’ websites 1.89 2.20 1.73 2.00 1.82 Use the ‘Marketplace’ to Buy/Sell/Browse 1.88 2.08 1.79 1.71 1.98 Update the personal information on my ‘Profile Page’ 1.88 1.99 1.82 1.83 1.90 Ask for/Respond to ‘Recommendations’ 1.79 1.94 1.71 1.68 1.86 Look through the ‘Stories’ section 1.76 1.90 1.69 1.70 1.80 Create ‘Events’ 1.67 1.75 1.62 1.61 1.70 Play ‘Games’ 1.64 1.75 1.58 1.38 1.78 Manage a ‘Page/Advertising’ for a ‘Business/Organisation’ 1.61 1.84 1.49 1.61 1.61 Use the ‘Discover People’ facility 1.57 1.56 1.58 1.60 1.56 Add a post to ‘Your Story’ 1.51 1.44 1.54 1.56 1.48 Create/Manage a ‘Fundraiser’ 1.24 1.24 1.25 1.28 1.23 Look through the ‘Facebook Jobs’ section 1.23 1.14 1.27 1.10 1.30 Broadcast a ‘Facebook Live Video’ 1.23 1.30 1.19 1.30 1.20
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8.3.3 Gratifications Obtained (Heavy v Light + Male v Female Users) As outlined in the theoretical framework, where gratifications sought = gratifications obtained, users of a media service will generally be satisfied with their experience and continue using that service (seeking the same gratifications again and again). One would, therefore, expect to see heavy users of a media service being those who obtain the most gratifications from it. This argument is supported, almost perfectly, by this project’s data when comparing the level of gratifications obtained by heavy and light Facebook users amongst the UK-GenXc, with 29/30 gratifications being obtained to a higher level of satisfaction by heavy users of the social network (the one exception being ‘Pass Time’).
Comparing genders, we find that female users obtain 27/30 gratifications to a higher level of satisfaction, again not a surprise given that females are more likely than males to be heavy users, spending an average 22 minutes longer each day using Facebook (see table 19). The three gratifications obtained where male users report a higher level of satisfaction are ‘Contact with Friends’, ‘Reconnecting with Old Friends’ and ‘Outdoing Others’, suggesting that on-going contact with colleagues and competitiveness are needs more important to males than females amongst the UK-GenXc.
Table 17 shows the data/results in full for the gratifications obtained by heavy/light and male/female Facebook users amongst the UK-GenXc – analysed via my own expanded/enhanced version of McQuail/Blumler/Brown’s 1972 classification system – and ranked from questionnaire responses to a Likert-type 5-point satisfaction grid question.
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Table 17: Cross-Tabulated Results Table B: Gratifications Obtained from Facebook Use (Heavy v Light + Male v Female UK Generation X Facebook Users)
Group Gratification Obtained Average of Heavy Light Male Female Total Users Users Users Users Users [5-1 Scale] (33.9%) (66.1%) (34.3%) (65.2%) 2 Contact with Friends 4.54 4.68 4.47 4.58 4.53 2 Contact with Family 4.11 4.25 4.04 3.85 4.27 1 Pass Time 3.88 3.87 3.89 3.79 3.95 4 Information 3.75 3.91 3.66 3.46 3.91 1 Escapism 3.68 3.87 3.58 3.54 3.78 1 Entertainment 3.64 3.85 3.53 3.55 3.70 2 Reconnecting with Old Friends 3.61 3.68 3.58 3.83 3.52 3 Photo-Sharing 3.55 3.81 3.41 3.53 3.57 1 Habit 3.43 4.05 3.11 3.29 3.52 5 Membership 3.36 3.78 3.15 2.83 3.66 4 News 3.27 3.63 3.09 2.84 3.52 4 Crisis Alerts 2.91 3.35 2.68 2.60 3.09 5 Not Being Alone 2.60 3.11 2.33 2.35 2.74 3 Being Heard 2.58 3.00 2.36 2.39 2.68 2 Meeting New People 2.53 3.08 2.25 2.46 2.57 3 Self-Image 2.52 2.63 2.47 2.38 2.61 4 Protection of Friends/Family 2.50 2.90 2.30 2.18 2.68 6 Events 2.45 2.63 2.36 2.20 2.60 5 Not Missing Out 2.42 2.62 2.31 2.23 2.53 6 Business 2.36 2.59 2.23 2.21 2.44 6 Recommendations 2.34 2.68 2.16 2.11 2.47 5 Emotional Support 2.33 2.86 2.06 1.95 2.55 6 Activism 2.24 2.73 1.98 1.90 2.42 3 Self-Comparison 2.09 2.35 1.95 1.88 2.20 6 Fundraising 1.97 2.01 1.94 1.89 2.01 3 Outdoing Others 1.91 2.22 1.76 2.03 1.86 1 Games 1.81 2.04 1.69 1.54 1.95 5 Trend 1.81 1.96 1.73 1.73 1.86 4 Jobs 1.43 1.49 1.40 1.30 1.51 2 Dating 1.15 1.16 1.15 1.10 1.18
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8.3.4 Exclusive Dependency (Heavy v Light + Male v Female Users) Heavy users of Facebook amongst the UK-GenXc display the greatest level of exclusive dependency upon the social network in all bar one category investigated. Again this should come as no surprise given that individuals highly dependent upon a media service are more likely to use that service to a greater degree than other users not so dependent on it. Hence, the more dependent a user is upon Facebook for the satisfaction of certain needs, the probability of heavy usage by that user increases, furthering the influence and power Facebook has over them. This is, in essence, a runaway-train effect and a vicious circle that it is difficult for users to break.
Female users (being, on average, heavier users of Facebook) are more dependent on the social network in more categories than their male counterparts. Significant differences can be seen in dependency upon Facebook to engage with a club/society and to back-up photos/videos (both highly female-dominant) and dependency upon Facebook to advertise a product/business (male-dominant).
Table 18: Cross-Tabulated Results Table C: Exclusive Dependency on Facebook (Heavy v Light + Male v Female UK Generation X Facebook Users)
Exclusive Dependency Total Heavy Light Male Female Users Users Users Users Users (233) (33.9%) (66.1%) (34.3%) (65.2%) To stay in touch with certain friends 87.6% 87.3% 87.7% 93.8% 84.9% To stay in touch with certain family members 61.8% 74.7% 55.2% 53.7% 66.4% To engage with a club or society 45.9% 49.4% 44.2% 33.8% 52.6% To find out about events 27.0% 32.9% 24.0% 27.5% 26.9% To keep up-to-date with the latest news 15.0% 19.0% 13.0% 11.3% 17.1% To back-up photos and/or videos 13.7% 13.9% 13.6% 3.8% 19.1% To advertise a product or business 10.7% 15.2% 8.4% 15.0% 8.6% Other (combined) 1.3% 2.5% 0.7% 1.3% 1.3%
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8.3.5 Other Key Categories (Heavy v Light + Male v Female Users) Considering some of the other key results, broken down between heavy and light users, plus males and females, we can identify that females amongst the UK-GenXc use Facebook an average of 1.37 times as long as males each day, although this average daily usage is reducing amongst both genders. Only heavy users of the social network are using Facebook more now than they were a year previous.
Heavy users have, on average 163.7 (63.2%) more ‘friends’ on the network than do light users although, surprisingly (given that females are more likely to be heavy Facebook users) males report to have an average of 64.6 (21.8%) more Facebook ‘friends’, perhaps explaining why on-going contact with friends scored such so highly in gratification satisfaction (see table 17) amongst male users.
Table 19: Cross-Tabulated Results Table D: Other Key Categories (Heavy v Light + Male v Female UK Generation X Facebook Users)
Other Key Categories Total Heavy Light Male Female Users Users Users Users Users (233) (33.9%) (66.1%) (34.3%) (65.2%) Facebook membership of 10+ years 64.8% 72.2% 61.0% 67.5% 63.2% Time spent using Facebook each day (average) 75 mins 152 mins 35 mins 60 mins 82 mins Less usage compared to a year previous 39.9% 22.8% 43.5% 40.0% 39.5% Similar usage compared to a year previous 41.2% 44.3% 39.6% 43.8% 40.1% More usage compared to a year previous 18.9% 32.9% 16.9% 16.3% 20.4% Number of Facebook friends (average) 320.3 422.9 259.2 360.3 295.7 Consideration of Facebook account deletion 37.8% 29.1% 42.2% 41.3% 35.5% due to data/privacy concerns Other social media: Use of WhatsApp 70.8% 65.8% 73.4% 70.0% 71.1% Relationship Status: Married/In a relationship 70.8% 64.6% 74.0% 76.3% 68.4% Relationship Status: Single 24.9% 29.1% 22.7% 23.8% 25.7% Gender 233 67.1% f 64.3% f 34.3% 65.2% (100%) 31.6% m 35.7% m of total of total (1.3% n/a)
Adding further evidence to the theory that a medium holds more power over those users exclusively dependent upon it for the satisfaction of certain needs, fewer heavy (and more dependent) Facebook users than light users amongst the UK-GenXc have
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 84 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns seriously considered deleting their account due to data/privacy concerns. In contrast, light users of Facebook use the next most-popular form of social media amongst the Facebook-using UK-GenXc (WhatsApp) more than the heavy Facebook users, suggesting that light users share the same overall media needs as heavy users, but obtain gratifications – and satisfy those needs – by using alternative mediums.
Finally, the data reveals that single individuals are more likely to be heavy Facebook users than are those who are married/in a relationship. This is not particularly surprising given that single individuals are likely to have more free time, are more likely to be looking to meet new people and are potentially going to experience a greater desire for online company, than are those already married/in a relationship.
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9. Conclusions
9.1 Introduction The empirical research conducted for this paper, with primary data collected via the quantitative method of an online questionnaire, has produced an interesting and revealing set of results and ‘answers’ to the project’s research questions (along with some relevant additional information that it is hoped will be of use to future researchers for comparative purposes) giving a fair overall indication of ‘how’ and ‘why’ the UK- GenXc use Facebook.
The results/research questions ‘answers’ are summarised in a single, easy-to-read, graphic below:
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Illustration 18: Summary of Research Questions and Findings/Results
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9.2 Concluding Discussion
9.2.1 Concluding Discussion of Project Results When reviewing the gratifications obtained from Facebook use by the UK-GenXc it is clear that maintaining contact with both friends and family members is what keeps most individuals using the online service. By introducing a business model more enticing to the masses than that previously being offered in the UK by Friends Reunited, Facebook has woven itself into the lives of its users in a way that it is now very difficult to unpick. It has become a monopoly that individuals have allowed themselves to become exclusively dependent upon.
Most people back-up the important files on their computer, so why, it has to be asked, has the UK-GenXc allowed itself to become so reliant upon a single third-party service when it comes to maintaining friendships and contacts? Lack of knowledge of alternatives is possible but, perhaps, laziness and lifestyles that lack spare time, could also play a significant role here? Certainly, I am guilty myself of relying exclusively on Facebook to maintain contact with certain friends and family members and this is behaviour I will now review and aim to change in the future.
It is not inconceivable that, for whatever reason, Facebook could face issues in the future resulting in a speedy mass exodus of its membership (or even forcing the social network to close down). This could, therefore lead to a huge loss of individual contacts with friends and family members, potentially resulting in a rise of medical depression and loneliness.
It is also extremely concerning that 15% of the UK-GenXc rely exclusively on Facebook to source their news. Facebook uses algorithms that filters what an individual sees in their ‘News Feed’ by what they have previously ‘liked’ on the site, and prioritises updates from friends who often share political views/interests. This means that individuals sourcing news from Facebook will, more often than not, only see ‘soft news’ that appeals to them (or that cements their world views). Ultimately, this lack of balance can fuel extremism, something that is perhaps already evident with the recent
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 88 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns rise of both the far right and far left politically in the UK (at the cost of, the often more balanced, centrist opinion).
Of the other most revealing research results it is, perhaps, the Facebook access methods of the UK-GenXc (now easily topped by the mobile phone) that stands out. Clearly this is a change of behaviour/habit from the early days of Facebook (when only a full ‘web’ version of the site was available) when users would have been far more likely to schedule distinct, short, dedicated Facebook sessions. Now, the social network is a part of our lives almost constantly, with push notifications arriving on our handsets 24/7 along with the ability/temptation to ‘take a peek’ at Facebook from almost anywhere at any time. Again, this matters as it could, potentially, lead to an increase in both Facebook addiction and physical dependencies in the future.
9.2.2 Re-labelling the likes of Facebook Earlier in this paper, I outlined definitions of ‘social media’, ‘social networking’ and ‘collaborative media’, revealing how all could have more than one meaning and also apply to both online and offline scenarios. Today’s popular press and academic researchers often uses the definitions interchangeably, with ‘social media’ being the most commonly used to describe a whole host of online services, something that has lead to a general lack of clarity and understanding. Therefore, I wish to propose a new, replacement term of ‘online collaborative network’ (OCN) to specifically describe/apply to the likes of Facebook/Tumblr – and ‘online collaborative networking’ to describe the actions and work of their users:
• ‘Online’ to specify (and limit the description to) a digital service found on the world-wide-web, available/easily accessible to the masses;
• ‘Collaborative’ because the content is created, consumed, digested, interpreted and added to (almost) exclusively by the users of the services themselves;
• ‘Network[ing]’ because the platforms are tools for connecting to and interacting with other individuals and organisations.
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I suggest use of such a term would introduce more clarity and consistency amongst media studies researchers and the popular press/media alike, along with a better understanding amongst the users of such services about how content is created.
9.3 Limitations of this Study & Recommended Future Changes
9.3.1 The Research Sample Readers should take into consideration that results and conclusions reached are based on a fairly small UK Generation X sample of 233 participants who self-selected themselves to take part via a snowball sharing technique (so no indication/measure of possible bias in the sample is possible). While this is a fairly healthy number for uses and gratifications research via an online questionnaire, it is, nevertheless, still a very small number compared to the total Generation X population in the UK. Additionally, no research has been conducted upon non-Facebook users from the UK-GenXc (something that would make for an interesting and useful add-on to this paper in the future).
9.3.2 Suggested Changes if Repeating This Project If repeating this project, the experience gained completing it has made me conclude that the following changes would enhance the results/conclusions:
• A limitation (and possible total removal) of the ‘open’ questions as these did not particularly work well (with participants often just repeating what they’d already indicated in their answer(s) to a previous question).
• Potentially introducing a second data collection stage, this time using a qualitative method (after the quantitative questionnaire stage), interviewing (or forming a focus group from) participants who volunteered to provide more information. This would also further reduce the need to use ‘open’ style questions on the questionnaire as additional information could be gathered during this second stage.
• I would cut down on the number of (or totally eliminate) questionnaire questions gathering ‘nice-to-know/interesting’ information not directly relevant to the project’s own research questions and, instead, increase the number of statements
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in the second Likert-type 5-point scale question used to determine ‘gratifications obtained’. Currently each gratification is being determined from a single statement and more robust results would be achieved from using two or three statements per gratification and being able to cross-reference results to ensure validity.
9.4 Summing Up... The completion of this project goes some way to plugging the knowledge void when considering how and why Generation X individuals in the UK use Facebook. It also provides a data set and results/findings that can be used by future social media researchers for comparative purposes with other generational cohorts, countries/regions of the world or with a new/repeated study of the UK-GenXc.
What the future holds for Facebook and its users remains to be seen. If individuals choose to remain exclusively reliant upon the social network for the satisfaction of media needs, then the company is likely to continue its successful growth and market dominance. However, if users start to lose confidence in the service (which could happen as a result of further data/privacy leaks for example) then the long-term future for Facebook may not be so rosy. I, for one, will be watching on with great interest to see what happens next...
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Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 105 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
APPENDICES
1
Facebook Development
2
Key Historical Media Dates for the Generation X cohort
3
Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (11 pages)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 106 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 1 – Facebook Development
Table 20: Facebook Development, Milestones & Registered Monthly Users: 2003-2018 (sources: PC Mag, 2009; MyLife, 2013 cited in Visually, 2013; Brügger, 2015; Boyd, 2018; Cadwalladr & Graham-Harrison, 2018; Facebook, 2018 cited in Statista, 2018a; Facebook Newsroom, 2018) Yr Development / Milestone Users 03 Mark Zuckerberg creates and launches ‘Facemash’ at Harvard (28 Oct) n/a 04 Mark Zuckerberg launches ‘TheFacebook’ at Harvard (4 Feb) 1 million TheFacebook expands to Stanford, Columbia & Yale TheFacebook moves to a new office in Palo Alto (California) TheFacebook ‘Wall’ is launched allowing users to post messages to their friends 05 TheFacebook supports 800+ college networks & expands to high school networks 6 million ‘TheFacebook’ becomes just ‘Facebook’ (20 Sep) Facebook.com URL costs $200,000 Facebook Photos is launched; International school networks are added 06 Facebook for Mobile launches; Launch of the ‘News Feed’ and ‘Mini Feed’ features 12 million Facebook expands registration so that anybody can join (26 Sep) 07 Facebook launches ‘Marketplace’ application for classified listings 58 million Facebook Video and Pages launch 08 Facebook Chat is launched (6 Apr); Facebook for iPhone is launched 100 million ‘New’ Facebook is launched (21 Jul) 09 Introduction of the ‘Like’ button (9 Feb); Facebook Usernames are launched (13 Jun) 360 million Facebook moves into new offices (but remains in Palo Alto) Facebook for Android is launched 10 Launch of Facebook Places; ‘New’ Groups are introduced 608 million ‘Facebook Live’ launched; ‘The Social Network’ is released in cinemas 11 Video Calling and Timeline are introduced; Facebook for iPad is introduced 845 million Facebook moves to a new home in Menlo Park, California (19 Dec) 12 Facebook announces acquisition of Instagram (9 Apr) 1.06 Facebook holds its initial public offering (May 18) billion 13 Facebook announces Internet.org; Donate launched 1.23 billion 14 Trending announced; Safety Check announced; Nearby Friends launched 1.39 billion Facebook announces acquisition of WhatsApp (19 Feb) and then Oculus (25 Mar) Save introduced; Stand-alone mobile apps for Groups and Messenger are introduced 15 Video Calling in Messenger and 360 Video on Facebook are launched 1.59 billion Ability to report a ‘False News Story’ introduced; Facebook Lite announced 40 million active small business Pages on Facebook; Instant Articles launched One billion people used Facebook in a single day for the first time (24 Aug) 16 Facebook Sports Stadium introduced; ‘Reactions’ launched globally 1.86 billion 360 Photos introduced on Facebook; Messenger Lite launched Events from Facebook launched; Workplace introduced Accusations of misleading news influencing the US presidential election 17 Personal fundraisers introduced 2.13 billion 18 Facebook is employing 30,275 people (30 Jun) 2.23 Facebook now has 13 offices in the US, 42 international offices & 14 data centres billion + Cambridge Analytica data ‘harvesting’ scandal revealed
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 107 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 2 – Key Historical Media Dates for the Generation X cohort
Table 21: Key Historical Media Dates for 'Generation X' Individuals in the UK (sources: Boyd & Ellison, 2008; Nicolson, 2009; BBC News, 2012; Danesi, 2013; Kleinman, 2016; Lean, 2016a; Jowitt, 2017; Facebook Newsroom, 2018; Office for National Statistics (UK), 2018 cited in Statista, 2018b) Year Event ‘GenXers’ ‘GenXers’ Age Age (oldest at (youngest event) at event) 1962 The introduction of ‘cassette’ tapes (popular as a form of ‘social n/a n/a media’ with teenagers during the 1980s) 1965 The BASIC computing language is developed n/a n/a 1966 First ‘GenXers’ born (1 Jan 1966) Birth Year n/a 1975 The first personal computer, Altair is launched 9 n/a 1975- Sports and music fanzines (an early form of ‘collaborative media’) 9-29 <=14 1995 are at their most popular 1980 Final ‘GenXers’ born (31 Dec 1980) 14 Birth Year 1982 The ZX Spectrum (the first affordable, colour, mass-produced UK 16 1 home computer) is launched; CDs first appear 1991 The world-wide-web is launched 25 10 1993 The first easy-to-use web browser, Mosaic, is launched 27 12 1994 The first ‘direct to home’ satellite TV is broadcast 28 13 1996 Google is launched 30 15 1997 DVDs are introduced 31 16 1997- The era of the first recognised ‘social networking site’, 31-34 16-19 2000 SixDegrees.com 1998 The first such survey finds that 9% of UK households now have 32 17 internet access at home 2000 Friends Reunited (the most successful early social networking site 34 19 in the UK) is launched; MP3 technology, allowing songs to be downloaded from the internet, becomes a popular way of listening to music 2002 The first broadband technology is developed 36 21 2003 Video on demand (VOD) debuts; MySpace is launched 37 22 2004 Facebook is launched (Harvard) 38 23 2005 Friends Reunited membership peaks at 15 million (equal to almost 39 24 a quarter of the UK’s population) 2006 Facebook becomes available to all 40 25 2012 Netflix launched in the UK 46 31 2016 Friends Reunited closes for good 50 35 2018 Facebook membership reaches 2.23 billion 52 37
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 108 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (1/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 109 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (2/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 110 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (3/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 111 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (4/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 112 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (5/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 113 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (6/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 114 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (7/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 115 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (8/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 116 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (9/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 117 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (10/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 118 Why Use Facebook? A Uses & Gratifications Study of Generation X in the UK Christopher Munns
Appendix 3 – Online Questionnaire used for Data Collection (11/11)
Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries (Malmö University) Page: 119