University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Theses from the College of Journalism and Journalism and Mass Communications, College Mass Communications of 5-2011 An iPhone in a Haystack: The Uses and Gratifications Behind Farmers Using Twitter Sarah Van Dalsem University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/journalismdiss Part of the Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Van Dalsem, Sarah, "An iPhone in a Haystack: The Uses and Gratifications Behind armersF Using Twitter" (2011). Theses from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. 11. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/journalismdiss/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journalism and Mass Communications, College of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. AN IPHONE IN A HAYSTACK: THE USES AND GRATIFICATIONS BEHIND FARMERS USING TWITTER by Sarah Van Dalsem A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Major: Journalism and Mass Communications Under the Supervision of Professor Sue Burzynski Bullard Lincoln, Nebraska May, 2011 AN IPHONE IN A HAYSTACK: THE USES AND GRATIFICATIONS BEHIND FARMERS USING TWITTER Sarah Van Dalsem, M.A. University of Nebraska, 2011 Adviser: Sue Burzynski Bullard The fast-growing social media site, Twitter, is growing in popularity among Americans from all walks of life, including farmers who are using it to share information with other farmers and consumers. This thesis expands on Uses and Gratifications Theory by looking at how farmers are using the social media site to promote agriculture and reach out to others. Based on a qualitative analysis completed on 22 interviews with farmers, four major purposes for using Twitter came to light: (1) Farmers are using Twitter to seek information; (2) they are using it as a tool to lead others within the agricultural community, and (3) they are using it as a way to build community and (4) build their businesses. This research is important because it builds on a limited amount of research on how a niche group of people uses Twitter and contributes to research on how farmers are receiving news and information. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I’d like to thank Sue Burzynski Bullard, Dr. Linda Shipley, and Dr. John Bender for all of their advice on this research and assistance in writing the thesis. I’d also like to thank the College of Journalism and Mass Communications for funding the project through the Hitchcock Fellowship. Table of Contents Chapter 1 – Introduction…………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 2 - Background on Farmers’ Use of Twitter, Theoretical Discussion and Literature Review……………………………………………4 Chapter 3 - Research Questions and Methodology………………………………………13 Chapter 4 - Findings from the Research…………………………………………………17 Chapter 5 - Discussion and Limitations of the Research………………………………...35 References………………………………………………………………………………..40 Appendix 1 – Demographics Charts by Group…………………………………………..43 Appendix 2 – Questionnaire……………………………………………………………..44 Appendix 3 – Interview Transcriptions………………………………………………….48 1 Chapter 1 – Introduction Twitter, a 140-character micro-blogging social media site, was launched in 2006 and became one of the fastest-growing social media tools in the world today. Currently, about 8 percent of Americans, which is a little over 24 million people, have a Twitter account (Smith & Rainie 2010, Webster 2011). Different kinds of people – from celebrities and athletes to politicians and farmers – use it in different ways. Businesses use it to promote their brands, moms use it to share recipes or child-rearing techniques and students use it to make job or career connections. Little research exists on how Twitter is used, particularly by niche groups, but some quantitative research has documented how many people use Twitter. In order to expand on the limited body of research, this thesis looks specifically at why farmers in the United States use Twitter and expands on Uses and Gratifications Theory, which states that there are certain uses of media which satisfy a person’s social and psychological needs (Ruggiero 2000). News outlets across the United States have reported that farmers are using social media to share their personal stories with the world (Barbassa 2010, Hest 2010, Karstans 2010, Knutson 2011, Monteith 2010). Farmers use Twitter for a multitude of reasons as agriculture-based organizations are teaching more farmers how to use it and an AgChat Foundation has been created to promote the use of social media among the agricultural community (AgChat Foundation 2011). After scouring numerous article databases including Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and Google Scholar, no academic research on farmers’ use of Twitter was found, and there was very little academic research found on Twitter usage in general (Chen 2 2011). This thesis could be an important contribution to micro-blogging research for a few reasons. First, the agricultural community is working to empower farmers through social media, and they believe Twitter is one tool to achieve that empowerment (AgChat Foundation 2011). Second, this research provides many examples of how farmers have benefited by teaching themselves how to use social media. It provides examples of how people have connected and shared ideas through Twitter to change a policy they didn’t like or to promote their idea of the truth about the agricultural community. Finally, the Smith and Rainie study (2010) said the most likely people to use Twitter resided in urban areas. Therefore, this research could be a building block to studying the usage gap of social media tools between rural and urban areas in the United States. Chapter 2, which summarizes the literature review and provides the theoretical framework, focuses on the ways farmers have used Twitter. It looks at how farmers have organized via Twitter against organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). It also examines how they are using the medium to discuss agricultural policies and tell their personal stories of farm life. Chapter 2 also lays the theoretical basis for the study. It discusses the role Uses and Gratifications research has played in studies on mass media and where the theory stands today in the expanded body of mass communications research. It focuses on the history of this theory, some of the criticisms of it, and how more studies are using it as it continues to develop and new social media tools are created. Chapter 3 introduces the research questions and discusses the methodology used to interview 22 farmers about their use of Twitter. Chapter 4 looks at the four major 3 trends that show why farmers are using Twitter, and Chapter 5 discusses the researcher’s conclusions by revisiting the research questions, looking at the limitations of the research, and discussing other areas that may need to be studied. 4 Chapter 2 – Background on Farmers’ Use of Twitter and Theoretical Discussion and Literature Review This chapter will give an overview of some of the ways farmers use the microblogging service, the campaigns they have launched on Twitter, partnerships they have been made with commodity brokers, and an explanation of the AgChat Foundation, which was started by farmers to support the use of social media among the agriculture community. This chapter also presents a review of the literature related to Uses and Gratifications Theory, which will be expanded upon during Chapter’s 4 discussion of my results. Farmers, who make up about 1.5 percent of America’s population (Knutson 2011), started talking to media outlets about their use of Twitter in early 2010. A study released by the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB) in August of 2009, found about 2 percent of farmers used Twitter. That number has likely grown considerably over the past year and half, because awareness of Twitter among people in America has exploded in growth since 2009 (Webster 2011). Five percent of Americans 12 and older were aware of Twitter in 2008, but that number jumped to 87 percent by 2010 (Webster 2011). While farmers aren’t usually known as technological enthusiasts (Barbassa 2010), a growing number are signing on to Twitter (Hest 2010). Karstans (2010) states, “Often out in the tractor working long days alone, farmers young and old are using newly affordable and accessible technology such as BlackBerrys and iPhones to tap into social 5 media applications. By participating, they are taking…farmers' ideas, concerns and ideals…around the world.” The 2009 NAFB study noted that of producers who make $100,000 in gross farm income, 55 percent have access to the Internet, with 38 percent of them using it every day. However, 45 percent of farmers have someone else access the Internet for them. The number goes up for farmers making $250,000 in gross farm income with 64.5 percent accessing the Internet. These numbers are likely to have grown since the NAFB study as broadband connectivity has expanded broadly in 2009 (Radwanick 2010). Because of the large gap of farmers that don’t access the Internet themselves, farm and grower associations have made it a goal to teach farmers how to use the Internet and other social media tools (Thorstensen 2010, Knutson 2011, Hest 2010, Monteith 2010). It’s important to note Twitter is not the only social media outlet farmers use. Many use blogs, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other less well-known social media tools to reach people (Karstans 2010, Knutson 2011, Crumb 2011). This thesis focuses on Twitter because of its ability to deliver important messages in real time, its discussion and chat capabilities for a large group of people, and because it’s very easy for people to connect and find each other through hashtags added to Tweets.