Trying to understand social media users and usage. The forgotten features of social media platforms
| Pages | 256-264 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-09-2015-0299 |
| Published date | 11 April 2016 |
| Date | 11 April 2016 |
| Author | Katrin Weller |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval |
Trying to understand social
media users and usage
The forgotten features of social
media platforms
Katrin Weller
Department of Computational Social Science,
GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Köln, Germany
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper from the series “Monitoring the Media: Spotlight on Social Media
Research”is to look into different approaches to study uses of social media platforms –from user
statistics to motivations for using specific features within a platform.
Design/methodology/approach –Based on a literature review some general findings on social
media usage are summarized alongside with examples of user activities that are rarely studied.
Findings –The paper concludes that social media research has neglected to question the use of more
recent features in social media platforms, such as Twitter favorites or Facebook hashtags, as well as
the more “destructive”activities in social networking such as unfollowing.
Originality/value –The paper draws attention to some features of popular social media platforms
which are currently understudied. It raises awareness for these specific gaps in social media research
and could inspire future studies to close the gap.
Keywords Literature review, Social networking sites, Social media, Social media research,
User behaviour, User motivations
Paper type Viewpoint
Social media users and usage
After roughly ten years of social media studies we do not yet know everything about
social media users and uses. Most social media platform providers occasionally release
statistics about their users (e.g. Twitter, 2011), but usually keep information rather
vague, e.g. only rarely distinguishing users per country or other demographic criteria.
With such user statistics one also has to be careful, especially when trying to compare
them across platforms or over time: some user numbers refer to registered user
accounts, others to “active”users –and the latter can also have various definitions, e.g.
everyone who has logged in to the platform at least once during the last month.
Furthermore numbers for automated accounts or bots are rarely available, thus
blurring the informative value of user statistics. As the official numbers provided by
the providers are rarely sufficient, some survey programs on internet usage also ask
about people’s participation in certain social media channels (e.g. PEW Research,
see Duggan, 2015).
All of this, however, rarely tells anything about how and why people make use of
certain social media platforms –or even how they approach individual functionalities
of these platforms. This is where social media research steps in. Researchers from
different backgrounds have tried to shed light on social media usage in a variety of
settings. Methods to do so may vary from surveys and participatory research designs
to analyses based on data collected from a platform.
Online Information Review
Vol. 40 No. 2, 2016
pp. 256-264
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-09-2015-0299
Received 7 September 2015
Revised 7 September 2015
Accepted 9 November 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
256
OIR
40,2
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