A comparative research on social media usage motivations: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

The study analyzes the motivation of university students from the perspective uses and gratifications theory in comparison of three social media platforms, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. In the first part of the study, the uses and gratifications literature is assessed in realtion to its place among other mass communication theories and approaches. In the second part of the study, the historical development of the social media is described and research on social media based on used and gratifications theory had been summarized. In the third part of the study, research method, sapling, research limitations and research questions are given. This part is followed by the research findings based on the quantitative data analysed by SPSS 20. The questionaire is applied to 628 students from 94 universites with an online form. Major factors derived from the literature were social interaction, survelience, self-expression, selfpresentation, self-image. These factors are also observed in the research findings. These factors differed with the social media platform and with gender. While social interaction, survelience and self-presentation did not differentiate among gender, self-expression and selfimage were stronger among female participants. In order to answer the main research question on the difference of factors among social media platforms, one way variance analysis is applied. According to this analysis twitter differs from the other platfoms in factos of selfexpression and social interaction, whereas Instagram is stonger in the fact of self-presentation. Surveliance and self-image does not meaninfully differentiate between the three social media platforms. Keywords: Social Media, Motivation, Web 2.0, Uses and Satisfaction