Determining the factors that affect university students and academicians’ social media usage & gratifications

Abstract

By the help of rapid developments in technology and new trends in social media platform, consumers’ behavior on digital platform has started to change. Users adopted a wide range of digital technologies into their communication. It remains unclear why they adopt multiple forms of social media instead of traditional media. In this context, the main purpose of this study investigates factors that affect university students and academicians being on social media, by the context of uses and gratification theory. In this context, data were collected from 345 university students and 87 academicians, by the technique of “easy sampling method“. Data management and analysis is performed by using SPSS 20.0 program. Results indicate that among the factors affecting the social media usage of the university students, there are differences between the genders in terms of the dimensions of socialization and obtaining information. In detail, the female participants are more satisfied than the female participants according to socializing and it is the vice versa for obtaining information. For academicians, there is a significant difference in terms of entertainment and information seeking dimensions, with the male participants having a higher average than the female participants.