the demographics of social media users

Continuous Assessment Cover Sheet.

DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS AND HUMANITIES

STUDENT NUMBER: N00100664 ________________________________________________

STUDENT NAME: Thomas Roe ________________________________________________

PROGRAMME: Dl-245 ________________________________________________

YEAR: 2 ________________________________________________

MODULE: Enterprise Communications ________________________________________________

LECTURER: Mrs. Rebecca Roper________________________________________________

WORD COUNT: 1529

I/ we have read the IADT plagiarism policy and I / We declare that this report/essay/project is my/our own original work

SIGNED: __________________________________________

DATE: __________________________________________

The Demographics of Social Media Users


Introduction

This study was conducted to examine the demographics of both social media users, as well as the attraction to the different types of social media to different demographics. This is becoming increasingly important as” users’ personality traits may be crucial factors leading them to engage in this participatory media” (Correa, et al., 2009). This study is important in the current age of the internet, web 2.0, as it helps companies and individuals target specific audiences; let them know if it is worth their time using social media and also what type of social media to use. The information for this study was obtained from other journals, the internet and a study made by the author for this research paper. The structure of this report will have a section dedicated to comparing and contrasting the main reference articles and another section built on the survey undertaken, with a short conclusion and summary.

Comparison of Articles

Personality traits are a common theme in all three articles used for this study. It is clear that they have a massive impact on what we do and how we interact, which is also evident in social media. For instance “The relationship between extraversion and social media use was particularly important” (Correa, et al., 2009).This is not to say only extroverts use social media as (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) says that different SNS’s (social network sites) attract different traits among people. It is difficult to say which traits go to the different sites but there are some which may or may not deal with personality, the next section will deal with this in more detail. But to continue with the personality trait of extraversion and perhaps openness the “experiences were positively related to social media use” (Correa, et al., 2009) but this is almost a given since extroverts in general are more open to change and new concepts. Although both men and women were both as likely to be social media users “only the men with greater degrees of emotional instability were more regular users” (Correa, et al., 2009) which asks the question if these emotionally instable men are a mix both introverts and extroverts, are men going to be attracted to social media anyway? In short, no not exactly, as these are only emotionally

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instable men and this doesn’t count the far greater number of emotionally stable men out there.

In keeping with the themes of emotions, dating sites are an extremely popular form of social networking as demonstrated by Friendster in the early 2000s and its rival match.com now. Friendster and match.com focused on different demographics, match.com being aimed at “strangers with similar interests” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) and Friendster being at aimed at friends-of-friends. Friendster had massive growth and struggled to cope at the time, this was down to people being more comfortable dating someone their friend knows and attracted more introverted people as they didn’t want to talk to someone they knew nothing about, there were a lot of restrictions in Friendster’s model which led to people trying to cheat the system, only to be banned, which lead to its overall demises, which shows people don’t like being told they can’t do something. Match.com on the other hand, has no restrictions and allows people to do what they like it was founded before Friendster and is still running strong today. Match.com is more attractive to extroverts due to meeting new people and its lack of restrictions, which fits in with the internet dating model of mainly extroverts, but Friendster mainly dealt with more introverted people, “ (Boyd & Ellison, 2007)bloggers, attendees of the Burning Man arts festival, and gay men”, which ultimately lead to its down fall.

Another key factor in determining which demographics are attracted to each different SNS was race, with SNS’s such AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) all forming and attracting their particular ethnic group, with the black community going to BlackPlanet, the Asian community going to AsianAvenue and the Hispanic community going to MiGente. These cultural groups were more prominent in the earlier years of SNS’s with main sites dominating the web now, instead of many smaller ones.

“History repeatedly demonstrates that rural communities have unique technological needs” (Gilbert, et al., 2008). In (Gilbert, et al., 2008) a study took place between rural and urban users of a particular social media site, with 3000 taking part, “340,000 online friendships and 200,000 interpersonal messages” (Gilbert, et al., 2008)being analyzed. It found strong evidence that area demographics have a strong influence on your social media activities, notably, rural residents had far fewer friends with the friends they do have living a lot closer to them. Also it was found that there were “substantially different gender distributions” (Gilbert, et al., 2008) This again shows not only does one form of demographic impact the social media audience but

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the two different types of demographic effect each other to have considerable different effects , that shows the importance of looking at all the facts in relation to demographics.

SNS’s hit mainstream in 2003 (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) with their being several main SNS’s at this moment in time (2011) each has a particular demographic target;Site Demographic targetLinkedIn Business ProfessionalsYouTube Video EnthusiastsFacebook Anyone over 13Google+ Anyone over 13Twitter Micro bloggersFlickr Photograph EnthusiastsXbox Live Video Game EnthusiastsPlayStation Network Video Game Enthusiasts

Most people are members of at least one of these sites, if not more, with the difference between these and the earlier models being polished and finished and as well the ability to categorize different friends which creates individual sites for particular interests inside these SNS’s, this has led to the folding of many smaller SNS’s for people with particular interests such as Bebo and MySpace both directed at musicians, these are both still active but are ants compared their former giant selves. SNS’s are only going to continue to grow into the future, with the biggest of them being worth close to $10bn now, so one can only imagine what the future holds.

Survey and analysis

A survey was undertaken for the purpose of this research paper and was designed as to reflect and/or contrast previous research done. It was open to all who wanted to participate, but was focused mainly on members of I.A.D.T. There were a small number of participants totaling 10 people with eight questions to be answered. There was an answer rate of 0.875 per question which is extremely high for a survey. The survey itself took place between the 6th and 7th of December 2011 via a survey website (Roe, 2011).

As in line with research there were a higher number of male respondents, further pushing the case of men being more extroverted, with only 40% women. These men and women ranged in age from 18 to over 30 showing a varied demographic.

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Again as researched before, the area where someone is living has an impact on their use of social media, with respondents living at varied distances from I.A.D.T. with 90% being of Irish decent. All respondents used social media with Facebook having majority share with 70% of respondents saying it was their favorite form of social media an interesting point to note is that 80% of respondents said they liked the social media site they used but 30% said they only used it because their friends used it. So this asks the question is there much of a difference in social media use in all these demographics? One dominating factor in terms demographics that seems to over shadow the rest and influence is that 100% of participants were students; this explains the very similar numbers being received.In saying that, there was one section of the survey that had largely different results; Time spent using social media today, here is a chart to illustrate this:

As you can see from the chart there is a larger difference than in the previous examples, with 50% of female respondents spending less than 1 hour per day using social media and 100% of respondents over the age of 30 with less than 1 hour as well. These further back up pervious research with men dominating the 2-4 hour slot and shows that men tend to be more extroverted in relation to social media. Overall this is an extremely small scale survey and even with its lack of participants, it still shows

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Gender

Female 40%

Male 60% 18-20 80%

30+ 10%

20-30 10%

Age

Time Spent per Day using Social Media

4-6hrs 10%

<1hr 30%

2-4hrs 60%


what the research has said previous and demonstrates that even in small scale project, it is possible to get the same results as one with thousands of people.

Conclusion

In conclusion the research explores the demographics of both social media users, as well as the attraction to the different types of social media to different demographics. It showed the l ink between the journals studied and the survey undertaken. The survey it’s-self demonstrated that the theories in the journals, put into practice, have similar out comes and thus further enhances the value of this research. Although it is sti l l suggest further research being done, as to complement this work. Overall this study put theory into practice and it worked, giving reason for greater development in the topic.

BibliographyBoyd, D. M. & Ellison, N. B., 2007. Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), pp. 210-230.Correa, T., Willard Hinsley, A. & Gil de Zuniga, H., 2009. Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use. 26(2), pp. 247-253.Gilbert, E., Karahalios, K. & Sandvig, C., 2008. The network in the garden: an empirical analysis of social media in rural life. Google, 2011. Google Scholar. [Online] Available at: scholar.google.com/[Accessed 07 12 2011].Roe, T., 2011. Social Media Use Survey. Leinster: s.n.Wikipedia, 2011. Wikipedia. [Online] Available at: www.wikipedia.org[Accessed 7 12 2011].

By Thomas Roe