A Tale of Four Platforms: Motivations and Uses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat Among College Students?

By Saleem Alhabash, Mengyan Ma. 2017

730 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The current research explores differences between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in terms of intensity of use, time spent daily on the platform, and use motivations. The study applies the uses and gratifications (U&G) approach to contrast the four platforms. A cross-sectional survey of college students (N = 396) asked participants to indicate the intensity of using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat as well as nine different use motivations. Findings show that participants spent the most time daily on Instagram, followed by Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter, respectively. They also indicated the highest use intensity for Snapchat and Instagram (nearly equally), followed by Facebook and Twitter, respectively. With regard to use motivations, Snapchat takes the lead in five of the nine motivations. Findings are discussed in relation to the U&G approach and uniqueness of different social media and social networking sites (SNSs).

Subfields: Communication, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ef1fddcc388d228a9e65b82c965de32ced869092

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Citations in the corpus

Problematic Instagram Use: The Role of Perceived Feeling of Presence and Escapism (2018, background): “Despite the fact that social media platforms have become increasingly similar adopting similar features, each platform has unique features, has a characteristic structure, and has different motives and gratifications underlying their use (Alhabash and Ma 2017).”
Habits and the electronic herd: The psychology behind social media’s successes and failures (2020, background): “Beyond social comparisons, social media sites inherently offer the reward of participating in a forum to maintain relationships with friends and create new ones (Alhabash & Ma, 2017).”
Uses and Gratifications of Problematic Social Media Use Among University Students: a Simultaneous Examination of the Big Five of Personality Traits, Social Media Platforms, and Social Media Use Motives (2018, methodology): “Instagram is the fastest growing SMS (Wagner 2015) due to the rapid growth in its popularity among teenagers and young adults (Alhabash and Ma 2017; Jackson and Luchner 2017).”