This study examines the roles of the gratifications sought and of narcissism in content generation in social media and explores the generational differences in motivations and in narcissistic personalities when predicting the usage of Facebook, blogs, and forums. Data were gathered from a probability sample of 596 social media users through a telephone survey in 2010. Factor analysis results showed that content generation using social media was satisfying five socio-psychological needs: showing affection, venting negative feelings, gaining recognition, getting entertainment, and fulfilling cognitive needs. In particular, people who used social media to meet their social needs and their need for affection tended to use Facebook and blogs. In contrast, when users wanted to air out discontent, they often turned to forums. Results also showed that exhibitionists seemed to use social media to show affection, express their negative feelings, and achieve recognition. The study found no generational differences in using Facebook and blogs as a means to satisfy social needs or the need for affection. However, differences in patterns of social media usage were found among Baby Boomers with different narcissistic personalities. The paper includes a discussion of the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research.
Social media is a group of internet-based applications that build on the technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content (UGC) (O’Reilly, 2005). UGC in social media has exploded in recent years. Social media takes many different forms, including both web-based and mobile technologies, such as internet forums, email, social networking sites (SNSs), blogs, microblogs, vlogs, wikis, and voice-over IP. In the Web 2.0 era, social media is a platform for service deliveries that emphasize user control, participation, and emergent behavior; they also provide a way of creating micro-content focusing on social connections between people (Alexander, 2008). Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques in mobile devices, social media has substantially changed the way individuals, organizations, and communities communicate and share content in an unprecedented environment of hyper-inter-connectivity. Through social media such as Facebook, MySpace, MSN Spaces, Blogger, forum, YouTube, and Twitter, users can publish their own diaries on their own websites, post-photos or videos, express opinions, meet other users, and establish communities based on shared interests. Among these different examples of social media, the present study narrowed and focused on three most popular, namely Facebook, blogs, and forums. These social media were chosen in this research because they facilitate many of the seven functional building blocks of social media (i.e., identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups) (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). However, it is not the aim of this study to differentiate which social medium functions best in any of the seven in our conceptualization and tested in hypotheses. Nevertheless, the results may invite such concepts to be adopted to explain the differences in the use of social media.
To examine media behavior and its consequences, an appropriate approach is to examine the objectives, the underlying assumptions, and the perspectives of the uses and gratifications (U&G) of its users. What motivates users to create content in social media and how the gratifications of generating content affect the activities in social media are important research topics. Thus, the first objective of this study was to identify the gratifications sought in the production of UGC in social media (especially in Facebook, blogs, and forums).
In addition, the study focused on the contribution of narcissism to social media content generation. Narcissism is the fascination with oneself, and narcissists generally think they are better than others, inflate praise of themselves, and believe that they are unique and special. Buffardi and Campbell (2008) found that these qualities may predict participation in social media. Narcissism has been consistently and positively related to content-generation online among young adults (Poon & Leung, 2011). People with strong narcissistic tendencies generally report a greater number of microblog friends and wall-posts, and they are more willing to upload photos (Ong et al., 2011). In line with these studies, it could be hypothesized that highly narcissistic subjects are likely to participate actively in social media content-generation.
In sum, social media are good platforms for narcissists to self-regulate and exert control over self-presentation, by conveying desirable information about themselves and posting attractive photos, for example, and to maintain a large network base of superficial relationships, such as virtual friends through CMC (Ong et al., 2011). However, as Buffardi and Campbell pointed out, the prevalence of narcissistic individuals on Facebook might lead to a rise in narcissistic behavior among users in general, if such behavior were to be viewed as acceptable. Nevertheless, these findings seem to be consistent with previous research indicating that social media users are usually motivated by two primary needs; one is the need to belong, predicted by demographic and cultural factors, and the other is the socio-psychological need for self-presentation management and relationship construction, predicted by personal traits, such as the four narcissistic personalities (Nadkarni and Hofmann, 2012 and Qian and Scott, 2007).
Having brought up in different decades, the Net Generation is certainly more media savvy with technology, especially with social media, while the X-Geners and the Baby Boomers may feel a little technophobic. Thus, one major implication of this study is that the social-psychological (both gratifications-sought and narcissistic personality trait) approach taken in this study and the generational difference concept used to diagnose the pattern of social media use will contribute in providing valuable information for developing effective strategies both in the design and marketing of future social media products to better incorporate social media for narcissistic self-regulation in such widely popular social technology (especially into mobile devices) not only for the Net Generation but also for the much neglected Gen Xers and Baby Boomers.
