Investigating the relationships among college students' satisfaction, addiction, needs, communication apprehension, motives, and uses & gratifications with Snapchat
Section snippets
Uses and gratifications
Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch (1973) developed the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) and identified eight types of uses and gratifications: 1) passing time, 2) companionship, 3) escape, 4) enjoyment, 5) social interaction, 6) relaxation, 7) information, and 8) excitement. A major contribution from UGT is the notion of an active audience that is not simply permeated by media content but rather consumes media with an end-goal in mind (Katz et al., 1973). Although research detailing UGT and
Participants
Participants in this study were recruited via a listserv at a southwestern university. The sample consisted of 347 females (73.1%), 121 males (25.5%), and 7 who did not identify (1.5%). The mean age for the same was 20.59 (SD = 1.95). All but 4 of the 475 participants had Snapchat accounts. Most of the participants are active Snapchat users only 18 (3.8%) said that they average 0 Snapchats per day, but 84 (17%) sent 1 to 3 per day, 123 (25.9%) send 3 to 10 per day, and 250 (52.6%) send 10 plus
Results
Hypothesis one predicted a relationship would exist between participant needs (entertainment and functional) with communication apprehension (social media and Snapchat). A canonical correlation was calculated using entertainment and functional as the independent variables and social media CA and Snapchat CA as the dependent variables. Using Wilks' Λ, the overall model was significant, Wilks' Λ = 0.88, F (4, 844) = 14.40, p < 0.005, which indicates that the two variates are significantly
Discussion
First, findings from this study revealed that there is a relationship between participant needs (entertainment and functional) with communication apprehension (social media and Snapchat). Specifically, there were functional needs for a person who has a high level of communication apprehension to use Snapchat more than someone who has a low level of communication apprehension. As suggested by Papacharissi and Rubin (2000), the Internet and social media, like Snapchat serves as an alternative
Limitations and conclusion
As with all research, the current study is not without limitations. First, our measures of Snapchat were embedded into a larger survey that averaged about half an hour to complete, because qualitative questions were asked as well. Therefore, the length of the questionnaire invites the possibility of fatigue. Second, the sample was predominantly female, and composed primarily of college students. Future research should ascertain the generality of our findings using samples of other demographic
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