Module 2: Individualism in the Digital Age, Part 3

For my blog post, I read the article called MySpace and Facebook: Applying the Uses and Gratifications Theory to Exploring Friend-Networking Sites. The main purpose of this article was four-fold. The first thing that the authors were trying to discover was some general information. This included the number of people that had Facebook or MySpace accounts, how many times they logged on, and how many hours a day were spent logged on. Furthermore, researchers looked at the kinds of information that people had posted and how many friends they had. The research showed that 75% of the participants had a Facebook and a MySpace account. This is a significant number considering that the participants did not know the topic of the survey before taking part. Also, approximately 87% of these people made information about themselves available on their accounts.

The next purpose of this research project was to look at whether gender differences existed within use of these websites. The researchers concluded that men are more likely to have more friends and more likely to log on during the day, whereas women changing their appearance on their accounts more often, to name a few. The conclusion was that gender differences on several key factors did exist.

Next, the study aimed to figure out what “gratifications” the users were getting from these websites. The researchers concluded that most people wanted to keep in touch with old or current friends.

And lastly, the study aimed to get an idea of the type of college students that had MySpace or Facebook accounts versus those that did not and what the reasons were for those that did not have an account. In general, those that did not have an account were older, compared to those that did have an account. Furthermore, those that did not have an account mostly attributed it to the fact that they just had no desire to have an account. I think the researchers succeeded in the goals that they laid out for themselves in the beginning of the study. However, I do agree with them that more extensive studies have to be conducted because it is difficult to reach conclusions with such a small sample size, particularly the small size of nonusers.

This article was very interesting for me because I wrote an essay on the article that’s main purpose was to evaluate the gender differences between the MySpace profiles of men and women. Therefore the gender differences section of this article was most interesting and relevant for me. I found it interesting that women were more likely to change their appearance and make personal information more available via their profiles. The article I read concluded that women were more likely to mention their significant others in their profiles and that was a somewhat reflection of the traditional gender roles. It makes me wonder if women changing their picture more often is a reflection of traditional gender roles, where appearance is heavily emphasized for women. The research also indicated that men were more likely to have a larger amount of friends than women were. I wonder if this too is a reflection of traditional gender roles where men are expected to be more outgoing than women are.