MUHAMMAD ZAID BIN MUHAMMAD SHAFIE (MLA181003)
MOHAMAD HAFIZ BIN CHE ISMAIL (MLA181004)
Article 1 : Yi-Ting Huang & Sheng-Fang Su (2018)
Motives of Instagram Use and Topic of Interest among Young Adult.
Article 2 : Eunji Lee, Jung-Ah Lee, Jang Ho Moon, & Youngjun Sung (2015). Pictures Speak Louder than Words: Motivation for Using Instagram. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, Volume 18, Number 9
1. INTRODUCTION:
This paper critically reviews two articles on the issues of motivations using Instagram and topic of interest among the young adults. The articles are “Motives of Instagram Use and Topic of Interest among Young Adult” and “Pictures Speak Louder than Words: Motivations of Using Instagram”. Both article consist of five main parts, which are introduction, literature review, method, findings and conclusion.
2. SUMMARY
Article 1: Yi-Ting Huang & Sheng-Fang Su(2018) Motives of Instagram Use and Topic of Interest among Young Adult
This article studied about the Motives of Instagram Use and Topic of Interest among Young Adult. Since Instagram currently was a favorite social media among young adults in the world, researcher were interested to investigate the topics relate with Instagram motivations and topic of interest. This article consists of three research questions, whether do motives of Instagram use and topic of interest among young adults vary with University Majors, do motives of Instagram use and topic of interest among young adults vary with gender and do motives of Instagram use and topic of interest among young adults vary with amount of instagram use. The research were conducted by Quantitative approach where the online questionnares were being structured and randomly given to a single University in Taiwan. Most of the participants were active Instagram users and were in the second year of study. The questionnares were based on the Uses and Gratifactions Theorys, which devided into five main factor, social interaction, diversion, documentation, self-promotion and creativity. 307 valid online questionnares were obtained, and being analysed. The result show that the motives for Instagram use were mostly to look at posts, particularly for the sake of social interactions and diversion. In context of gender, male students use Instagram to show off themselves more often than female students, while Female students used Instagram “to escape awkward situations” more often than male students, in addition, female students notice Instagram ads more than male students do. In context of University majors, Design majors strongly agreed that their motives for instagram use were associated with creativity, meanwhile the engineering majors only give an average score greater than 4 to the item “to see updates of my friends”. In the context of time spent, 42% of the participants spent more than 1 hour on Instagram alone every day. Heavier users of instagram focus on documentation more than those with slight Instagram users. Heavy users have stronger motives than light users do and thus mostly gave higher average scores.When applied to the findings of this study, the uses and gratifications theory suggests that gender, major, and amount of time spent on Instagram are correlated with significant differences in motives for Instagram use. This means that males vs. females, Designers vs. Engineers, and heavy users vs. light users turn to this platform to satisfy different needs. From the perspective of computer-mediated communication (CMC), the popularity of Instagram among young people has much to do with its use of visual images as the primary means of revealing information. Young adults in Taiwan show a marked preference for images and videos over posts when compared to those in Europe and the US, which indicates that communicating with strong visual images is the mainstream CMC model for young people in Taiwan.
The authors also mentioned some limitation and suggestions for future research at the end part of the paper. The samples were mainly obtained via convenience sampling and come from a single university. Thus, they did not design a suitable questionnaire regarding internet addiction or base our investigation on addiction. They suggest that data should be obtain from fews different University and majors. In future research, they plan to analyze and explore the type of Instagram ads,heavy users, and the interest categories of users.
Article 2: Eunji Lee, Jung-Ah Lee, Jang Ho Moon, & Youngjun Sung (2015). Pictures Speak Louder than Words: Motivation for Using Instagram.
The article by Eunji Lee et.al. (2015) aimed to examine the social and psychological factors that lead consumers to become fanatics of Instagram. Next, it also aimed to examine the structural dimensions of consumers’ motives for using Instagram and to explore the relationships between identified motivations and key attitudinal and behavioral intention variables. The findings suggest that Instagram users have five primary social and psychological motives: social interaction, archiving, self-expression, escapism and peeking. This research employed a quantitative approach by engaging participants in online survey and online questionnaire to obtain the data. The respondents were recruited from an online panel in Korea. 239 Instagram users participated in this study, but only 212 usable data were collected. The mean age of the respondents was 29 years. There were two research questions asked;
RQ1 : What are the underlying psychological and social motives for using Instagram?
RQ2 : What are relationships between identified motivation and intention to use Instagram?
For the 1st research question, the motivation scales were derived from prior literature on the Internet, SNSs, and blogging motivators. Initially, 60 items were retained to be used in the survey, but after the 1st and 2nd stages, a total of 38 statements about reason for using Instagram were constructed, after eliminating some items which were deemed inappropriate, irrelevant, or conveyed the same meaning. The respondents were required to answer a 7-point Likert-type scale to determine their answer. For the 2nd research question, attention toward Instagram used was measured with three 7-point semantic differential scales (favorable/unfavorable, good/bad, pleasant/unpleasant), while intention to use Instagram was measured with three 7-point semantic differential scales (likely/unlikely, probable/improbable, possible/impossible).
The findings for the 1st research question revealed that majority of Instagram users use the app for social interaction with (14.14%), followed by archiving (14.07%), self-expression (13.58%), escapism (11.03%) and peeking (9.40%). For the 2nd research question, the findings revealed that for both attitude toward Instagram use and intention to use Instagram were the same. Archiving and peeking topped the list, followed by social-interaction, self-expression and escapism. Findings also revealed that social interaction is a strong factor for Instagram users to establish and maintain social relationships. Archiving motive shows that Instagram users record their daily events and traces, and thus creating their own personal cyber documentary through fancy photos. Self-expression motive indicates that Instagram users utilize pictures to present their personalities, lifestyles and tastes. Escapism and peeking are another primary motives. Instagram users want to pursue relaxation, avoid the troubles in their life, and peek at others’ photos.
3. CRITICAL EVALUATION
In the first article, written by Yi-Ting Huang & Sheng-Fang Su were very interesting, its mainly talk about the motives of instagram uses among young adults in Taiwan, since the Instagram users in the world were increasing, the motives or objectives use of itself also different, depends on many factors and background. As we can see in this article, the different background such as gender, university mojors and time spent show a different motives and purpose in using Instagram. Even,the data obtained in this reseach were only collected from Taiwan young adults, the data finding were still relevant in the purpose of future research in other country . This is because the internet addiction among young adults were already being a worldwide problem. Research has shown that individual with internet addiction and various other compulsions tend to spend more time on their mobile device ( Yu, J.; Kim, et al. 2013) Among the adults that use their smartphones for nearly three hours every day, 59% indicate that they are very reliant on social media, over half of them accessing social media sites at least once every hour (Internet Trends Report, 2015). This show that the study of internet use especially Instagram were significant and worth to investigate. The data obtained from this article were also informative. It can use in many purpose in the future, by getting information about people interesting and demanding , it can be use on business purpose, educational purpose, entertainment purpose and many more.
This article was very relevant in the context of CMC. Nowadays, people use different platform of social media to archieved different kind of needs. Different uses of the platform also give an different impact in the way of people communicate each others. For example, Instagram use, people more tend to use Instagram as a platform to communicate by using pictures. Instagram offer a quality resolution of picture to be uploaded, where user can upload and also edit the picture by using many types of filter that already being provide in the apps. Users also can freely insert their caption about the picture and allow another users to give comment and feedback. Many people more prefer to expressed themself by using picture rather than using text. Research show that expression via picture shown a clear message and easy to understand compared with text. When someone expressed happy feeling by using text, the viewers cannot understand the exactly level of happiness by only looking at the text, but if the expression were shown by picture, the viewers can easily understand the different level of emotion that being show by the sender. However, the function of communication of itself will lead to many negative impact such as make a fake expression post for showing of purpose and many more.
The second article, this article is very informative, as the authors have listed several motives to investigate the underlying psychological and social motives for using Instagram, and to explore the relationships between identified motivations and attitudes toward and intention to use Instagram between respondents in an online survey.
We could see from the findings that people use Instagram for different purposes, with five primary social and psychological motives: social interaction, archiving, self-expression, escapism and peeking. Very much alike to other social media platforms, people might use Instagram to dispel their loneliness (Clayton et.al, 2013), meet others and to earn social support (Ellison et.al, 2007). To some people, gathering as many people as followers can be a motivating force for using Instagram. So, it is very interesting to see the reasons why people are using Instagram.
The authors were very creative in choosing the title of this article. “Pictures speak louder than words” is a catchy title to draw people in reading this study. Instagram is specifically built for photos, and it creates strong visual-oriented culture with the rule “image first, text second”. Photographs are much better than texts for self-expression and impression management, since the myth of photographic truth lends photography a credibility that text can lack (Marwick, 2015).
The downside of this study is that, it only focus on the youth (aged 20 – 39), since according to the authors, SNSs’ users in Korea was found to be the highest among those between the ages of 20 and 39. If they were to include those between the ages of 15 and 60, I personally think that the result might be somewhat different. In addition, most of the respondents are still new in using Instagram, with the average of 10.3 months (range 1 – 48 months). If they included those who have been using this app for more than years, the result perhaps might be slightly different. Lastly, the result also show that both age, and especially sex, were not found to be significant variables in conducting this study. I think this is due to the limitation of the age in the study that made the findings a little bit imprecise.
4. SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
In regards to their similarities, both articles highlight the Motivation and the purpose of Instragram use among active Instagram users. In both cases, the author use same content of motives Instagram use on the questionnaire but with different definition. The five main factor of Instagram use on article 1 is Social Interaction, diversion, documentation, self-promotion and creativity, while on article 2 is social interaction, archiving, self-expression, escapism and peeking. Both article show a similar finding, where the result show motive Instagram use on Social Interaction was the highest.
To highlight the differences, both article had different research questions. Article 1, discuss on does the motives and interest topic were vary with different background such as gender, University Major and Amount spent, while article 2 research question study on underlying psychological and social motives for using Instagram and relationships between identified motivation and intention to use Instagram. The difference in the context of participant, participants in article 1 consist of young adults in a single University in Taiwan, while participants in article 2 were from Korea where the mean age of the participants was 29 years old.
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