Module II

1.) What is [are] identified as the primary reason(s) for utilizing such sites?

First, social sites have become hugely popular over the past five years. We have been introduced to social sites such as Reunion.com and Bebo.com. But the social site that is amongst the must used and popular is Facebook and Myspace. Facebook, a social networking site launched is 2004, was created as a “social utility to connect people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them (Facebook.com)”. Myspace is described as “a place where you can create a profile page that you can use to meet new friends (myyspace.com)”.
Additionally, both social utilities however, are used for very different reasons amongst males and females. According to Raacke, the use of these sites differs amongst gender.
Research has shown that online communication fosters relationship building, improving communication between parties, and consistently documents both sex and generational differences in online communication. For example, women are more likely to engage in online communication to maintain personal connections with family, friends, and coworkers, whereas men use online communication for pursuing sexual interests and romance (Raake, pp. 169)
As stated prior, while females find Facebook as a place to rekindle old friendships, or find old classmates, males focus on quite the contrary. Males use such sites as a means to establish friendships that may possibly result in some type of sexual relationship in the future. While researches to further prove this theory is somewhat scare, the content in which males utilize such social networking sites is vastly different than the content of communications that females utilize.
Furthermore, when males contact a female on either site, there is usually a use of sexual connotation—such, “hey sexy, how are you doing tonight?” Females’ communications on both sites are different in context. I discovered this by searching through public profiles on both social networking sites. I did use search criteria that was bas upon age, locality, gender, what relationships they are looking for, etc. After going through some public profiles on both Myspace and Facebook, I found that a number of men were contacting women whom they did not know, but had some type of interest in knowing. Women, on the other hand, contacted women who they perhaps knew from the work place or an academic institution.
Also, the gratification theory plays a major role in the popularity and use of these social networking sites. The gratification theory is the basic theme of uses and gratifications is the idea that people use the media to get specific gratifications. The main idea of the Uses and Gratifications model is that people are not helpless victims of all powerful media, but use media to fulfill their various needs. These needs serve as motivations for using media.
Jay G. Blumler and Elihu Katz devised their uses and gratifications model in 1974 to highlight five areas of gratification in media texts for audiences. These include:
1. Escape — Some media texts allow the user to escape from reality. For example, video games.
2. Social interaction — People create personal relationships with the characters in a media text. Potentially this could become dangerous if people do not question the reality of such texts. It also creates a common ground for conversation in people's every day lives.
3. Identify — People often identify a part of themselves in a media text, either through character or circumstance. For example, hair style trends stemming from a magazine feature. This can go a long way in people's ideologies.
4. Inform and educate — the audience gain an understanding of the world around them by consuming a media text, for example print and broadcast news.
5. Entertain - consumed purely for entertainment purposes, meaning that text need not have any other gratifications (The Uses of Mass Communication, 1974).
The Theory of Gratification allows us to utilize a physiological evaluation of people fascination with different forms of media. This theory gives explanation and insight into why these sites are so popular. Many students utilize these sites as a pure form of “entertainment”. Other students solely use such sites to escape from reality. On these sites, profiles can be created based on pure fantasy. Many people create profiles that purely based upon the perception of what they want to be. Many of the profiles are both sites are said to be untrue in one form or another in profile content. These ties into the first notion of the gratification theory “escape”. An individual may not be totally satisfied with his/her current existence, so they will find a method to escape from such by living vicariously as a different person on the internet.
In conclusion, there could be a world of different reasons why people utilize social networking platforms. It can not be ignored that these sites are a social are a excellent source of networking. However, while these networks are a great way to utilize, build, and gain new social skills, it must be used with a great deal of discretion. Myspace has been the target of several news reports. Myspace as well as other social websites can be quite dangerous to the unsuspecting. While some use these sights for entertainment, other use these sights to prey on individuals.