An Examination of the Role of the Communicator on Gratifications Attained on Social Network Sites

Abstract

The many features available on social network sites complicate interpretation of research results in uses and gratifications studies.  This paper proposes a perspective that focuses on the communication role of the user that may promote greater understanding of uses and gratifications results, and applies its use.  Results of this analysis suggest that our understanding of uses and gratifications based on survey research questions will benefit from distinguishing between user role as a message source or receiver. More specifically, results of this analysis found the communication role of the user was able to predict certain social network site gratifications.  While results were promising, additional research should be conducted to refine these categorizations for predicting media gratifications.