BA CHELOR THESIS
Impact of social network on our social life
Fockedey Walter, Lamarque Alexandre
Independent Project, 15 credits
Halmstad 2015-05-28
IMPACT OF SOCIAL NETWORKS ON OUR SOCIAL LIFE
Academic research done by Alexandre Lamarque and Walter Fockedey, May 2015
Erasmus exchange year 2014/2015
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to thank Halmstad University for letting us the opportunity to spend 2 semesters in which we improved and learned new skills. Moreover it gave us the opportunity to discover new people and different new cultures. This Erasmus year was a great adventure and it allowed us to enrich ourselves.
We want to thank Venilton Reinert for what he taught us during our second semester.
Indeed, he gave us the opportunity to realize this academic research.
ABSTRACT
In this academic research, impacts of social media on people’s living will be studied and analyzed. The problem is to know what those specific impacts are and what are their consequences on our society. To answer this problem, different studies and researches made on the different effects that social media could create will be analyzed. Then those different researches and studies will be correlated and compared with further collected data retrieves thanks to a survey. Statistical results and previous studies will help to respond the problem of this academic research.
CONTENTS
I – Introduction p.5
1.1 Background p.5 1.2 Theory applied____________________________ p.7 1.3 Problem p.7 1.4 Purpose p.8 1.5 Delimitation p.9
II – Frame of reference p.9
III – Methodology p.20 3.1 Method p.23 3.2 Type of research p.27 3.3 Instrument to collect the data p.27 3.4 Population and sample p.28
IV – The empirical study p.28
V – Primary data and the analysis p.33
VI – Conclusion p.46
VII – References p.49
I - Introduction
1.1 Background
Since a couple of years, the technology is getting more and more present in our lives. New technologies are part of people’s lives. With this evolution, social networks started to be known.
In 2004, Facebook has been created, the aim of this social network is to gather millions of users that can exchange information, hobbies or even promote businesses and socialize with people interested in similar values. Facebook was the launching of the popularization of social media. Facebook attracted a large number of Internet users around the world, but rapidly many others social networks were made. In fact, according to Global Web Index (2015), there are 3.025 billion Internet users around the world, 2,060 billion are active on social networks, 68% of Internet users and 28%
of the world population, which means that 82% of Internet users are on Facebook and 48% are regular users. Moreover, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project January Omnibus Survey (2014), the largest users of social media were adults ages 18 to 29. Indeed, 89% of them use social networking sites.
As A. Lenhart, M. Madden, A. Smith (2011) said, the use of social media has increased dramatically during the past years. In fact, 95% of US adolescents from 12 to 17 are regularly going on social media sites.
Nowadays, a lot of people are using social networks because it is considered as the best way to communicate between each other. With them you have access to plenty ways of communications. Indeed, according to Rich Maggiani (2014), social media has drastically changed how we communicate. With the creation of plenty of social media, the way of communicate between each other have been replaced by a more robust multi dimensional communication model, that model is called social media.
At first it seems to be a great invention but when you take a step back you can see that social media had a big impact on our society and on our sociability.
According to Larry Rosen (2014), he is explaining that social network sites are taking a major part on people life. Indeed, he said that we have eight main social network
sites, but Facebook remain the leader. In fact, thanks to personal experiences, it happens to have a family dinner where everybody is watching at his smartphone, communicating with social media instead of enjoying a real conversation with its family.
Also it appears that people are using their technology for a combination of gaining some pleasure and from avoiding anxiety about not knowing what is going on at every moment on every electronic communication platform including social media.
Since the creation of applications, that means games and social network in a major part, people are inventing a real new life through those supports. We can thus see a kind of socialization via social networks, with thousands of followers that are interacting. Indeed, according to Mark S. Granovetter (2001), to arrange a meeting, rather than using the phone, people are more common to get a direct contact through social media. It thus creates a kind of socialization.
However, the issue that is occurring in our current society is that this unreal socialization done via the Internet is actually taking hold on the real sociability. The problem that is appearing is that youth is spending more hours on their smartphones rather than enjoying time outside with friends. According to Karen Frazier, (2014) it exists various negative aspect of spending time on those websites.
Indeed, in 2010 Western Reserve School of Medicine showed a study in which they proved that it exists hyper-networking (people that spend more than 3 hours per day on social media) and hyper-texting (people that are sending more than 120 text messages per day).
1.2 Theory applied
As we saw, social media created impacts on our society but also on our sociability among each other. That’s why the most coherent theory for our academic
research is the “Social impact theory”.
The social impact theory was created by Bibb Latané (1981). The social impact theory says that an individual could be in the same time the source or the target of a social impact. Social impact is the result of social forces including the strength of the source
of impact, the immediacy of the event, and the number of sources exerting the impact.
The more targets of impact that exist, the less impact each individual target has.
In other words, in our situation, the source of impact is the social media. However, as it exists a lot of different social media, the strength of the source of impact would be bigger. That means that as users, we are the targets of those social impacts caused by those social medias.
Nevertheless, the more users it exists, the weaker will be the impact on individuals.
But no matter how many users we are, the social impact would still exist.
1.3 Problem
We chose to speak about this subject because it concerns a lot of people that are using Internet. Nowadays, social networks have fully invaded some lives and way of living. The creations of those medias were in hand with smartphones. In fact, it is part of the digital revolution. In the 2000s, smartphones appeared (Which is a computer that you can use in your hand to communicate almost everywhere around the world) and thus social media became more influent thanks to the easy way of using it. (Frank Rose, 2014). The smartphone is the fastest way to communicate.
It creates a real social issue as Larry Rosen (2014) said in our previous part, because it creates an obsession that obliged people to use those social media as a priority. The main problem of those social medias is their impact on our social life. Some positive impacts for certain and negative for others. We can definitely see that our way of living has changed a lot compared to before. According to Vaibhav Kalamdani (2009), before social media, people were spending less time on the Web, they were more physically social, while, now they are spending way too much time and they are more virtually social. Indeed, people are spending much more time on their unreal social world rather than going out and enjoying time outside. Even in a summer day at the beach, you will always see people stuck on their phones checking out notifications from those social networks. There is a real dependence. We don’t know if this impact is good or not, we are very shared on the problem, there are positive and negative aspects that we will try to examine in this document trough the result of researches done before and thanks to a survey that we made.
Our problem is to know what are the impacts of social media on our living. We also want to know if we can determine if those impacts are positive or negative.
Indeed, we know that social media, especially Facebook has been more influent.
However, we don’t know the effects on people’s behavior. We thus need to know how social media such as Facebook has changed their behavior.
1.4 Purpose
Social media emerged in our society, and as we saw previously, there are an important number of users. This way of communication appears in the middle of certain people’s lives. Indeed, those people concerned have known life before and after social media. The purpose is thus to know if Facebook’s users have now changed about their behavior.
Do Social Media such as Facebook really changed their users from a behavioral point of view which created an impact on the economy?
In order to answer this research question, we will thus, thanks to other works done by authors, analyze how those social media impacted their lives. We will also create a survey that will help us to emphasize the answers.
1.5 Delimitation
As this subject is a large topic in which you can talk about a lot of things, we decided to delimitate our work.
That’s why we’ll be focus first on researches done concerning the impact of Facebook on users’ behavior. And then we’ll exploit the results of our survey to confirm our thoughts on the subject. We will thus concentrate our academic research on what are the social impact on the behavior and mood of people but also on the society.
II - Frame of reference
To have a better view of the subject, we think that it could be very useful to define some key concept in order to lay the foundation. In fact, to analyze this research question, it is better to understand perfectly the terms we are working with.
According to Heidi Cohen (2011), the term "social media" is increasingly used and covers the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and content creation. Social media use the collective intelligence in a spirit of online collaboration. Through these means of social communication, individuals or groups of individuals who work together create web content, organize the content, index, alter or make comments, combine with personal creations. The term of social media remain and concern a wide variety of different websites: blogs, wikis, and digital social networks of any type. Social media use many techniques such as RSS and other web syndication feeds, blogs, wikis, photo sharing, video sharing, podcasts, social networks, the collaborative bookmarking, or micro blogs.
As we know what a social media is, we have to dig deeper in order to define more precisely our subject. The next term that is very important to know and that will delimit better our subject is social networking service.
According to Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison (2007), social networking service refers to the set of virtual resources, which is Internet, used to connect to natural or legal persons between them. With the advent of the Internet, it covers the known Web applications under the name of "social networking service online." These applications have multiple objectives and vocations. They are used to build a social network by connecting friends, associates, and generally individuals together using a variety of tools in order to facilitate, for example, management of professional careers, distribution and artistic visibility or private meetings.
A social network is oriented web 2.0, that is to say, it allows visitors to be active participants in the network, not just visitors of static pages.
In these communities, an initial set of founders sends messages inviting members of their own personal network to join the site. New members repeat the process, increasing the number of members and links in the network. The sites then offer features such as automatic updates address book, viewing personal profiles, the ability to form new links through introduction services and other forms of social connections online. Social networks can also be organized around business connections, as in the case of LinkedIn or Viadeo, around events (concerts, exhibitions...) causes or interests (political Hope as left or nethics ) as Oliceo, cultural (films, books, paintings) as Flixster or Blupps or situations.
Most Internet social networks are public, allowing anyone to join. Organizations such as large companies also have access to private social networking programs, known as Enterprise Relationship Management. They install these programs on their own servers and allow employees to share their networks of contacts and relationships with people and outside companies. Recently have developed in parallel with these private social networks online professional social networks that establish a business networking or networking system. (Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison, 2007)
The creation of a social network can be linked with the pyramid of needs Maslow (1943). Grouping a set of social entities is a result of the needs expressed by the individual himself. Thus, it is possible to identify three of fundamental needs:
-‐ Personal fulfillment by self-expression. Each user speaks on their user files, profile, and enriched content. It communicates personal information to enable other users to recognize or to find out.
-‐ Socialization experiencing a need relational. Users can enter into relationship with each other directly or through a mutual acquaintance; this relationship is usually indicated by a list of friends or contacts, public or private. The user can also enter into a relationship with brands, artists, locations, etc.
-‐ The esteem of others through the need to communicate. The user has available a wide variety of tools to communicate. Communication can be enriched by site (invitation to events, calendar sharing, etc.)
This virtual world allows numbers of interactions between users, thus constituting social networking.
According to Elizabeth Woodson (2013) and Herbert Kelman (1958), social influence and social pressure is the influence exerted by an individual or group on each of its members, the result is to impose the dominant norms of attitude and behavior.
This influence leads to behavior change, attitudes, beliefs, opinions or feelings of an individual or group following contact with another individual or group. To rate such an effect influence, any relationship must exist between these entities. There are several types of social influences, tell typologies of influence, such as conformity, innovation and submission to authority. There are also other phenomena that can be explained in terms of social influence as the resistance that opposes the preceding phenomena.
Social influence covers a very wide field. The phenomena can be observed in everyday life.
Our academic research will be focused on social networking services that are social media and their impacts on users’ behavior and on the economy.
After defining those key words, we will now be focused on articles and scientific researches from other authors that worked on the subject.
According to research report, Facebook could have emotional consequences.
This report is based on a study made by Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer from the University of Innsbruck in their book titled “Computers in Human Behavior”
(2014). They tried to understand this phenomenon. They show that we tend to misunderstand the effect of Facebook on our mood, and we go back there, even if the last time, we had the feeling of wasting time.
This report focuses at how these social networks have modified and still transform our behavior, our interactions, and our way of seeing things.
For their study, Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer (2014) turned to 123 participants who used Facebook for 20 minutes, which were then retrospectively assess their mood. Most said to be a less good humor that the participants in the other groups (one on the Internet, and a control group that was not doing anything), and had the feeling of doing nothing meaningful with their time.
Yet when they are asked, as part of another experiment, if the fact of going on Facebook improve their mood, they think so.
Users seem wrong to predict the emotional impact of the use of Facebook, they are not aware of the negative effects this may have on mood.
In general, we tend to underestimate the impact of events in our life, whether positive or negative.
With Facebook, it is all the more true that it is easy to forget. We did not realize it happens nothing exceptional.
It all depends on our commitment to the social network: If you share articles, images, comments, or if we just look at what happens.
In the study, it is those who have had a passive behavior that have seen their mood deteriorate.
Still concerning Facebook and its effect on mood, Gloria Mark, Shamsi Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski and Paul Johns (2014) said that using the phone, chatting, listening to music, reading and especially watching video were highly correlated with negative social well being. Media multi-tasking was also correlated with negative social well being.
According to Margaret E. Morris, Sunny Consolvo, Sean A. Munson, Adam D.I.
Kramer, Kevin Patrick and Janice Tsai (2011), Facebook is a tool to explore social network approaches to behavioural change. Facebook offers a communication channel and a broad lens onto our social networks. As such, it is a dominant way in which we form perceptions about the behavior of peers. These perceptions of social norms have been shown to powerfully shape behavior. Furthermore, Facebook is itself an environment that exerts influence.
According to a study done by Helmut Appel, JAN Crusius, and Alexander l. Gerlach, (2015) they were looking at the effects of high comparison standards on depressed individuals.
An account is proposed according to which low self-esteem in depressed individuals leads to upward social comparison and thus makes envy more likely. This effect should frequently occur in online social networks like Facebook.
Depressed and non-depressed participants indicated their self-esteem and were then presented with specifically set up Facebook profiles that were either attractive or unattractive.
They were found to have a lower threshold for envy and were particularly vulnerable to high comparison standards. The results suggest that distorted social comparison and low self-esteem substantially contribute to this effect. The depressed should be made aware of the risks entailed in social comparison, especially in online social media.
The results strongly suggest that the use of social media as Facebook, cause low self- esteem, and consequent feelings of inferiority play a crucial role in depressed individuals’ elevated levels. (Cohen-Charash, 2009)
According to the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (2015) since online social media are already part of most people’s lives, some interventions should be included as educational elements. This could be achieved in various ways, for example, by raising awareness of positive impression management in online social network's or by advising depressed users to avoid certain comparison standards altogether.
As we saw on the different studies and articles, Facebook and social medias could thus interfere on our mood. Then, online social network impact people in a lot of different ways, as we will see thanks to the next studies and articles discussed bellow.
According to Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer (2014), FOMO, Fear of Missing Out, is the modern-day syndrome, anxiety relating to the fact miss an event, interact, comment, news etc.
A study published (2013) in the journal Computers in Human Behavior is interested in this issue. To measure FOMO of its participants, Andrew Przybylski, psychologist, and colleagues questioned 672 men and 341 women. Only part of the questions concerned the syndrome. They then used this questionnaire on a British population:
2,079 people aged 22-65 years. The goal: to understand how they are involved in social networks, satisfied or not, and whether they are autonomous, competent and connected to others.
The result is that participants felt less autonomous, connected; they were more affected by FOMO. Similarly, the more they were achieved, the more they used social networks.
And this anxiety becomes urgent to go see what's happening on social networks.
Another study of 87 students showed that those who were suffering from FOMO admitted to be more distracted, send more mails and messages.
Larry Rosen (2014) also explained that one person out of four would feel anxious if he couldn’t pick up his phone whenever he wishes.
Still concerning the fear of missing out something, people tend to think that others have information that they do not have and often follow the behavior of others, in other words, that’s mean that they prefer to spend all their time on social media in order to be sure to get all new information from others (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004, Deutsch and Gerard, 1995 and Kelman, 1958).
From an article of Libby Banks (2015), she discussed about users and their obsession of social media and never missing a feed on those networks.
Fashion is over present on these social medias. Indeed, companies are presenting and advertise their products on every social media.
Within hours, days or a few weeks, something you’d never heard about has become omnipresent, worshiped, critiqued, exalted, scrutinized. Your Twitter feed is full of people raving about it or slating it.
If the Internet’s default mode is obsession, this mind-set is impacting how we shop and how we dress.
The online retailer unleashes between 3,000 and 4,000 new products onto the site every week.
It thus exists a fear of missing out something for users considered as obsessed of social medias.
Still according to Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer (2014), without mentioning dating sites, it is much easier today to meet people. In two clicks you can find a Facebook group, forum or tweeting to talk with someone who has the same
center of interest as you. And meetings are less dematerialized. You meet people online, and you end up seeing them "for real".
Furthermore, social networks allow remaining contact with people that you cannot see in real life. Meet and keep in touch with people are both facilitated by social networks.
According to Jenny Q. Ta (2014). It exists impacts on socialization. It permits people to re-connect with their old friends or keep in touch with their family for example.
You can also make new friends, trade ideas, share content and photos, and many other activities.
Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer (2014) also said that with certain social medias, you could be someone else. Indeed, with social medias such as Twitter and Tumblr, they provide a form of anonymity that gives us the opportunity to become someone else. All we can claim in real life, you can do it on these social networks. On subjects of a little delicate society (for example discrimination), discussions are often as severe as the people are anonymous. These networks offer the opportunity to affirm aloud what we think quietly.
With Facebook it's different, there is another way to live a second life. Since we are on this network to be in contact with his friends, it is not anonymous. However, we can play with our identity, create, and control what you want or what you want to be kept to yourself. You become the person you would like to be (as the following picture show it).
Moreover, people have a strong motivation to compare their opinions with others said Festinger (1954).
Past research on social impact identified two conditions under which people follow the opinion of the majority. In fact, according to Sherif (1935), informational social influence takes place when people follow the opinion of others due to their desire to make correct responses under uncertainty. In contrast, according to Asch (1955), normative social influence takes place when people follow others’ opinion due to their desire to be liked by others. Those researches show that people are ready to change their behavior in order to be appreciated by the others.
People are thus able to change themselves in order to become someone that they always wanted to be. Even if trying to become someone else isn’t always the right decision.
Moreover, others research were made and show that social media impact our way of being. In fact, according to G.S. O'Keeffe, K. Clarke-Pearson (2011) Social media permit users to create online profile pages that may or may not represent the user's real life. These websites are attractive to adolescents because they allow for individualized self-promotion as well as inclusion into a group that may not be attainable in physical reality. In fact, for adolescents it is very important to be unique.
Then, social media allow them to manufacture an image they want other people to see.
Information is disseminated at a crazy speed, and takes trends around the world.( John Cacioppo, 1993)
But that's not all: emotions are contagious also. John Cacioppo, a researcher from the University of Chicago, spoke a few years ago of "emotional contagion" (1993). If one of your contacts is lonely, there is more than one in two chance that this is also your case.
He explains that whatever bad feelings people have, they can rub off on your mood, and even if you have never met or even interacted with this person.
But rest assured, happiness is also contagious.
Here we will be focused on an article of Jenny Q. Ta (2014) that is explaining and describing what are the impacts of social media on our society.
We will thus see what are the effects of social media on politics, business, and socialization as well as some of the negative effects such as cyber bullying and lack of privacy.
Concerning the impact on politics, politicians used the social media as a useful tool in order to spread and share their messages and opinions.
According to Sounman Hong and Daniel Nadler (2011), they said that social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook have been adopted as politically transformative communications technologies, on the level of previous politically significant technological innovations, such as radio and television.
Facebook and Twitter, will bring about a radical transformation of deliberative democracies, allowing citizens to engage their government and allowing politicians to connect with and mobilize the public and their supporters in ways never before thought possible (Grant and Moon 2010).
For example, the number of Japanese politicians using Twitter grew from three to 485 in less than a year, and that in Germany 577 politicians had opened Twitter accounts.
They also affirmed that political use of Twitter on public opinion was positive because the number of Tweets from selected politicians is positively correlated with changes in public opinion. (Sounman Hong and Daniel Nadler, 2011)
Secondly, there is an impact on business. Indeed, companies are using social media in order to advertise their products or build customer loyalty for example.
You can also organize some give away for your customers or get a direct touch with them so that you can enthuse them to visit your website. It will also allow the companies to better understand the market. The last positive point is that you can learn about different cultures and societies by connecting with people in other countries. (Sounman Hong and Daniel Nadler, 2011)
Still according to Jenny Q. Ta (2014). Certain users place too much emphasis on virtual interaction and sometimes almost ignore the real outside world.
Cyber bullying and online harassment are also negative aspects of social media.
You can also see some impact on productivity. Some companies have blocked social networks on their office Internet because of addicted employees that weren’t fully concentrated on their work. In fact, studies show that British companies have lost billions of dollars per year in productivity because of social media addiction among employees. (Jenny Q. Ta, 2014)
Karen Frazier said in her article titled “Negative impact of Social Networking Sites”
(2014) that social media had unhealthy behaviors such as an increase of drinking, smoking, depression, substance abuse, poor sleep patterns, suicide or poor academic performance for example.
Finally, we can also see certain isolation from those users. Indeed, they experience less face-to-face interaction.
Kiesler (1984), Sproull and Kiesler (1986) confirmed it. They affirm that for all its benefits, social media holds risks for social life. Indeed, it can often result in
misinterpretations, angry and uninhibited exchanges, and feelings of isolation or depersonalization among its users.
Ecker (2010) and Lewandowsky (2012) analyzed that inaccurate messages add noise to social media, confuse people, and could result in misbeliefs that are difficult to change.
According to G.S. O'Keeffe (2012) Social media have an impact on self-esteem. In fact, nowadays, popularity is measured by how many ‘friends’ or ‘likes’ are collected on a social media. Social media encourage adolescents to compete for attention in order to increase their ‘likes’ and enhance their self-worth. If a publication doesn't garner enough comments, the adolescent is encouraged to ‘share’ it to make it more newsworthy. These seemingly innocuous online behaviors can be quite damaging themselves, and they are easily translated into a risky offline reality. In other word, popularity on social media became so important that if people don't create enough interest for others, they would feel very bad about it. It will affect their psychological well being.
This phenomenon is accompanied with the cyberbully. A cyberbully is someone who deliberately uses social media to perpetuate false, humiliating, or malevolent information about another individual. (G.S. O'Keeffe, K. Clarke-Pearson, 2011) Similar to traditional offline bullying, studies have shown cyberbullying can lead to depression, anxiety, severe isolation, and poor self-esteem for the bullied individual.
(S. Hinduja, J.W. Patchin, 2010)
Cyberbullying can be even more pervasive. In fact, social medias are working at any time of the day or night for everyone, and everyone can see it. (E. Donnerstein, 2012) Perhaps not surprisingly, it has also been shown that individuals who participate in cyberbullying are more likely to participate in offline bullying. (K.J. Mitchell, D.
Finkelhor, J. Wolak, 2011)
According to Hervé Kabla (2011), social networks have become standard tools, used by millions of people. Whether professionals or not, internal or external, we are all affected by these tools that are part of the social web. In France, an active out of 10 has an account on LinkedIn, one out of 6 on Viadeo. A French out of three is on Facebook, and almost 75% of us are brought every day to visit a broadcast
Such diffusion cannot be done without a profound change of function and behavior.
As happened during the broadcasting of other innovations (car, laptop, mobile phone, etc.), social networks are profoundly changing industrial relations and unprofessional.
People use social media not only for entertainment but also for education, business, and governance said Yasuaki Sakamoto (2014).
Here are some examples of changes due to social media and its impact on our society explained by Hervé Kabla (2011).
First, social media would now be useful for the recruitment of new employees. It has now become a habit, every candidate for a new job, a new position, should expect that his employer is the subject of a Google search. This allows the prospective employer to learn about his career, his professional network on “tracks left on the web”, whether or not in favor of that candidate. The impact is huge for both candidates and recruiters, which may sometimes make judgments a priori and totally subjective.
In this case of the recruitment of new employees, social media created a great social impact. In fact, people have to be careful with their publication, shares and content on the social media because it could affect their job for the future.
Secondly, social media are used for internal communication. Internal social networks now allow communication between employees of the same company, the same group, from geographically remote sites, and on a large variety of professional topics.
Yammer, blueKiwi and others allow boost internal networks, to better collaborate by sharing information through the "weak ties" that underlie sometimes some of the most strategic issues for our companies.
Finally, social media created the service communities. Carpooling, babysitting, the service-oriented social networks are the next big revolution to come. Confidence in these networks will be done through the recommendation of a trusted third party: if your neighbor or your friend says that this or that local service was satisfied, there is a good chance that you can be too. Young shoots that Yokoro, covoiturage.fr were built on this idea and attracted tens of thousands of Internet users.
Those examples show that the social impact of social medias allowed the creation of new communities online. It thus created a new way of gathering people.
Social media thus have some positive and negative social impacts on the society.
Users are then free to use those social network sites or not.
As we saw previously, social media can impact the professional world by facilitating and offering jobs.
In fact, according to Katie Pfledderer (2014) and the member survey conducted by DirectEmployers Association, there are 90% of companies that currently use social media in some capacity for recruiting and em-ployment branding. Many other industry studies reflect similar results. For job seekers, this means an opportunity to engage with a company through its pro-file pages or directly with recruiters. Social media can also boost your job search through networking, researching and marketing yourself.
In comparison with our research question, our frame of reference part helped us to confirm that it exists some behavioural consequences due to social media, especially Facebook’s uses. It created a positive impact on the economy. In fact, it facilitated and offered certain jobs.
Those researches are very reliable due to the authors that we found. However, these affirmations are kind of weak because those researches are past. That means that we have to confirm what authors found before.
III - Methodology
3.1 Method
First of all, we need to know what is the difference between a qualitative and a quantitative research. That’s why we will define each kind and then what research we are doing.
Qualitative research is a research that produces and analyzes data such as written words or says observatory and behavior of people (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984). It is used
to examine subjective human experience by using non‐statistical methods of analysis (Borbasi and Jackson 2012).
It refers to a method of research interest in the meaning and the observation of a social phenomenon in the wild. It deals with easily quantifiable data. It does not reject the figures or statistics but just do not give them the first place.
Qualitative research suits behavioral and social sciences as it aids in understanding the unique nature of human beings (Burns and Grove 2009)
This research is performed when one is interested in knowing the factors affecting some aspect of the behavior of the social actor brought into contact with reality. It seeks to understand, describe, and explore a new area. It seeks to assess the performance of a person to go to the discovery of the other. Trying to evaluate an action, a project. All this is the result of quality research. (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984)
According to Aliaga and Gunderson (2000), a quantitative research is explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analyzed using mathematically based methods (in particular statistics). Quantitative research is the set of methods and reasoning used to analyze standardized data. This data often results from a questionnaire/survey but can also be produced by the coding of archival documents, administrative records, audio or visual sources.
Quantitative analysis is based on statistical methods (percentages, probability, numbers...). It is an approach that provides a measure of what people think from a statistical and numerical point of view.
Quantitative research can gather a large amount of data that can be easily organised and manipulated into reports for analysis.
A useful way to distinguish between the two methods is to think of qualitative methods as providing data in the form of words, and quantitative methods as generating numerical data.
According to Neuman, a methodologist (1994), Quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection are often employed in support of each other on the one research project. Moreover, Neuman has tabulated the differences between qualitative and quantitative research as we can see in the following table:
Quantitative Qualitative Objective is to test hypotheses that the
researcher generates.
Objective is to discover and encapsulate meanings once the researcher becomes immersed in the data.
Concepts are in the form of distinct variables Concepts tend to be in the form of themes, motifs, generalizations, and taxonomies.
However, the objective is still to generate concepts.
Measures are systematically created before data collection and are standardized as far as possible.
Measures are more specific and may be specific to the individual setting or researcher.
Data are in the form of numbers from precise measurement.
Data are in the form of words from documents, observations, and transcripts. However, quantification is still used in qualitative research.
Theory is largely causal and is deductive. Theory can be causal or non-causal and is often inductive.
Analysis proceeds by using statistics, tables, or charts and discussing how they relate to hypotheses.
Analysis proceeds by extracting themes or generalizations from evidence and organizing data to present a coherent, consistent picture.
These generalizations can then be used to generate hypotheses
Thanks to the previous table, we can differentiate the two types of researches, indeed, in one hand; a quantitative research will come up with some statistical results from studies done for this research. While in the other hand, a qualitative research will result from an existing research done before.
To get a perfect answer on the subject, we needed both type of researches. Indeed, we first needed some numerical data in order to show the behavioral and economical impacts. We thus need a minimum of data to affirm those impacts. Quantitative data is a strength for us because you cannot confirm any of these affirmations. Numerical
data are primordial. However, you also need Qualitative data in order to develop and describe these impacts.
Concerning our research question, we had to show and prove that it exists some behavioral and economical modifications. We thus had to find numerical data in order to be reliable on our answers. Secondly, we had to determine what are those different modifications. For this, qualitative researches are necessary in order to explain and detail those impacts.
As we have to explain a fact, which is the impact on Facebook on users’
behavior and the economy, we had to come up with numbers in order to prove it.
Quantitative researches are thus the first researches that we have done. However, we also needed some Qualitative researches in order to explain and describe the data found on the subject.
3.2 Type of research and Primary/Secondary data sources
In order to get a reliable outcome of the analysis, we must be careful on the research method that we are willing to choose.
According to Baines & Fill (2014), it exists three kinds of research. There are the exploratory research, the descriptive research and the explanatory research.
The objective of exploratory research is to identify key issues and key variables. The objective of exploratory research is to gather primary data that will help define problems and suggest hypotheses. (Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong 2006)
Then we have the descriptive research. The objective of much descriptive research is to define and explain a specific phenomenon. The aim of descriptive research is to describe things thanks to a comparison of different variables used in a quantitative collection. Here you can use secondary data to understand or complete the analysis. (Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong 2006)
Finally we have the explanatory research or otherwise called causal research. The objective of causal research is to test hypotheses about cause-and-
effect relationships. In order to determine causality, it is important to hold the variable that is assumed to cause the change in the other variable constant and then measure the changes in the other variable.
Explanatory research has been quantitative in nature and has typically tested prior hypotheses by measuring relationships between variables; the data are analyzed using statistical techniques. (Zikmund 1984)
We had to do a comparison between those 3 types of researches in order to find and choose which one will be the best. Concerning the explanatory research it allows to give some easy answers to determine if it exists a link between different independent and known variables. Usually, it gives simple results to read and it offers the opportunity to get insights. However, the results can be distorted because the research doesn’t take the whole environment into account.
Now according to exploratory research, it allows us to get a better understanding.
With this type of research you can test the concept, compare the situations and a conclusion can be made and solution of problem can be found. However, with that type of research it exists a limit because much qualitative information is needed.
Now about descriptive research, several variables can be crossed and thus give us various approaches. However, it happens that respondents do not always answer what they really think.
After dealing with those different types of researches and weight the pros and cons, with the different advantages, disadvantages and their opportunities and weaknesses;
but also according to our research question, we decided to choose the descriptive research. Indeed, in our case, we are describing a phenomenon, the impact of Facebook on users behavior and on the economy.
Primary and Secondary Data Sources:
There are two types of data that can be used. First, primary sources are self- generated and consist of experimental designs, case studies, survey data, focus groups, participant observation data, and so on. Primary data were created at the time of the event. Primary data mean “original data collected for a specific research goal”
The second route that we wish to pursue is that of using existing materials or secondary sources.
Secondary sources can be various, company records, archives, trade union materials, census data and government sources. Secondary data were created after the event, and often use primary sources as examples. In fact, according to Boeije, the existing data, collected for a different purpose and reused for another research question. In other words, secondary data are based on primary source
In our case, we should use both types of sources. In fact, primary source allowed us to suggest the hypothesis that social network could impact its users.
However, we also needed secondary data in order to emphasize the first affirmations.
Obviously, primary data collections are decisive to answer the research question because they have been made in this purpose.
3.3 Instrument to collect the data
It exists different ways to collect data in function of the nature of the research, which is qualitative or quantitative.
First, for the qualitative research, there are different ways to collect data. In fact, according to James (‘Qualitative Data Collection’, chapter 4, p.69, 2007), “Qualitative data are particularly appropriate for participatory action research projects because they can help us understand people’s reactions, beliefs, and behavior more clearly”.
In fact he listed the different data collection strategy:
First, the interview that is a one-on-one question-and-answer sessions where the researcher may use a variety of techniques. Interviews average 30–45 minutes per person. This collection strategy allows revealing information about a single individual. Moreover this strategy is flexible because the question asked during the interview can be modified in function of the reaction or the answers of the interlocutor. But according to James (2007), interviews are time-consuming form of
data collection because it requires time for the preparation, the interview, and the transcription.
The second data collection strategy is, Focus groups, which have the same characteristics as interview, the difference is that it is a group interview. According to James (2007), in focus groups, people may be more motivated to participate to the interview thanks to the group process. In fact, shy people feel encouraged to participate.
“Interviews and focus groups are similar methods” (‘Qualitative Data Collection’, chapter 4, p.71, 2007) In fact, in both settings, researchers has to develop their questions, and to test them to help ensure that their questions are understood by their subjects. Moreover, they have to work on the set up an environment that enhances the potential for full disclosure, being both comfortable and safe from a research subject’s point of view.
For the quantitative research, the principal way to collect data is with a survey/questionnaire. (Kenneth N.Ross, 2005)
According to Kenneth N.Ross, (2005) survey research, by definition, implies the use of some form of questionnaire to be administered to a sample of respondents; the questionnaire is simply one instrument that can be employed in the study of a research problem. As such, it may or may not be the most suitable tool for the task at hand.
Before deciding on the need for a new questionnaire, one should consider whether or not some of the required information may already be available from other sources, for example, from statistics compiled by governments or research agencies, or from survey research archives. One should also consider whether a suitable questionnaire already exists that could be wholly or partially used.
The development of a questionnaire commences with the transformation of general educational research and policy concerns into specific research questions for which the data are intended to supply an answer. (Kenneth N. Ross 2005)
After reading and learning about those different ways of collecting data. We wanted to do a quantitative research in order to confirm the numerical results obtained compared to those found previously on our frame of references. In order to do so, we
behavior on Facebook and if they perceived Facebook as something that impacted the economy (For example: creation of job opportunities). The survey research was thus our logical way of collecting data.
Thanks to the survey, it is easier to collect and interpret the statistics found and compared them with previous researches.
3.4 Population and sample
According to Bobbie Latham (2007), the sample method involves taking a representative selection of the population and using the data collected as research information. Frey (2000) said that a sample was a “subgroup of a population”. It has also been described as a representative “taste” of a group by Berinstein (2003).Lohr (1999) finally said the sample should be representative in the sense that each sampled unit will represent the characteristics of a known number of units in the population.
However, in order to get a sample, you first need to well choose the kind of sample that you are looking for. Indeed, it could be a probability sampling or a non- probability sampling.
Fink (1995) affirmed that in a probability type of sample, every subject or unit has an equal chance of being selected from the population. Indeed, it is important to give everyone an equal chance of being selected.
According to Bobbie Latham (2007), there are different types of profitability sampling such as simple random sampling, systematic random sampling, stratified random sampling, and cluster sampling. While the different types of non-probability sampling are convenience, purposive, snowball and quota.
We considered our survey as a probability simple random sampling. A simple random sample is selected by assigning a number to each member in the population list and then “use a random number table to draw out the members of the sample” (MacNealy 1999 p155).
Indeed, our questionnaire has been submitted on our various social medias that we are using and we shared and spread it to the whole users of those social medias. Answers were anonymous. Our target was massive because it reached not only our country but
also the entire world. Indeed, our population was social media users, and our sample was those users ages from 18 to 30 years old.
However, there are several methods in order to get in touch with the population through a collect of data like the survey. Indeed, you could reach them through the mail, the telephone, personal or group interviewing and like it was our case, the social networks. (Schiffman & Kanuk 2000)
Still according to Schiffman and Kanuk (2000), using the telephone would help you to get quick answers and questions could be explained. But it will cost you money to call them.
By using the mail’s way, answers won’t be always honest because people would not be anonymous on their answers. However, it is a free way to reach your sample.
Nevertheless, the response rate is usually low.
Now concerning the personal and group interviewing, you would be able to go deeper on your explanation and it would be interactive. However, it is a very expensive way of reaching out people for your survey and it takes a lot of time.
Finally, with the social networks’ way, you will have honest answers because it would be anonymous. It is also super easy to reach out a lot of people in the same time.
Indeed, a simple click is necessary. The response rate is usually high and it is totally free. However you do not have any control of the sample.
IV - The empirical study
Concerning our empirical study, we first had to select a method that had to be either qualitative or quantitative. Then we had to choose a specific type of research between exploratory, descriptive and explanatory. Our next step was to get a method of collecting the data. Indeed, we had the choice between qualitative methods such as the case study, the interview or the focus group for example and the choice of a quantitative method with questionnaire/survey.
Finally, once all these criteria were chosen, we had to select a specific population and type of sample. Indeed, our population would be the Internet users. While our sample
would thus be huge because our questionnaire can reach everybody from this age that is using social networks.
As our research is on the impact of Facebook on users’ behavior and on the economy, for our empirical study, we decided to collect data through a questionnaire submitted online, which is a quantitative research method. We also said that our type of research would be descriptive. In fact, our research consists in describing a phenomenon thanks to a comparison of different variables used in a quantitative collection. Our research would also be compared with secondary data.
Moreover, people targeted are thus randomly chosen, as we do not know whose going to answer it. This is also a probabilistic type of sample as Fink (1995) affirmed that we all have an equal chance of being selected from the population.
We thus focused on our academic research problem, which is to know what are the impacts of Facebook on users’ behavior and on the economy. Our survey’s questions were thus made in relation with information found on our frame of reference in order to get results that would help us to confirm and discuss the authors’ affirmation on the subject.
To create our questionnaire, we used the Google doc tool on Google drive. In order to have the maximum of information that we could have, we had to ask a lot of questions. But in the same time we tried to put ourselves as people who are supposed to answer this survey. In fact, we didn’t want that people feel lazy to answer our questionnaire. So we had to make an understandable and easy questionnaire to answer. Moreover, we decided to make a good-looking survey in order to look more
‘professional’. It doesn’t seem to be a very important part, but people will be more open to answer to a nice looking/professional questionnaire than a questionnaire that seems to be made at the last minute. Indeed, we made a few photo editing in order to have at the end a professional looking questionnaire (see the picture below). Of course, in the same perspective of making a good questionnaire, we had to ask our question in the right way. (No mistakes, no misunderstanding etc.) Moreover, we decided to put all our survey both in English and in French (mother tongue) in order to get more responses.
Here is the link of our survey:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hWEI1GqFIs0OUPU3L_VBi9nxDKC0VrXebJwzhZHa41w/viewform
In order to reach the maximum of people, we decided to spread out our survey on the principal social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, mass mailing prospection. In order to touch a large public we also asked people to share our survey via their own networks by using public publication, shares, link to the survey etc.
In this part, we will go deeper on how we made our questions and explain why we thought those questions were the one we were willing to ask.
We will thus tell you one by one the questions asked and then describe them. In our questionnaire, we asked questions about specific social medias, we chose the one that are the most used. In fact, according to Global Web Index (2015), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are the most used.
In our survey titled “The impact of social networks on our social lives”, we asked those following questions:
1- What is your gender?
Response: Male/Female
! First of all, it was important to know whether the users were mostly male or female in order to see if social media trends to attract mostly women or men.
2- How old are you?
Response: <18 / 18-30 / 30-60 / >60
! As it is important to know the gender of people that we are questioning, it is also important to know their age in order to be aware of which range of age is the most social connected. In fact, it will facilitate the interpretation of the results.
3- Which social network do you use?
Response: Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn/ Snapchat/Others
! We have to know what the trends of users are concerning social media. Indeed, we need to be aware of which one of these social networks is the most influent in the eyes of people we questioned.
4- Why do you use the social networks?
Response: Hobby/Professional
! We have to distinguish if the majority of users are coming into those social media as a hobby or use them for a professional reason.
5- Could you stop using those social networks?
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn/Snapchat Response: Totally/Not Really/Absolutely not
! By asking this question, we would like to underline if people could stop using or not any of these social media, in order to show if it exists a kind of addiction.
6- How much time per day do you spend on one of this social network?
Response: <2h / 2-4h / >4h
! This question will allow us to have a better overview of how much time people are spending on social media. Still with the purpose of knowing if it exists a kind of addiction.
7- Do you use those social networks more on your computer or on your smartphones?
Response: Computer PC/Smartphones
! This question is useful to know if social media users prefer the computer or the smartphones platform.
8- How are those social networks helpful for you?
Response: Personal contact / Professional contact / News / Share / Events / Advertising / Others
! It will allow us to analyze the differences of utilization of social media. And then to know what are the main activities of people on social media.
9- What impacts the social networks have on our social life?
Response: Positive/Negative and Why? (Personal opinion)
! It is important to know if people trend to think that social medias are a positive or a negative thing for us. It is also interesting to have their personal opinion on the
subject.
10- Do you think that will one day regret the life before the social networks?
Response: Yes / No and Why? (Personal opinion)
! It will help us to know if people prefer to live with social media or not.
11- Do you think that social networks are used too much?
Response: Yes/No
! This question allows us to know if people think that there is an addiction with
12- Occupational status
Response: Farmer / Craftsman / Employee / Worker / Student / Entrepreneur / Unemployed
! This question allows us to know which kind of person is using social network. In fact, it will facilitate the interpretation of the results.
13- Feel free to leave a comment about this subject.
! This section is interesting for us; in fact it allows people to leave us any further comment about our survey. Their comment could be useful in our analysis.
V – Primary data and the analysis
In the last main part of our academic research, we will exploit our survey by giving you the results of our quantitative research through statistical results. After analyzing those results, we will compare them with researches done before from our frame of reference.
RELEVANCE TO FRAME OF REFERENCE
Our survey, as well as our frame of reference, is oriented toward impact that social media could cause on our living. In fact, as we saw thank to researches from other authors, those impacts are multiple.
For our survey, we received 117 answers, all anonymously. As the pie shows, from the 117 participants, 62% were women and 38% were men.
We can thus say that from the result of our questionnaire, we have a majority of women as users of social media.
38%
62%
GENDER
Men Women
4%
78%
16%
2%
AGE RANGE
<18 18-‐30 30-‐60
>60
107
64
36
65
76
19
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn Snapchat Others
Which social media do you use?
Depending on the result of our questionnaire, most people questioned were ages 18 to 30. In fact, they represent 78% of the participant.
A 2014 survey realized by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project January Omnibus Survey (2014), the largest users of social media were adults ages 18 to 29.
Indeed, 89% of them use social networking sites.
In other word, we can conclude that the largest users of social media are still people from 18 to 30 since last year.
32%
68%
Why do you use those social networks?
Professional Hobbie
On our questionnaire of 117 participants, 107 are using Facebook. It confirms that Facebook it the most popular social network these last years, as you can see above.
(Pew Research Center, 2014).
Moreover, multi platform use is on the rise. Indeed, users are not only using Facebook but they also use others social media such as Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
To sum up, while Facebook remains the most popular social media site, its overall growth has slowed and other sites continue to see increases in number of users. (Pew Research Center, 2014).
According to our survey, and the one from Pew Research Center (2014), we can see that the results are correlated. In fact, the majority of users is from 18 to 30 and is using Facebook.
According to our results, majority of users are coming onto the social media as a hobby. Indeed, only 32% of users are using social media for professional reason.
Then we can thus deduct that social media impacted people on their professional life.
Indeed, as Sounman Hong and Daniel Nadler (2011) said, there is an impact on business. Indeed, companies can now use social media in order to advertise their products/services or build customer loyalty. That’s why the use of social media for professional use is increasing. Moreover, according to Hervé Kabla (2011) social
104
9 4
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Totally Not really Absolutely not
71
31
15 0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Totally Not really Absolutely not
SnapChat
81
23 20
30 40 50 60 70 80 90
65
40
10 20 30 40 50 60 70
recruitment of new employees.
Secondly, it also facilitates internal communication in companies. And finally social media created the service communities. (Carpooling, babysitting etc.)
Those researches are thus in correlation with our result. In fact, it justifies the use of social media for professional purposes.
As some participant said in our questionnaire (the free expression part) social media are more and more used in companies. In fact, it is very useful to communicate, share document and interact faster. In other words, social media created a certain social impact. In fact, people are more open to communicate between each other; it can thus create a better atmosphere in the workplace. Finally, we can say that social media had been a real opportunity for companies to extend themselves.
Could you stop using the following social networks?
29
48
40
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Totally Not really Absolutely not
By looking at those graphics above, we can affirm that the majority of users that we questioned were unable to stop using Facebook rather than any other social medias. In fact, for the other social medias, people seem to be totally able to stop using them. We can thus see a certain form of addiction of Facebook.
If we look in our frame of reference part, Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer (2014) said that Facebook could cause a decrease in mood of people. In fact, thank to their study made on 123 people that were using Facebook for 20 minutes. Most of them said that they had a decrease of their good mood, and had the feeling that they were wasting their time.
Moreover according to their study, they affirm that mood could change depending on their commitment on the social network. For example, if you share articles, image, comment, or if you just look at what happen. In other words, it means that most of people went on Facebook just to look at what happen.
According to a study done by Helmut Appel, JAN Crusius, and Alexander l. Gerlach (2015), they were looking at the effects of high comparison standards on depressed individuals). In fact, in their study, they said that users of social media as Facebook who have low self-esteem will leads them to be more depressed than they already are.
In fact, they will feel the need to compare themselves to others. They concluded that depressed people should be more aware of the risks entailed in online social media.
54%
37%
9%
How much time per day?
< 2h 2 -‐ 4h > 4h
Moreover, as Cohen-Charash, (2009) says that the use of Facebook could cause low self-esteem, and then will create feelings of inferiority. According to him, it plays a crucial role in depressed individuals’ elevated levels.
Even though people are aware of those negative effects on your behavior, this addiction controls them by continuing spending time on those social medias. It is a vicious circle where users are spending hours and hours of their time behind the screen while they are deteriorating their mood and behavior.
Thanks to those results, we can affirm that 88 out of 117 of our participants are potential subject to Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer’s study (2014).
Indeed, they can be affected on their mood and behavior, but they can also feel distracted because of Facebook.
This graphics is telling us that out of the 117 answers that we got, 37% of them are spending around 2 and 4 hours of their time per day on social media. It is more than 1 person out of 3. This result thus confirms the addiction seen before with our previous graph. With this graph, we cannot affirm why does this addiction exist,
