Social media users post their experiences for personal satisfaction and public recognition, study says

Photo courtesy of
Steve Garfield on Flickr.

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are peppered with posts ranging from pictures of life events, such as a college graduation, to more trivial events, such as how long a friend's run was. With such a broad spectrum of posts on social media, one study found that personal satisfaction and public recognition were some of the top motives for users to share their achievements and experiences in online public spaces.

Online badge systems help social media sites better engage users, the study said.

According to the study "Tweeting Badges: User Motivations for Displaying Achievement in Publicly Networked Environments," a social media site's success relies on its level of "social engagement," which is "the extent to which users interact with one another in creating, sharing, and promoting content."

The study - which is by Dr. K. Hazel Kwon, an assistant professor in the school of social and behavioral sciences at Arizona State University, Dr. Alexander Halavais, an assistant professor of sociology at Arizona State University, and Shannon Havener, a market research consultant - analyzes how the integration of game-like qualities in a social media site encourages and motivates users to share their experiences on that platform.

A senior art history major at the University of Maryland gave her take on how social media engages users. She said people use social media to advertise themselves.

The study analyzed online badge systems - a "digital representation" of a user's achievement or experience on the site.

The researchers used Twitter as a platform to survey a sample audience of 142 participants within two days of tweeting an online badge.  The goal was to understand what motivates users to share these badges.

Graphic courtesy of Dan Russo.

The survey was limited, however, because it only took a sample of users who tweeted badges and thus are a more active online audience. A survey of 77 University of Maryland students suggests more active users represent a small portion of those on social media.

The survey asked the students how often they posted on social media in a typical week. Eight percent of students said they post on social media daily while 21 percent said they post only a few times per week. The majority of students - 61 percent - said they rarely, if ever posted on social media.

Despite the audience limitation, the study found that "self-efficacy" and "social incentives" motivated users to post the largest variety of types of badges.

Screen shot by Dan Russo.

The study defined users motivated by "self-efficacy" as those concerned with "personal identity expression, a sense of achievement, and social identity promotion."

Meanwhile, the research defined users motivated by "social incentives" as those focused on "social networking" and "building up reputation and recognition" on online public platforms.

For instance, the social media app SnapChat uses a score system to entice its users to send more photos to their friends and grow their social network.

The study found Twitter users motivated by a sense of goal achievement most often posted badges about fitness and education.

The survey in the study found that users who tweeted badges from fitness apps, such as NikeRun+ - which allows users to track their distance on runs and share it via Facebook or Twitter - did so for a sense of achievement.

Stan, a doctorate candidate for history at the University of Maryland, uses the NikeRun+ app to track the distances of his runs and disagreed with the findings.

The study also found Twitter users motivated to expand their social network or build their reputation posted badges about leisure.

The study categorized Yelp, the site where users rate businesses and can look at other participants ratings, as using leisure badges.  For example, if a Yelp user reviews a lot of gyms they receive a "Gym Junkie" badge which they then may share on social media.

University of Maryland senior physics major Andrew Stefany agreed with the study.  He said people post on social media in order to communicate with their social network.

Stefany echoed the research, which said when users share leisure badges they are trying to build their recognition on an online public platform.

Web developers can implement users' motivations in the design of sites to better engage their targeted audience.

The study suggests its findings can give web developers a better understanding of their users' motivations.  That understanding would guide their design to better engage users through gamification - the integration of game-like qualities to sites.

Robert Cobb, a software engineer at Fin Exploration Co., discussed some of the limitations of gamification and online badge systems that the study did not address.

He said while research drives the design choices the company makes, gamification and online badges are not always the most successful blueprints.

"Badges sometimes help, sometimes don't ... if [badges] come off as an irrelevant add-on, they're pretty bad," Cobb wrote in a Facebook message.

While this study has its limitations, it does still provide useful advice and data for future web developers researching how to best engage their users.

"Unless you don't plan to have users," Cobb wrote in a Facebook message, "all the work you do is centered on thinking about [users'] needs and motivations."