In The Social Media Ecology: User Perceptions, Strategies and Challenges Xuan Zhao, Cliff Lampe, and Nicole B. Ellison argue that when sharing anything on social media, people simultaneously consider both their “audience” and their “content” and that these two barriers can compete with one another.
Zhao, Lampe, and Ellison conducted their study in a mid-western city in the US with a broad age range of 22 – 53 years old. Through a 60 minute face-to-face interview, the twenty-nine participants shared their preferred “modes of communication,” with that specific term being used to not make people think some platforms they use as communication platforms while others are not. The different participants and their preferred social media platforms are listed in the figure below.
Through the study, they learned that before someone shares any type of content, they will typically consider exactly who they are sharing it with as well as how they will be affected based on other’s perceptions and behaviors to their content. However, although this was the general idea, the norms can differ across platforms. When one shares content to a specific platform, they need to deem that content appropriate for said platform.
One participant noted on Facebook that “while [she] is Friends with some folks that [she] works with, whatever interactions [they] have on Facebook has nothing to do with work.”
The same participant reported, though, that there are certain platforms where it is deemed unnecessary to go in-depth with the selection process of sharing. She mentions: “If it’s an exceptionally cute photo of my rabbit, I send it to Facebook. If it’s just – ‘this is another pet picture’ I just keep it to Instagram… I don’t want to have [my bunny] overtake my Facebook page.”
With this, some participants were able to show that different platforms are meant to post different sets of content between the realm of uncaring to normative. So those who use Facebook normally use it to keep in touch with a comprehensive group of “contacts” whilst sharing stricter “content” based on their audience. Platforms like Snapchat, however, can be used as quite the opposite of Facebook, typically with users not worrying greatly about what it is that they post and who they are sharing it with.