In “The Social Media Ecology: User Perceptions, Strategies and Challenges,” the authors Xuan Zhao, Cliff Lampe, and Nicole B. Ellison use the results from their experiments to prove that social media users purposefully and thoughtfully navigate a variety of platforms in order to reach different audiences with different content. 

Their research questions focused on the constraints and tensions that social media users experience when making decisions about where and how to post based on the opportunities and boundaries of different platforms. In their experiment, they surveyed participants’ demographics and social media site use, had them participate in a card sorting activity, and then interviewed them about their thought processes. They found that many participants reasoned that, “Aligning specific kinds of content (such as sports or children) with specific channels helped to ensure messages were delivered in intended ways and could receive sufficient attention from other parties.” They argued that “norms” differ across platforms, and that people specifically curate their posts across platforms to shape how they are perceived by the given audiences. They found, though, that the boundaries between different platforms were relatively permeable, saying that, “Since a single platform was not likely to have the perfect match of “contacts” and “content,” participants reached their desired audience by sharing the same content over multiple platforms.” The authors also compared the social media sphere to a natural ecosystem, emphasizing that users strive to maintain homeostatic and stable connection, while continuously adapting and evolving to use new media tools. They identified the tension that users experience when new social media platforms emerge and they find themselves needing to learn a new set of norms in order to shape their identity in a new place. 

Their argument was formatted in a very coherent and scientific way, they clearly outlined their research questions, methods, analyses, and findings, which made it easy to follow. Additionally, their study was very well thought out, in that they used different elements of their experiments to illicit authentic responses from participants. They concluded their argument strongly by stating that all of these findings proved that people manage their social media presence based on how they think different audiences will react to content.