Social Media News: Motivation, Purpose and Usage

This paper presents the results of an online survey which was conducted to analyse the use of social web in the context of daily news. Users' motivation and habit in the news consumption were focused. Moreover, users' news behaviour was distinguished in three purposes such news consumption, news production and news dissemination to find out if the usage has a passive or active character. In a second step it was questioned which social software is used for which purpose. In conclusion users appreciate social software for features such as interactivity and information that traditional media does not provide. Among the social web platforms users prefer social networking sites as well as videoshare platforms. Social networking sites also rank first in the news production and dissemination.