Instabook: Content on Facebook vs.

Instagram

Anaforian, Daniel

Dehar, Harpreet

Khan, Sam

Praszker, Michael

MKTG 183 - 10:20 am

Professor Munson

June 6, 2019
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Table of Contents

Executive Summary 2

Introduction: Problem Statement and Background Literature Review 2-3

Research Objectives: Hypotheses 4-6

Methodology 6-7

Results 7-9

Implications, Recommendations, and Conclusions 10-11

Limitations 11

Appendices 12 - 18

Appendix A: “Interpretation and Possible Marketing Implications of IAKN”

Appendix B : Summary Figure: Integrated Associative Knowledge Network

Appendix C - L: Statistical Analysis

Bibliography 19
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III. Executive Summary

When most college students get a break in between classes, they are often seen to stare at their

cell phone screen to interact with friends and family via social media platforms. In today’s

society, Instagram and Facebook are two of the most common platforms of social media yet still

vary in the types of content posted on each. Given that a majority of college students have been

familiar with Facebook and Instagram for over five years, we decided to focus this project on

understanding what caused people to use one platform over the other. With this, we looked at

what kind of media is posted on each platform, what the driving forces are when deciding what

to post, what features do people like the best, and how often people visit each platform. Also, we

hoped to understand the impact of “likes” on a person and whether they can tell which platform

will allow for more views on their post.

After many mind maps, hypotheses, and 122 surveys, the results demonstrate that students

preferred different platforms depending on the what kind of content they were posting. 82.7% of

the respondents reported that they would choose Instagram over Facebook for their personal life.

55.8% mentioned that they would use Facebook for business use. The mean time spent on

Facebook was 1.4 hours and 2.1 hours for Instagram. Throughout the course of 54 questions, our

team was able to conclude that Instagram was more preferable due to its exciting features and

young approach. Through the course of this paper, we will discuss the driving forces behind user

behaviors and how Facebook can adapt to the be more appealing in terms of content and features

for college students.

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IV. Introduction: Problem Statement and Background Literature Review

Every day our world becomes more interconnected. As more people have access to the Internet,

more people want to connect with friends and family across a digital sphere. This led to the

growth of social media sites, especially in the early 2000s. Social media sites are defined as

online platforms that allow users to create a public profile and interact with other users on the

websites. Currently, more Americans use social media than do not. Nearly two-thirds of all

American report using social media and roughly three-fours of all American Internet users use

social media (Perrin 2015). Young adults (aged 18-29) are the most connected demographic,

with roughly 90% of this group using at least one social media site. The biggest social media

sites include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Facebook is by far the largest social

media site, with roughly 2.27 billion monthly active users worldwide. Instagram boasts 1 billion

monthly active users, while Twitter has 326 million and Snapchat has 301 million (Allton). This

project will focus on Facebook and Instagram as they are the most widely used platform by

college students. College students use social media frequently to build a relationship with their

peers and create a community at their particular university and are therefore important to study.

There has been significant research into the general uses of social media sites, namely by Katz,

Papacharissi, and Rosengren. In their Users and Gratification Model, they find that five

assumptions must be true when someone uses a social media site. They find:

(a) audience members are active and goal-oriented consumers of media; (b)

people gratify certain needs when using media; (c) as media satisfy needs, they

become sources of competition to other need-satisfying sources; (d) media users

are aware of their interests and motives and have certain expectations of media
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that help them with media selection and need gratification; and (e) media users

are the ones capable of judging the quality of media.

Their findings suggest that a user is aware of their media and deliberate in choosing their media.

Once the media need is satisfied, they then use media to satisfy other needs of which they are

aware. The entire time the user is judging the quality of the media to ensure it properly meets

their needs. While this research is incredibly helpful for understanding general motivations, it

does not help us to understand the usage motivations of college students, who make up a large

portion of the social media users.

Thus, this suggests that there is a significant hole in the research that needs to be filled. This

study intends to identify kind of media is posted on each platform, what the driving forces are

when deciding what to post, what features do they like the best, and how often people visit each

platform. It also looks to uncover the impact of “likes” on a person and whether they can tell

which platform will allow for more views on their post.

V. Research Objectives: Hypotheses

Through our secondary research, we began to think of research questions to guide our

research, and hypotheses that we could use to better understand social media usership. Our

research had two main research objectives. The first, was to identify and understand content

sharing patterns across all social media platforms, particularly between the two largest ones,

which are Facebook and Instagram. From there, our second research objective was to understand

what factors motivate people to use social media, and what they use specific social media

platforms to accomplish.

From there, we developed two research questions:

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1. What motivates people to use different social media platforms?

2. How does content posted differ between Facebook and Instagram?

Based off these research questions, we developed nine hypotheses that we hoped to answer

through our qualitative and quantitative market research:

1. Is there a statistically significant preference that respondents have towards a social media
platform?
a. Ho: The frequencies of users for their most preferred social media platform does
form a uniform distribution
b. Ha: The frequencies of users for their most preferred social media platform does
not form a uniform distribution
2. Is one gender more likely to have multiple Instagram accounts?
a. Ho: Gender is not related to respondent’s likelihood of having more than one
Instagram account
b. Females will likely have more than one Instagram account compared to males
3. Does a respondent’s year in college impact the amount of time they spend on social
media?
a. Ho: Year in college is independent of time spent on social media per day
b. Ha: Year in college is not independent of time spent on social media per day
4. Is one gender more likely to use Instagram?
a. Ho: μ (female) = μ (male)
b. Ha: μ (female) > μ (male)
5. Does being in a relationship affect the amount of Instagram accounts a user has?
a. Ho: μ (single) = μ (in a relationship)
b. Ha: μ (single) > μ (in a relationship)
6. Does being in a relationship affect the amount of time spent on social media per day?
a. Ho: μ (single) = μ (in a relationship)
b. Ha: μ (single) > μ (in a relationship)
7. Does political affiliation affect how much time a respondent spends on social media?
a. Ho: μ (Democrat) = μ (Republican)
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b. Ha: μ (Democrat) > μ (Republican)

8. Does a respondent’s year in school affect the importance they place on receiving likes on
Instagram?
a. Ho: There is no relationship between year in school and the importance a
respondent places on the number of likes they receive on Instagram
b. Ha: There is a direct relationship between the importance a respondent places on
the number of likes they receive on Instagram and the respondent’s year in school
9. Does a respondent’s level of reservedness affect their likelihood to be influenced by
Facebook advertisements?
a. Ho: There is no relationship between a respondent’s level of reservedness and
their likelihood to be influenced by Facebook advertisements
b. Ha: There is an inverse relationship between a respondent’s level of reservedness
and their likelihood to be influenced by Facebook advertisements
10. Will the number of hours a respondent spends on social media per day affect how
important receiving likes on Instagram are to them?
a. Ho: There is no relationship between number of hours a respondent spends on
social media and the importance they place on receiving likes on Instagram
b. Ha: There is a direct relationship between the number of hours a respondent
spends on social media per day and how important the number of likes they
receive on Instagram is
VI. Methodology

For our survey, we targeted college students of all genders to better understand how

young adults approach different social media platforms. All four of us use both social media

platforms so we had background information of the various features the platforms offered and we

used our previous knowledge to formulate the questions we asked during the laddering stage.

Qualitative data was retrieved from 16 one-on-one interviews and quantitative data was retrieved

from 122 Qualtrics surveys - all participants were Santa Clara University students. When we all
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combined our datas from the mind maps into one Integrated Associative Knowledge Network

(figure 1), we noticed that some of the recurring themes between the social media platforms were

self-esteem, need of likes, sense of self-esteem, and privacy. We tried to interview people from

different groups to avoid getting similar feedback, however, it was surprising to see that multiple

interviewees thought that Facebook was outdated, however, still used it to feel a sense of

belonging. We also noticed that Instagram is commonly viewed as a app that is used for taking a

break, something that we had expected when drafting out topic proposal. With each pilot survey,

we added more personality and demographic based questions to relate back to our hypotheses.

Based on our findings for the IAKN, we developed a 13 page survey with 54 questions

on Qualtrics. Our total number of respondents was 122. The questions were in different formats

such as sliders, multiple choice, open-ended, and matrixes. Given that we included many open

ended questions, the survey took approximately ten minutes to fill out entirely (with the

assumption that the respondent has used Instagram and Facebook). Also, we got a variety of

responses due to the open-ended structure which provided interesting intel for our implications.

Overall, respondents mentioned that they thought it was a long survey, but it was an interesting

topic and they all felt that they learned something about their use of social media.

VII. Results

After collecting our survey responses, we analyzed the data on SPSS to understand if our

hypotheses were true.

Chi-Square tests:

By analyzing frequencies, we found that users most preferred social media platforms

were Instagram (the leading majority with 52%), followed by Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook,
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Other, and LinkedIn (Appendix C). We were surprised that only 9% of users said that Facebook

was their preferred social media platform, and expected Instagram and Facebook to share most

of the distribution since they are the two largest social media platforms in the world. However,

after performing a goodness of fit chi-square test, we found that there was a uniform distribution

(Appendix D). Therefore, there is no statistically significant preference in social media platform.

We also wanted to test if year in school affected how much time on spends on social media, and

we found that with p=0.265, there was no relationship between year in school and time spent on

social media per day. We lastly wanted to analyze if females would have more than one

Instagram account than men, and we found this true with p = 0.023. Of the 43% of females who

reported having another account, 10 stated that they use it for a “finsta,” or private

fake-Instagram account where they add their best friends to share posts about intimate details in

their lives (Appendix E).

T-Tests:

After finding that females are more likely to have more than one Instagram account than

men, we tested if females would use Instagram in general more than men. We found that this was

false, with p = 0.00, where men used Instagram more (Appendix F). This is an interesting finding

considering that Instagram is reputed to have lots of female models in makeup and fashion, so

Instagram having a larger male audience shows that stigma may be untrue. We also analyzed if

respondents who identified as Democrats spent more time on social media, considering Santa

Clara University is a more liberal and politically active university. We found however, that with

a p=0.43, there is no significant difference between these two political groups (Appendix G). We

lastly analyzed if people who are single are more likely to have more than one Instagram
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account, since they may want to share about their lives in “finstas.” However, with p=0.97, there

is no relationship between relationship status and the amount of accounts a user has (Appendix

H). To further analyze this theory, we also tested if being in a relationship would reduce the

amount of time a user spends on social media. However, this was statistically insignificant

(Appendix I).

Correlations:

To see the importance likes on Instagram plays on respondents, we analyzed if there is a

relationship between that and a respondent’s year in school. Though the r-value was negative,

this was not statistically significant, meaning that importance in receiving likes on Instagram is

not related to a respondent’s class year (Appendix J). To further analyze this, we also tested if

the amount of time spent on social media was related to the importance one placed on the

amount of likes they received on Instagram. However, though r was positive, this was

statistically insignificant (Appendix K). Lastly, we analyzed if a respondent’s level of

reservedness was related to their likelihood to be influenced by Facebook advertisements, and we

found thought there is a negative r value, this was also statistically insignificant (Appendix L).

When this same test was ran but according to the user’s likelihood to be influenced by Instagram

ads, though statistically insignificant, the r-value was positive (Appendix L). This is interesting

to observe, since ads could be less influential on reserved people on Facebook, but less

influential on open people on Instagram. More tests can be done to observe this discrepancy in

future studies.

VIII. Implications, Recommendations, and Conclusions

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There are several relevant audiences who could benefit from viewing our survey results.

These results could be most useful for those that work at Facebook and Instagram for a large

portion of the survey questions were directly related to those two social media platforms and

their respective demographics and benefits. Other social media platforms could also benefit from

viewing our survey as they could draw from what respondents deemed as strengths or

weaknesses of competitors in the social media world. Marketing/advertising teams that provide

sponsored content on social media platforms could also use the information provided from this

survey to better focus advertisements. Understanding demographics of respective social media

platforms, specifically age and gender, can help companies maximize the effectiveness of their

ads by developing a more specific target audience.

From the survey results, there are a few main takeaways that could be used to improve

both Facebook and Instagram. Facebook seems to have an advantage in terms of the overall

connectivity and comfortability when sharing more personal events, which are two of

Facebook’s bigger goals. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, social needs, including

affection, friendship, and belonging, are a more basic and wide need than ego needs which

include prestige, status, and self-esteem. Facebook aims to and succeeds in satisfying those

social needs in a global and seemingly boundless scale. Facebook should focus on their existing

strengths, continuing to emphasize personal connections. Facebook already has several functions

and notification systems to promote conversation amongst users such as birthday notifications

and “friendaversaries” however exploring more features in this area would further enhance the

Facebook experience. For example, if two friends used to share a lot of content and
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communication has dwindled, Facebook could send each user a notification with old photos

trying to inspire old friends to reconnect.

Instagram seems to fill ego needs better than Facebook. This being said, Instagram

should use that to their advantage. By understanding that the general demographic for Instagram

is younger and focussed more on “likes”, Instagram should promote photo sharing and

maximizing likes and other components of Instagram that feed a user’s status or prestige.

Another improvement instagram could make from the information presented in the survey can be

found in understanding the annual income of the respondents who elected to provide such

information. On Instagram, there are a lot of sponsored content pages that advertise clothing or

make-up or equipment of sorts and by understanding the annual income levels the ads can be

more appropriately directed.

IX. Limitations

Although we tried to account for everything, our results do come with some limitations,

regarding mostly the survey. Level of nonresponse bias and survey fatigue may have played a

role in our surveys. Our survey is ten minutes long and has a good number of open-ended

questions, which could have led users to leave questions unanswered. Having too many

open-ended questions may have limited us from achieving complete responses and from getting

a full picture of social media usage among college students. We also didn’t ask many questions

regarding personal feelings towards the usage of each platform. It would have been helpful to

know if users feel particularly self-conscious while using a particular platform. We hoped to

uncover this through the personality section of our survey, but it would have been a clearer

correlation had we asked more specific questions. Overall, we do recognize that there were a few
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limitations in our study, but we do not believe that these drastically affect the outcome of our

findings.

Appendices

Appendix A: “Interpretation and Possible Marketing Implications of IAKN”

Putting together the IAKN was very interesting because we were able to look at what the

common themes were when asking a interviewee to reflect on their social media usage. As

mentioned in the methodology section, reoccuring themes between the two social media

platforms were likes, self-esteem, and privacy. As a group, we concluded that the amount of

likes one gets on a particular post may impact their self-esteem. This brought us to the realization

that social media as a whole has a great impact on an individual’s self-esteem which may cause

them to put more thought into the process of deciding what content to post and where. What took

us by surprise is that our IAKN suggested that users thought Instagram was very toxic/fake,

however, 82.7% of our survey respondents stated that they prefer Instagram over Facebook to

use for their personal life.

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Appendix B : Summary Figure: Integrated Associative Knowledge Network

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Appendix C:

Appendix D:

Appendix E:
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Appendix F:

Appendix G:
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Appendix H:

Appendix I:

Appendix J:
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Appendix K:
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Appendix L:
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Bibliography

Allton, Mike. “Social Media Active Users by Network.” ​The Social Media Hat.​ November 5,

2018.​ ​https://www.thesocialmediahat.com/active-users

Katz E., Blumler J. G., Gurevitch M. (1973). Uses and gratifications research. The Public

Opinion Quarterly, 37, 509–523.

Papacharissi Z. (2008). Uses and gratifications. In Salwen M., Stacks D. (Eds.), Uses and

gratifications: An integrated approach to communication theory and research (pp.

137–152). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Perrin A. (2015). Social media usage: 2005-2015. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science &

Tech.

Rosengren K. E. (1974). Uses and gratifications: A paradigm outlined. In Blumler J. G., Katz E.

(Eds.), The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives on gratifications research

(pp. 269–286). Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.