Introduction to Social media

CCST 9076

Dr Shihui Feng CCST 9076

shihuife@hku.hk
Unit of Human Communication,
Development and Information Sciences
Faculty of Education
University of Hong Kong

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Course Objectives

1. Equip students with a solid understanding of fundamental concepts central to social

media addiction
2. Develop interdisciplinary thinking for synthesizing social theories and computing
techniques in addressing social and global problems
3. Facilitate students to gain the capacities of developing solutions to social problems
collectively
4. Cultivate awareness of ethical issues and social responsibilities in the development of
social media applications

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C-I course badging
https://cics.hku.hk/

An introduction video of CIC — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsQ9R_TGEFc 3

Course Outline
Lecture Schedule
Week 1 (Jan 17, 2024) Introduction to social media
Week 2 (Jan 24, 2024) Are you addicted to social media?
Week 3 (Jan 31, 2024) Psychological factors in social media addiction (I)
Week 4 (Feb 7, 2024) Psychological factors in social media addiction (II)
Week 5 (Feb 21, 2024) Technological factors in social media addiction (I)
Week 6 (Feb 28, 2024) Technological factors in social media addiction (II)
Week 7 (Reading week) 3-Day No Social Media Challenge (no in-class lecture)
Week 8 (March 13, 2024) What do tech companies think about social media addiction?
March 20 NO CLASS
Week 9 (March 27, 2024) The impacts of social media addiction on our lives
Week 10 (Apr 3, 2024) The impacts of social media addiction on our societies
Week 11 (Apr 10, 2024) How to develop healthy social media usage?
Week 12 (Apr 17, 2024) Group presentation— The future of social media: “Your” social media
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Course Assignments

Assessment type Weighting (%) Deadline

Reflective Report — “3 Day No 30 12 March (23:59)

Social Media Challenge ”

Debates 20 Tutorial 4, 6

Group Project 50 Group Report (30% progressive deadlines)

Group Presentation (10% Lecture 12, Apr 17)
Reflection & Peer Evaluation (10%, individual-
based, Apr 19)

Please refer to “CCST9076_AssessmentDetail_2023-24” on Moodle for details.

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Course Assignments

● Debates:
● Tutorial 4: Should users or social media platforms hold the accountability for social media
addiction?
● Tutorial 6: should there be regulations on the use of generative AI in social media content?
● Group Project:
○ Design ”Your” Future Social Media
○ Process and Progress!
○ Complete the required steps following the timeline (see the details in the
CCST9076_AssessmentDetail_2023-24)

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Lecture 1- Outline

● The evolution of social media

● Social media & social connections
○ Six-degree separation
● Definition & characteristics of social media
○ User-generated content (UGC)
○ Features of social media
● Social media use types
○ Five types of social media use
○ Theory of uses and gratifications (UGT)

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Session 1—Learning Outcomes

Identify Understand Analyze Evaluate

the characteristics of social the underlying features among various different types of social
media mechanisms driving social social media platforms media usage
media use

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the 'most liked image on Instagram' The most liked image of 2021 on Instagram

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Let’s do a quick survey in-class….

● At what age did you start using social media?

● What is the first social media app did you use?
● How many social media apps do you use every day?
● How much time do you spend on social media on average per day?
● What is your most frequently used social media app now?
● What activities do you do the most on social media?

Visit https://www.menti.com/alb2kb7g32vs or go to https://www.menti.com/ and

enter the code: 1628 8561

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Evolution of social media
Six Degrees (1997-2000)

• Founded by Andrew Weinreich

• The very first social network sites
• Features: profiles, friends lists and school
affiliations

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Evolution of social media
Friendster (2002)

• Launched by Jonathan Abrams and

Peter Chin
• Built on the premise of ”six degree
separation”
• Show how a user can be connected to
strangers

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Evolution of social media ~1.07B active users
~740M active users ~2B active users

1997 1999 2002 2003 2004 2005 2010 2012 2017

~2.89B active users ~192M active users ~1B active users

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Social Connections
● Six Degree Separation
● The Small World Problem
● “Starting with any two people in the world, what is the probability that they will
know each other?” (Milgram, 1967)
X- a-b-c…… -Z

● “Given any two people in the world, how many intermediate acquittance links
Stanley Milgram
are needed before they are connected"

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 Six Degree Separation

Random dispersement Each person’s first-hand

people in the small acquaintances
world

With group inbreeding, X’s

The network spreads,
acquaintances feedback into
with completed inter-
his own circle, normally
connections
eliminating new contacts

(Milgram, 1967)
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Six Degree Separation

• The average path length between two

random people is much smaller than
expected

• Geographic location tended to have an

impact on the average length whereas
other information

160 chains that started in the Nebraska study, 44 were completed and 126 dropped out
The chains varied from two to 10 intermediate acquaintances with the median at five
(Milgram, 1967) 17
“Six” Degree Separation
● In 2011, people are 3.74 “degrees of separation” on
Facebook (≈ 721 million active Facebook users and
their ≈ 69 billion friendship links) (Backstrom et al.,
2012)
● In 2016, 3.57 intermediaries or “degrees of
separation on Facebook (≈ 1.59 billion active
Facebook users) .
● In 2016, Within the US, people are connected to each
Estimated average degrees of separation between all
other by an average of 3.46 degrees. people on Facebook.
● The majority of the people on Facebook have Source: https://research.facebook.com/blog/2016/02/thre
averages between 2.9 and 4.2 degrees of separation e-and-a-half-degrees-of-separation/

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Social Media

“Social media is a group of Internet-based applications

that builds on the ideological and technological
foundations of Web 2.0, and that allows the creation
and exchange of user generated content.” (Kaplan &
Haenlein, 2010)

• Connect people
• Online sociality—Social activities that are enabled
by social media technologies
• User-generated content

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User-generated Content (UGC)
● “Media content created or produced by the general public rather than by paid professionals and
primarily distributed on the Internet”. (Daugherty et al, 2008)

● Unlike conventional media, UGC “comes from regular people who voluntarily contribute data,
information, or media that then appears before others in a useful or entertaining way, usually on
the Web—for example, restaurant ratings, wikis, and videos”. (Krumm et al., 2008)

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User-generated Content (UGC)

“Creators of UGC feel inherently gratified with a sense of self-

esteem because they have created content and become
members of an online community that shares the principles
they consider important. It validates and helps them feel good
about who they are and what they believe about the world.”
(Daugherty et al., 2008)

YouTube star Felix “Pewdiepie”

Kjellberg has 21.9M followers
on Instagram and over 110M
subscribers on YouTube.
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What are the differences among these social media platforms?
Which platform do you use the most frequently? And why?

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● Visit https://www.menti.com/alj1uancci25 or go
to https://www.menti.com/ and enter the code: 8145 4708

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Types of Social Media

Social media can be categorized into different types (Balakrishnan & Griffiths, 2017), e.g.:

1. Social networking (e.g., Facebook),

2. Professional networking (e.g., LinkedIn),
3. Video sharing (e.g., YouTube),
4. Knowledge-blogging (e.g., personal blogging), and
5. Micro-blogging (e.g., Twitter).

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Features of Social Media

One way to understand the common and distinctive features of social media apps is the
“four-features” definition of “social media networks”(Kane et al., 2014):
1. Digital profile: a profile of content supplied by the user, network members and the
system.
2. Network transparency: features that allow users to view and traverse their
connections and those made by others.
3. Relational ties: mechanisms to articulate a list of users whom they share a
connection.
4. Search and privacy: features for users to access content by searching and to control
who can access the content they contribute.

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Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT)

Why do individuals choose to use specific media and what gratifications do they derive from it?

This can be explained by the Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT).

● U&G is a mass media model that helps researchers understand different "user motivations of media
usage and access.” (Bakar et al., 2014)
● In particular, it helps us clarify the individual reasons as well as the psychological needs behind their
specific preferences. (Bakar et al., 2014)

U&G's flexibility "is particularly important as we enter an information age in which computer-mediated
communication permeates every aspect of our individual and social lives." (Ruggiero, 2000)

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Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT)
Five types of user needs (Katz et al., 1973; Tanta et al., 2014)
● Cognitive need
○ Information attainment, for understanding, exploring, curiosity
● Affective need
○ Aesthetic, emotional experience, pleasure
● Personal identity
○ Self-esteem, self-confidence, social status, integrity
● Integration and social interaction
○ Development/ maintenance of social connections
● Escapism
○ Relax, tension release
● What drives you to use social media?
● What keeps you on social media?

● Visithttps://www.menti.com/alc28n4qcjdo
● or go to https://www.menti.com/ and enter the code: 6173 3999

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“Media are not technologies, but techno-social systems. They have a technological level of
artefacts that enable and constrain a social level of human activities that create knowledge
that is produced, diffused and consumed with the help of the artefacts of the
technological level.” (Fuchs, 2014)

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The Evolving Social Media

Figure Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/www-evolution-web10-web20-web30-web40-prasenjit-singh 30

The Evolving Social Media

What do you think the future of social media is?

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Group Project — Design ”Your” social media

● What is ”new”?
● What is the purpose of the social media platform?
● Who are the targeted users?
● What are the core features and technical infrastructures?
● Are there any ethical concerns?
● Would it make users ”addicted”?
● …

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Tutorial Enrollment
1. Visit and log in HKU Portal
2. Click “My eLearning”
3. On the right side of your screen, find the “eLearning resources” column
4. Click “Tutorial Sign-up Management”
5. Locate our course “CCST9076_2A_2023”

1. Enroll in one of the tutorial group by the end of Friday (23:59)

2. If you have any questions, please email Liu Haohua, Eric (liuhh@hku.hk)
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Attendance

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References
Baccarella, C. V., Wagner, T. F., Kietzmann, J. H., & McCarthy, I. P. (2018). Social media? It's serious! Understanding the dark side of social media.
European Management Journal, 36(4), 431-438.
Bakar, M. S. A., Bolong, J., Bidin, R., & Mailin, B. (2014). Factors of gratification contributing in continuance intention to watch movies on YouTube.
Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 155, 9–13. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.10.248
Balakrishnan, J., & Griffiths, M. D. (2017). Social media addiction: What is the role of content in YouTube?. Journal of behavioral addictions, 6(3),
364-377.
Daugherty, T., Eastin, M. S., & Bright, L. (2008). Exploring consumer motivations for creating user-generated content. Journal of interactive
advertising, 8(2), 16-25.
Fuchs, C. (2021). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.
J. Krumm, N. Davies and C. Narayanaswami, "User-Generated Content," in IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 10-11, Oct.-Dec. 2008, doi:
10.1109/MPRV.2008.85.
Milgram, S. (1967). The small world problem. Psychology today, 2(1), 60-67.
Kaplan, A., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59-68.
Kane, G., Alavi, M., Labianca, G., & Borgatti, S. (2014). What’S Different About Social Media Networks? A Framework and Research Agenda. MIS
Quarterly, 38(1), 275-304.
Leonardi, P., Huysman, M., & Steinfield, C. (2013). Enterprise Social Media: Definition, History, and Prospects for the Study of Social Technologies
in Organizations. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 19(1), 1-19.
Rudman, R., & Bruwer, R. (2016). Defining Web 3.0: opportunities and challenges. The Electronic Library.
Ruggiero, T. E. (2000). Uses and gratifications theory in the 21st century. Mass communication & society, 3(1), 3-37.
Schlagwein, D., & Hu, M. (2017). How and why organisations use social media: five use types and their relation to absorptive capacity. Journal of
Information Technology, 32(2), 194-209.
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CCST 9076 Attention Magnet: The Psychological and
Technological Aspects of Social Media Addiction
Lecture 1

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