Abstract
This article “strengthens the core” of uses and gratifications theory by offering reliance, credibility, and interactivity as measures of social media use. Although reliance is recognized as a predictor of media use, it has not been extensively studied in regard to social media. The findings indicate that reliance is the strongest predictor of motivations for using social network sites (SNS) and blogs but is a weak predictor of Twitter use. Although results are mixed on whether credibility influences media use, credibility is a significant and positive predictor of blog and SNS use. Importantly, this study introduces interactivity as a predictor of social media use. Interactivity is a strong and significant influence on SNS and Twitter but only weakly affects blog use. Results from an online survey support reliance as a measure of media use and suggests that credibility and interactivity are also effective measures that should be included in future studies.
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