University students’ motivations for watching social media advertisements: A study in the context of uses and gratifications theory

Abstract

Social media tools which are popular today among young people, especially university students, provide individuals opportunities to create their own profiles and share music, videos and photos related with their interests. These social networks sometimes surpass traditional socialization spheres such as family, school, peer groups and society, and they also cause traditional media means (TV, radio, newspaper, etc.) to lose their effects. These media tools play an important role on the individuals to create their own identities in the socialization process. The identities of this new platform, its connections and the contents produced generate a new generation. Digital networks provide for this new generation an easy and convenient platform to communicate with their family, friends and the others. In addition, they provide maximum pleasure and gratification for these individual users by fulfilling their needs constantly and immediately. In the past, people used to use various mass communication tools like television, radio and movies as well as face-to-face human interaction in order to fulfill these needs and desires. Most of the time, these gratifications could not realize because of the reasons such as inaccessibility, responding, programming and timing. Social networks have become to be preferred as the use of social networks are different from the traditional mass communication tools and the individuals play an active role on sending messages to others. In this respect, individuals, thanks to not only mediative social contact but also accessing other media contents optionally and eagerly, are satisfied immediately with the…. © Peter Lang GmbH.