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Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 755762

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Computers in Human Behavior

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Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how active Twitter use gratifies
a need to connect with others
Gina Masullo Chen
Syracuse University, 215 University Place, Syracuse, NY 13244-2100, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 10 November 2010
Keywords:
Twitter, Connection
Uses and gratifications
Social media

a b s t r a c t
Twitter is an Internet social-network and micro-blogging platform with both mass and interpersonal
communication features for sharing 140-character messages, called tweets, with other people, called followers. Hierarchical OLS regression of survey results from 317 Twitter users found that the more months
a person is active on Twitter and the more hours per week the person spends on Twitter, the more the
person gratifies a need for an informal sense of camaraderie, called connection, with other users. Controlling for demographic variables does not diminish this positive relationship. Additionally, frequency of
tweeting and number of @replies, public messages between Twitter users, mediate the relationship
between active Twitter use and gratifying a need for connection. Results are discussed in light of uses
and gratifications theory.
! 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
When the social-networking site Twitter started in 2006 (Farhi,
2009), its first users answered the question on Twitters online
interface: What are you doing right now? These responses became
known as updates and later tweets, 140-character messages that
people who opted to follow the user could read online or on their
cell phone or mobile device. As Twitter use grew, some media bloggers argued Twitter was simply a haven for narcissistic bloviating
about inane facts such as what one had for lunch (Ariens, 2009,
February 28; Popkin, 2007, May 8; Sarno, 2009, March 11). Others
argued Twitter was becoming a way to form connections in real
time with thousands of people who shared your interests (Sarno,
2009, March 11) or a way to get to know strangers through the details of their lives (Thompson, 2008, September 5). Researchers began studying Twitter and found that people were using it to give
and receive advice, gather and share information, and meet people
(Johnson & Yang, 2009). People tweeted about a range of topics,
including events of daily life, and linked to news stories (Java, Finin, Song, & Tseng, 2007). In time, Twitter evolved from an online
application where users answered a simple question to a new
economy of info-sharing and connectivity between people (Sarno,
2009, March 11). Research has found that this sharing of everyday
experiences and chitchat online help people establish common
ground and can bring people together through social media (Donath & boyd, 2004; Rheingold, 2000), but this idea has not been
tested on Twitter.
Tel.: +1 315 882 6026.

E-mail address: gmmasull@syr.edu

0747-5632/$ - see front matter ! 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.10.023

This studys main contribution to social-science research is to

examine whether Twitter is just the chaotic noise that some say
or has the potential to gratify the basic human need to connect
with other people. This research asks: Does active use of Twitter
gratify a need to feel connected to other people on Twitter? For this
study, connection is defined as a type of informal camaraderie explained by Granovetters (1973) concept of weak ties between individuals or the distant connections that Littau (2009) found online.
A need is defined as an immediate outcome of internal and external occurrences (Murray, 1953, p. 60) that moves from disequilibrium toward equilibrium. In other words, if people have a need to
connect with other people, they will seek to gratify it. This study
contends that selecting a medium, such as Twitter, and using it actively is one way people can gratify a need to connect with other
people.
This study offers an exploratory look at Twitter, a medium
researchers have had little time to study because it is so new, compared to traditional forms of media, such as newspapers, television,
and film. Even among social networks, Twitter has received less
study so far than larger and older applications, such as Facebook.
Communication researchers have examined interactive media
since the late 1990s, but their review has focused on how the audience uses these media (Singer, 1998), not whether people gratify a
need to connect with each others users through the medium, as
this current study suggests. Twitter is one of the fastest-growing
social-networking sites, with unique visitors1 growing from 1
million in June 2008 to 21 million a year later (Nielsen Wire, 2009,
1
Unique visitors are people counted only once when they visit a web site,
regardless of how many times they visit the site.

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G.M. Chen / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 755762

July 27). Twitters membership has grown from 6 million in 2008 to

triple that a year later (US Twitter Usage, 2009). In a marketing
study, Zarella (2009) found that 90% of the 5.4 million Twitter users
he studied had tweeted at least 11 times and had at least 11 followers. With so many people using Twitter, understanding whether people can gratify a need to connect with other people through Twitter
is a meaningful addition to the body of knowledge about how people
interact online.
A uses and gratifications (U&G) approach is beneficial to exploring these questions because its principle elements include peoples
psychological and social needs as well as how media can gratify
needs and motives to communicate (Rubin, 2009b). U&G holds that
multiple media compete for users attention, and audience members select the medium that meets their needs, such as a desire
for information, emotional connection, and status (Tan, 1985). It
follows that people who are most active on Twitter would do so
because they get something out of that experience. This theory
was used since the 1940s and briefly fell out of favor but has experienced a resurgence in the study of the Internet and new media
(Rubin, 2009a). People today must be even choosier than in the
past to select a medium that meets their needs because they have
more media choices (Ruggiero, 2000).
U&G has been successfully used in recent research on the web
(Ko, 2000; Ko, Cho, & Roberts, 2005; LaRose & Eastin, 2004; LaRose,
Mastro, & Eastin, 2001). It has also been used to study blogging
(Chung & Kim, 2008; Hollenbaugh, 2010; Kaye, 2005); online
games (Wu, Wang, & Tsai, 2010); and social-networking sites such
as Twitter (Johnson & Yang, 2009), Facebook (Bumgarner, 2007;
Joinson, 2008), and MySpace (Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008). This
theory is particularly suitable for studying Twitter, which offers the
potential for both mass and interpersonal communication (Johnson
& Yang, 2009), because U&G asks what people do with media, not
what media do to people (Swanson, 1979). It assumes that media
have little or no impact on those who do not use it, but that people
select a particular medium because it is meaningful (Johnstone,
1974) and gratifies one or more needs (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch,
1974; Rubin, 2009a).
1.1. How U&G and connection relate
The purpose of this current study is to apply the principles of
U&G to Twitter to see how people who seek out this medium
and use it actively gratify a need to connect with other people on
Twitter through the medium. For this study, I examine how use
of Twitter relates to satisfaction of needs of individuals, relying
on Weibulls (1985) structural model of media use as utilized by
Wu et al. (2010). Weibull argued that individual needs lead people
to use media to satisfy those needs, which in turn leads them to
use that medium again because using it was gratifying. Media
use that becomes habitual reinforces this relationship because people return to a medium they find gratifies their needs (Weibull,
1985). Cutler and Danowski (1980) conceptualized two main categories of media gratifications, content gratifications where people
derive value from the information in the media message, and process gratifications, where people gain from the experience of using
media. For this study, I am focusing on Twitter serving as a process
gratification. I argue Twitter allows people to gratify their intrinsic
need to form relationships with other people through the habitual
process of using Twitter by sending tweets and direct messages,
retweeting, following people, and gaining followers. Gratification
of the need to connect with others through the process of using
Twitter is a para-social gratification, where people form ritualized
social relationships (Wenner, 1985, p. 175) through media use. It
is important to note that Wenner defined para-social gratifications
as relationships with media actors, such as television newscasters
or newspaper columnists, because he was writing about traditional

media. In a social media environment such as Twitter, I argue people form social relationships with media actors who are other people on the social network. Taken together, Weibulls (1985) model
of uses and gratification, along with Wenners (1985) understanding of ritualized social relationships, and Cutler and Danowskis
(1980) idea that media gratify process needs form a framework
to relate U&G to this studys premise that habitual Twitter use
can gratify peoples need to connect with other people on Twitter.
1.2. Social networks
Before expanding on the theoretical foundation of this study, it
makes sense to understand the history and meaning of social networks on the Internet. Before the Internet was called the world
wide web in the early 1990s, people formed personal connections
with each other through computer-conferencing systems, such as
the WELL, short for Whole Earth Lectronic Link (Rheingold,
2000). WELL members conversed via computer, shared alliances,
formed bonds, and, in some cases, met in real life. As computer
interactivity became more sophisticated, more robust and easier
to use social networks developed. Social networks are defined as
online environments where people create profiles about themselves and make links to other people on the site, creating a web
of personal connections (boyd & Ellison, 2007; Donath & boyd,
2004). As such, Twitter fits this definition of an online social-networking site.
The first recognizable social network, SixDegrees.com, launched
in 1997, and a rash of sites followed, including Ryze, MySpace, and
then Facebook in 2004 (boyd & Ellison, 2007) and finally Twitter
2 years later. Twitter is seeing more growth than either MySpace
or Facebook, according to figures from Alexa.com, the web-traffic
ranking site2. Those figures show that for June 28, 2010, 6.45% of
global Internet users visited Twitter, 2.52% visited MySpace,
and 33.56% visited Facebook. Twitters percentage of global Internet
visitors for that day was an increase of 25.79% since April 2010,
compared with an increase of 10.04% for Facebook, and a drop of
16.7% for MySpace. While social networks tend to flourish and then
flounder, at least at the moment, Twitter seems to have strong
appeal.
2. Theory
2.1. Connection
Both Murray (1953) and Maslow (1987) defined needs as forces
that push people in a certain direction to gratify those needs. They
both identified a need to affiliate (Murray, 1953) or feel a sense of
belonging (Maslow, 1987) that relate directly to this studys concept of the need to connect with other people on Twitter. The need
for connection with other people examined in this study relates to
the broader idea of face-to-face sense of community (SOC), defined
as a feeling that members have of belonging and being important
to each other (Chavis, Hogge, McMillan, & Wandersman, 1986, p.
11). But it lacks the strength of this community model posited by
McMillan and Chavis (1986). That model offers four dimensions:
Membership in a group, which offers a feeling of emotion safety;
reciprocal influence among members; fulfillment of needs met
through cooperative behavior; and emotional support stemming
from struggles and success of community living (Chiquer & Pretty,
1999). That model was based on offline relationships between people in neighborhoods and included the idea of acceptance, offering
a setting where we can be ourselves and see ourselves mirrored in
the eyes and responses of others (McMillan, 1996, p. 1, 2). The
2

Rankings tracked at www.Alexa.com on June 29, 2010.

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G.M. Chen / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 755762

gratification of the need for connection in the current study utilizes

some of the ideas of SOC, such as the sense of belonging and feeling
of membership based on reciprocal relations. Yet, as an online social media, Twitter cannot offer the strength of offline feeling of
community. The Internet offers an alternative setting with a different set of expectations than face-to-face communication (Bargh &
McKenna, 2004). Even Blanchards (2007) sense of virtual community (SOVC) measures too strong a need for community than could
be expected to be gratified in computer-mediated communication
(CMC). SOVC relies on formal group membership in virtual communities, such as listservs and newsgroups of people who shared
a common interest like love of dogs or skiing.
Instead, the gratification of the need for connection examined in
this study relies on less formal relationships between people, capitalizing on the webs potential for interaction that is absent in
more static communication forms (Rogers, 1997), such as a print
newsletter or newspaper. This process can result in connections
between individuals whom never would have met in the face-toface (FtF) world (boyd & Ellison, 2007). The gratification of the
need for connection being measured in this study is similar to
the we-ness (p. 148) that Cooks, Paredes, and Scharrer (2002)
used to explain the closeness that women found on Oprah Winfreys online community O Place. Granovetters (1973) concept
of weak ties is useful to explain the gratification of the need for
connection. He defines the strength of a tie between people as a
combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the
mutual confiding, and the reciprocation between people, and he
notes these ties incorporate a feeling of belonging. The weak ties
concept applies to this current study because I predict that the
more time people spend on Twitter, the greater their potential to
gratify a need to connect to other people on the social-networking
site. Homans (1950) words from long ago still ring true: The more
frequently persons interact with one another, the stronger their
sentiments of friendship for one another are apt to be (p. 133).
2.2. Uses and gratifications (U&G)
CMC, including social-networking sites, such as Twitter, offer
potential for gratifying this need for connection with others. Johnson and Yang (2009) found that social motives were important to
Twitter users. Hampton and Wellman (2003) found that Internet
access and online discussion groups bolster contact among community members, although through weaker connections than in
the FtF world. Zhao (2006) found that people who use the Internet
frequently have many more social ties than light users. Steinfeld,
DiMicco, Ellison, and Lampe (2009) studied Beehive, an internal
company social network at IBM, and found the employees most active on the site had stronger connections with others on the online
network. Similarly, Steinfeld, Ellison, and Lampe (2008) found that
the more intensely people used Facebook, the greater their perceived connections with strangers. U&G helps explain this phenomenon because, as Ruggiero (2000) notes, the web offers the
potential for interactivity, which he defines as connection with
others that is less apparent in more traditional media, such as
newspapers or television.
U&G proposes that communication behavior is goal-directed
and purposeful in that people choose based on their needs, wants,
or expectations (Rubin, 2009a) to participate or select media messages, using social and psychological factors as a guide or filter (Rubin, 2009b). An active audience is at the core of this approach,
although it is assumed that audience members may vary in their
level of activity in a continuum from active to passive where people may make rational decisions to reject or accept particular media (Rubin, 1993). Some media may invite a less active audience
(Blumler, 1979). According to U&G, a medium or message is a
source of influence with the context of other possible influences

757

(Rubin, 2009b, p. 165). To understand media use through this perspective, we must focus on needs gratified through media use. In
this sense, U&G is a psychological communication perspective because rather than attend to the direct impact of media use (Rubin,
2009b), it focuses on what purposes or functions the media serve
for a body of active receivers (Fisher, 1978, p. 1590). Katz et al.
(1974) posit that U&G explains how people use media to gratify
needs, understand motives for media use, and identify consequences that follow from these needs. As a theoretical framework,
U&G focuses on social and psychological needs, which generate
expectations that lead to different patterns of media use to gratify
these needs (Katz et al., 1974). It is important to note that Internet
communication has in some ways nullified the traditional senderreceiver model, which makes using U&G even more relevant to online media (Ko, 2000). People online can choose what media they
want to use (Singer, 1998) with a simple click of the mouse. They
can both send and receive messages simultaneously through media
such as Twitter. Therefore, active user may be a better term than
active audience when applied to Twitter, although the theoretical
underpinning remains the same.
2.3. How U&G explains gratification of the need to connect
U&G explains how the active audience (or user) would seek out
a computer-mediated medium to gratify a psychological need.
U&G suggests that people can select from many media, so if they
pick Twitter and stick with it, Twitter must be meeting needs in
some way. This study focuses on the gratification of one specific
need, a need to connect with others. Following Weibulls (1985)
structural model of media use, this study highlights individuals
media needs, which are gratified through the choice an individual
makes to pick a medium, such as Twitter. A medium can facilitate
or restrict (Weibull, 1985, p. 134) the possibility a user will gratify
a need through the medium based in part on the amount of time
the individual chooses to spend with the medium.
As a result, I posit that those who spend the most time Twitter
would be most likely to gratify this need to connect with other
people compared with those who are less active. Gratification of
the need to connect with others on Twitter is a process gratification, where the individual receives gratification only or mainly
from being involved in the process of communication behavior,
rather than from message content (Cutler & Danowski, 1980, p.
270). In other words, it is by using Twitter and its functions that
people gratify their need to connect with others. Furthermore,
gratification of the need to connect with others on Twitter fosters
para-social gratification (Wenner, 1985), whereby active Twitters
users form relationships through the process of using the social
network. Bolstering the relationship between U&G and gratification of a need to connect with others is Wenners (1985) contention that media can be a basis for social contact. Therefore, U&G
supports the premise of this research that the people who gratify
a need to connect with other to the greatest extent on Twitter
are those who spend the most time actively using the medium. It
is not the act of using a particular Twitter function such as tweeting and retweeting that has the effect of gratifying a need to connect with other Twitter users. It is the fact that by taking these
actions users are having a form of computer-mediated conversation with other people, so using these functions mediates the relationship between being active on Twitter and gratification of the
need to connect to other Twitter users. Based on this theoretical
framework, this study hypothesizes:
H1. Active Twitter use will be the strongest predictor of a
gratification of a need to connect with other people on Twitter,
mediated by usage of Twitter tools while controlling for age,
gender, race, education, and income.

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3. Method
3.1. Survey design
A 21-question survey was designed using the free online SurveyGizmo program for use in this study. While online surveys have
been found to have some weaknesses (Kaplowitz, Hadlock, & Levine, 2004; Sheehan, 2001; Thompson, Surface, Martin, & Sanders,
2003), online surveys offer the advantage of reaching people who
regularly use the Internet, a population vital to this study. Additionally, U&G research has found that self-reports are an accurate
way for people to provide data about their media use and communication motives (Rubin, 2009b), so a questionnaire was judged the
best method for this research. Respondents accessed the questionnaire through an online link and first were asked to consent to participate in the study and assert that they are 18 years or older. Then
they answered questions about their use of Twitter, gratification of
their need to connect with others on Twitter, and demographic
variables. Operationalization of variables is explained in detail
below.
3.2. Sampling frame
Twitter lacks a public membership list or a central registry similar to a phone directory. These drawbacks make knowing the full
population impossible, so creating a random sampling frame from
the population is problematic (Andrews, Nonnecke, & Preece,
2003; Couper & Miller, 2008; Kehoe & Pitkow, 1996). In addition,
the number of total people who have Twitter accounts is estimated
at about 18 million (US Twitter Usage, 2009), which is too small a
subset of the total Internet-using population to make a methodology, such as a randomly sampled telephone survey, an adequate
way to amass a large enough sample of Twitter users. To deal with
these issues, a nonprobability sample was obtained using convenience snowball sampling, which is useful for locating members
of a small, scattered target group (Welch, 1975). While this sampling method does not offer generalizability of results, it provides
a way to reach a small group of Twitter users to understand this
burgeoning medium in an exploratory fashion.
3.3. Sampling techniques
To ensure validity of the sample, I aimed to reach as many Twitter users as possible. Links to the questionnaire were repeatedly
tweeted as well as posted on the researchers Facebook page and
media blog, Save the Media3, over the course of 7 days in November
2009. Twitters @reply and direct message functions were employed
to send the survey link to Twitter users who have a lot of followers
and tweet on a variety of subjects. Each person who received the link
was asked to pass it onto other Twitter users. In this way, an attempt
was made to create a varied sample.
3.4. Sample
A total of 437 people submitted on online questionnaire on SurveyGizmo. However, three responses were eliminated from analysis because the respondents indicated their age was younger than
18, which made them outside the scope of Institutional Review
Board approval for this project. The survey was designed so people
who indicated on a screening question that they did not have their
own Twitter account could not answer any other questions. This
lead to removal of 17 respondents who did not have their own
Twitter accounts. Responses from an additional 100 people were
3

Accessed at http://savethemedia.com.

eliminated because they did not answer most of the independent

variable questions, so including their answers would have had little affect in the analysis. This resulted in a total sample of 317 people. A response rate could not be calculated because a random
sample was not used.
On average, respondents were 34.41 years old (SD = 11.37), and
most were college educated (M = 17.54 years of school,
SD = 2.53 years) and female (60.9%). Family income was dichotomously coded into four categories. Low income was defined as
$60,000 or less (40.9%) and served as the reference category; middle was $60,001 to $90,000 (23.4%); high was $90,001 or more
(31.6%); and other encompassed those who did not answer the
question (4.1%). Race was dichotomously coded as white (80.7%)
and other because of a lack of racial variance in the sample.
3.5. Operational definitions
Because Twitter is a medium that allows people to both send
and receive messages simultaneously, the active audience construct intrinsic to a U&G approach was conceptualized as active
time on Twitter, the focal independent variables. As recommended
by Rubin (2009a) the active audience construct was measured in a
continuum from active to passive. Two operational definitions
were used. Survey respondents were asked how many months they
actively used Twitter (M = 10.13, SD = 7.19). Active use was defined
as tweeting, reading tweets, or using other Twitter functions, such
as retweets, @replies, and direct messages. The second way active
time on Twitter was measured was by asking respondents how
many minutes per day they use Twitter and how many days per
week they use Twitter to create a multiplicative index of minutes
per week, which was converted to hours per week on Twitter for
ease of interpretation. On average, respondents used Twitter
12 hours per week (SD = 18.19) Square root transformation was
used for both active months and hours per week on Twitter to adjust for positive skew, following the recommendations of Tabachnick and Fidell (2007).
Using a U&G framework, this studys dependent variable assesses gratification of one of the human needs identified by Maslow (1987) and Murray (1953), a need to form associations with
other people. As this study focuses on an online social-networking
site, this concept was narrowed to gratification of a need to connect with others on Twitter. It was operationalized through five
Likert-scale-style questions that assessed agreement on a 15 scale
with 5 being strongly agree and 1 being strongly disagree: I feel I
am connected to other users on Twitter, I feel like I fit in on Twitter, I have made connections to other people on Twitter, I feel
comfortable communicating with other people on Twitter, and I
feel like I belong in the Twitter community. These questions were
developed based on research of sense of community indices (Blanchard, 2007; Chavis & Pretty, 1999; Chiquer & Pretty, 1999; McMillan, 1996), but these concepts were revised to fit the weak-tie
connection predicted on Twitter. The five questions were summed
into an index that had high reliability (Cronbachs a = .93, M = 3.8,
SD = .89). This variable was reflected and square root transformation was used to adjust for negative skewness, and then the variable was reflected back to restore it to the original scale
(Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).
3.6. Mediating variables
Using the U&G approach, frequency of usage of Twitter functions was predicted to mediate the relationship between active
time on Twitter and gratification of the need to connect with others on Twitter. In other words, use of the Twitter functions themselves is important only to the extent that this usage bolsters the
active use of Twitter that leads people to gratify a need to connect

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G.M. Chen / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 755762

with others on Twitter. Three of these Twitter functions were operationalized by asking respondents to log onto their Twitter profile
pages and record the number of tweets, followers, and following.
Tweets (M = 1472, SD = 2662.116) were the number of up to 140character messages that survey respondents sent to their followers
since joining Twitter. Followers (M = 421.17, SD = 953.18) were defined as the number of people who opt to receive the tweets of a
survey participant. Following (M = 367.11, SD = 875.18) was defined as the number of people a survey respondent follows on
Twitter. The other three Twitter function variables were operationalized by asking responding to estimate how many times in an
average week they perform each of three functions on Twitter: Retweets, @replies, and direct messages. Retweeting (M = 12.98,
SD = 29.50) was defined as repeating another Twitter users message. Sending an @Reply (M = 14.89, SD = 33.61) was defined as
sending a message to another user that is visible to other users. Direct messages (M = 2.98, SD = 7.77) were defined as private messages on Twitter. Square root transformation was used for
followers and following to adjust for moderate skew, and logarithmic transformation was used for the more severely skewed @reply,
retweet, and tweets variables, following the recommendations of
Tabchnick and Fidell (2007). Direct Messages was so severely
skewed that it was dichotomized as sends direct messages
(63.1%) and does not send direct messages (36.9%).
3.7. Control variables
This study sought to isolate the effect of the relationship between the active time on Twitter and gratification of the need to
connect with others on Twitter, so it is beneficial to control for
demographic variables that have been found to be related to Internet use (Kraut et al., 2002; Zhao, 2006). Variables used as controls
were age, education, family income, gender and race.

759

support for the hypothesized contention that use of Twitter functions mediates the focal relationship between active Twitter use
and gratification of the need to connect with other on Twitter.
Results from hierarchical OLS regression confirm these findings.
Collectively, when all the variables were entered, they accounted
for 47.3% of the variance in the dependent variable, gratification
of the need to connect with others on Twitter (R2 = .47, F = 17.98,
p < .001), showing support for H1 (Table 2). In model one, both active months on Twitter (b = .40, p < .001) and hours per week on
Twitter (b = .35, p < .001) show significant positive relationships
with gratification of the need for connection, explaining 34.5% of
the variance (R2 = .35, F = 82.75, p < .001). When Twitter function
variables are added into the equation in model two, hours per
week on Twitter lost significance, and active months (b = .22,
p < .001) became a less important predictor of gratification of the
need for connection. Total tweets became the most important predictor of connection (b = .26, p < .01), followed by average @replies
per week (b = .17, p < .05). Collectively, active months, total tweets,
and @replies explain 46.4% of the variance in gratification of the
need for connection (R2 = .46, F = 33.33, p < .001). In the third model, demographic variables (age, education, family income, gender,
and race) were added, but active months (b = .23, p < .001), total
tweets (b = .25, p < .01), and @replies (b = .17, p < .05) remain the
only statistically significant predictors of gratification of the need
for connection, explaining 47.3% of the variance (R2 = .47,
F = 17.98, p < .001). An incremental F test (F = 5.6, p < .05) comparing the variance explained in model one with the variance explained in model three shows that adding the Twitter usage
variables significantly increases the amount of variance explained
in gratification of the need to connect. This suggests that active
months on Twitter, total tweets, and @replies predict whether people will gratify a need to connect with others on Twitter, and that
this relationship does not diminish once demographic control variables are added, showing partial support for H1.

4. Results
H1 predicted that people who seek out Twitter most actively
would gratify a need to connect with others on Twitter to a greater
extent than other users, mediated by use of Twitter functions,
while controlling for demographic variables. First bivariate relationships were assessed using Pearsons r correlation coefficients.
Results show a moderate positive relationship between active
Twitter use (active months, r = .48, p < .01; hours per week,
r = .44, p < .01) and gratification of the need to connect to others
on Twitter, offering support for the hypothesized focal relationship
(Table 1). Use of Twitter functions also positively correlates with
gratification of this need for connection, with frequency of tweeting showing the strongest relationship (r = .63, p < .01). This shows
Table 1
Pearsons r correlation, coefficients, N = 317.
Gratification of need to
connect to others on Twittera
Twitter functions
Tweets (log)
@Replies (log)
Retweets (log)
Followers (SR)
Following (SR)

.63**
.56**
.52**
.42**
.40**

Time spent on Twitter

Active months on Twitter (SR)
Hours per week on Twitter (log)

.48**
.44**

Responses coded 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neutral, 2 = disagree, 1 = strongly

disagree, log = logarithmically transformed variable, SR = square root transformed
variable.
**
p < .01.
a
Additive indices of Likert-scale questions.

5. Discussion
The U&G approach has been found to be a useful framework for
Internet research (Bumgarner, 2007; Chung & Kim, 2008; Hollenbaugh, 2010; Johnson & Yang, 2009; Joinson, 2008; Kaye, 2005; Ko,
2000; Ko et al., 2005; LaRose & Eastin, 2004; LaRose et al., 2001;
Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008; Wu et al., 2010). U&G has been used
more frequently in recent years to examine needs gratified through
use of online applications, such as social media.
The interpersonal aspect of a social media such as Twitter
makes the U&G approach particularly suitable because U&G focuses on peoples psychological and social needs, along with how
a particular medium can gratify needs and motives to communicate (Rubin, 2009b). It holds that multiple media compete for
users attention, and that active users select the medium that
meets their needs (Tan, 1985). The core of the U&G approach is that
it asks what people do with media, not what the media does to
people (Swanson, 1979). This aspect of U&G is particularly salient
for Twitter use because it explains how people first select this
medium and then use it to meet their psychological or social needs.
Furthermore, this study tested the U&G principle that users can
gratify their needs through the very process (Cutler & Danowski,
1980) of using a medium, regardless of content. This gratification
is a para-social gratification (Wenner, 1985) because it offers the
opportunity to foster relationships between users.
The main goal of this study was to examine how active users of
the social network Twitter gratify a need for connection with other
Twitter users. This connection is an informal camaraderie that derives from Maslows (1987) need to belong and Murrays (1953)
need to affiliate. This type of connection is explained by Granovet-

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G.M. Chen / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 755762

Table 2
Hierarchical OLS regression analysis of time on Twitter, Twitter usage, and demographic variables on the gratification of the need to connect on Twitter index, N = 317.
Variables

Model 1
b

Active months on Twitter (SR)

Hours per week on Twitter (SR)

0.111
(0.01)
0.40***
(0.05)

***

b
0.40
0.35

Total tweets (log)

Retweets (log)
@Replies (log)
Direct Messages

Followers (log)
People followed (log)
b

Model 2
b
0.06
(0.02)
0.10
(0.06)
0.09**
(0.03)
0.06
(0.04)
0.09*
(0.04)
0.03
(0.03)
!0.003
(0.003)
0.002
(0.003)

***

Gender
Racec
Age

Education
d

Income
Middle
High

Missing
Intercept
F value
R2
Adj. R2

***

!1.95
82.75***
0.35
0.34

***

!2.05
33.33***
0.46
0.45

Model 3
b

b
0.22
0.09
0.26
0.11
0.17
0.05
!0.13
0.10

0.06
(0.02)
0.12
(0.06)
0.09**
(0.03)
0.06
(0.04)
0.09*
(0.04)
0.03
(0.03)
!0.002
(0.003)
0.002
(0.003)
0.008
(0.03)
!0.02
(0.03)
!0.001
(0.001)
0.005
(0.005)

***

0.00
(0.03)
0.03
(0.03)
!0.09
(0.07)
!2.09***
17.98***
0.47
0.45

b
0.23
0.10
0.25
0.11
0.17
0.05
!0.11
0.09
0.01
!0.03
!0.04
0.04

0.00
0.04
!0.06

Notes Standard errors are shown in parentheses. OLS = ordinary least squares, log = logarithmically transformed variable, SR = square root transformed variable.
a
Sends direct messages = 1.
b
Female = 1.
c
White = 1.
d
The reference group is low income, up to $60,000.
*
p < .05.
**
p < .01.
***
p < .001.

ters (1973) concept of weak ties between individuals and is a

weaker version of the feeling of community researchers have found
in the offline world (Chavis et al., 1986; Chiquer & Pretty, 1999;
McMillan, 1996; McMillan & Chavis, 1986). First, this study sought
to examine how actively people use Twitter both over the course of
a series of months and on a daily basis to assess the active audience
concept intrinsic to a U&G approach. Secondly, the study aimed to
quantify how well people gratify a need to connect with others by
using this particular medium. Finally, my goal was to see how use
of particular Twitter functions, such as tweeting and retweeting,
mediate the relationship between active time on Twitter and gratifying a need to connect with other users.
A main finding is that spending a lot of time using Twitter over a
series of months is more responsible for gratifying peoples need to
connect with others on Twitter than the hours per day people
spend on Twitter or the specific acts of sending messages or
repeating others messages on Twitter. Yet, spending time on Twitter over the course of a week and actually using the medium
through tweeting and sending @replies are also important if people
want to gratify a need to connect with others through the social
medium. The mediation role of total tweets and @replies is particularly compelling because tweets are the conversation of Twitter,
and, as Honeycutt and Herring (2009) found, @replies signal the
start of that conversation.

5.1. Implications
These findings confirm earlier research that found that people
who are active on social networks, such as Facebook are more
likely to feel connected (Ellison, Steinfeld, & Lampe, 2007; Steinfeld
et al., 2008; Valenzuela, Park, & Kee, 2009.) This study found evidence of the we-ness that Cooks et al. (2002) used to describe
the connection women found on Oprah Winfreys online community O Place, the distant relations Littau (2009) found online,
and the connection that Hampton and Wellman (2003) found in
online discussion groups. Additionally, these findings offer supports for the idea that Twitter is not just virtual noise of people
talking at each other, as some critics contend, but that it is a medium that people actively seek out to gratify a need to connect with
others. This supports the idea that U&G is a suitable approach for
study of online social networks, and paves the way for more research of this kind. It also begins to answer Katz et al. (1974) early
call to link the gratification of specific human needs with particular
media use. Clearly, this study shows that people who actively seek
out Twitter are doing so out of a basic human need to connect with
others that they can then gratify by using this computer medium.
These findings reinforce that communication behavior is goaldirected and purposeful with the active user at the core, as U&G
proposes. They also emphasize that an active audience selecting

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G.M. Chen / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 755762

media is still viable even though todays media landscape offers so

many more options than it did in the past. These findings reinforce
the ideas offered in U&G because they support the idea that those
who use Twitter most frequently both over a series of months and
by actively tweeting and sending @replies must be getting something out of the experience or they would not stick with it long enough to gratify their need to connect with other users. This offers
support for the idea that the time people spend on Twitter fosters
computer-mediated relationships that enable people to gratify
their need to connect with others.
5.2. Limitations and future research
This study found that those who stick with Twitter are the ones
who end up gratifying a need to connect with other people on
Twitter, but it does not explain what type of person stays with
Twitter. Future research should focus on why some people continue using Twitter for months while others abandon it after a
few tries, and what is different about these two groups. Several
variables are worthy of consideration: Motivations for Twitter
use, frequency of use of other social media, and personality variables, such as level of extraversion. This may help shed light on
the 53% of variance left unexplained in gratification of the need
to connect with others on Twitter.
Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Midwinter Conference in Norman, Oklahoma, in March, 2010. The
author thanks Ki Arnould for assisting with that version.
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