How social is Twitter use? Affiliative tendency and communication competence as predictors

An online survey (N = 461) investigated how individuals' interpersonal need and ability affect their motivations of Twitter use and how different motivations predict specific usage behavior. Based on the two competing views concerning the antecedents and consequences of online communication (social enhancement vs. social compensation), the joint effect of affiliative tendency and communication competence was hypothesized. For those high on affiliative tendency, communication competence positively predicted Twitter use for network expansion and negatively predicted more self-focused, intrapersonal Twitter use, but no such effect was found for less affiliative individuals. Those using Twitter for surveillance spent more time on Twitter and maintained a larger Twitter network, while those using Twitter for network expansion posted tweets and retweeted others' posts more frequently. As has been the case with every 'new' medium, communication researchers have examined who uses various forms of social media, for what specific purposes, and with what consequences Given that the primary function of social network services (SNSs) is to enable individuals to create personal profiles and social connections and share them with others within their network (boyd & Ellison, 2007), it seems only natural that the lion's share of research has been devoted to exploring how users' dispositional characteristics that are typically associated with social interaction, such as extraversion, shyness, loneliness, communication anxiety, and self-esteem, might affect social media use and yield different outcomes (e. Such scholarly attempts to understand how individuals' inter-personal orientations and psychological traits shape their SNS use have been grounded in one of the two competing perspectives concerning the relationship between online and offline communication , which well predate SNSs. On the one hand, the social enhancement model, or the rich-get-richer model, suggests that more socially active and competent individuals are more inclined to utilize SNSs to corroborate and expand their interpersonal network. Consistent with this view, studies have shown that extra-version positively predicts SNS use and SNS addictive tendencies (Correa et al., 2010; Wilson et al., 2010) and Facebook users tend to be more extraverted than nonusers (Ryan & Xenos, 2011). On the other hand, the social compensation model, also known as the poor-get-richer model, posits that those more socially inept and less satisfied with their current relationships are more strongly motivated to compensate for their deficiency by turning to online communication venues as a functional alternative to face-to-face interaction. In line with this reasoning, shyness was positively associated with the time spent …