Journal of Public Affairs (2012)Published online in Wiley Online Library(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1414

■ Special Issue Article

The use of social media: an exploratorystudy of usage among digital natives

David L. Williams1, Victoria L. Crittenden2*, Teeda Keo2 andPaulette McCarty3

1Coles College of Business, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia, USA2Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA3College of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

*CorrBostoE-ma

Cop

Word-of-mouth has long been an important concept in marketing communications. In today’s world of Web 2.0,electronic word-of-mouth has materialized as a phenomenon of critical interest to marketers. Within the contextof electronic word-of-mouth has emerged consumer-generated content in which consumers can quickly and easilycreate and distribute messages via the worldwide web. Given that today’s college students are considered digitalnatives and comprise the Generation C market segment, one might suspect that this group would be active in creat-ing and disseminating product/service content within their social groups. This research reports on an exploratorystudy that examined college student behaviors in the vast world of social media. On the basis of a content analysisof self-report behaviors, these digital natives are content with current technology and capabilities for their generalrole as spectators. They appear content with what they know and what they are doing. The research raises identityquestions as to who the active innovators in marketing’s social media ecosystem might be. Copyright © 2012 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

The 21st century is experiencing a communicationexplosion, sparked by social media. This socialmedia revolution has resulted in vast changes inthe way consumers receive and use marketingcommunications. In particular, consumer-generatedcontent has emerged as a phenomenon of interestamong both scholars and practitioners of market-ing. According to Blackshaw and Nazzaro (2004: 2),consumer-generated media ‘describes a variety ofnew sources of online information that are created,initiated, circulated and used by consumers intenton educating each other about products, brands, ser-vices, personalities, and issues’. In conjunction withthis social media revolution has emerged Consumer2.0—‘a consumer who has grown up with brandnew perspectives and redefined the interplay of

espondence to: V. L. Crittenden, Carroll School ofManagement,n College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA.il: victoria.crittenden@bc.edu

yright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

communications, relationships, brands, technologyand media’ (Mr Youth and RepNation Media, 2008).In this paper, we examine this new breed of consu-

mers, whom we refer to as ‘Digital Natives’, withinthe context of their actions in the extensive world ofsocial media. These digital natives, today’s collegestudents, are described as technologically savvy andthe most visually sophisticated of any generation(Stamats, Inc, 2008). Specifically,we asked college stu-dents to identify social media platforms, providers,and behaviors, as well as explored in-depth the notionof consumer-generated content. To this end, the nextsection describes these digital natives in terms ofage, spending power, and behavioral characteristics.Then we delve into Web 2.0 and its role with respectto word-of-mouth communications and consumer-generated content. After describing the underlyingframework of consumer and technology, the method-ology utilized in this exploratory research is outlined.The results of a content analysis of the data are thenpresented, and conclusions about the research find-ing and limitations are imparted along with someimplications for public policy as related to thebroader academic community.

D. L. Williams et al.

DIGITAL NATIVES

The millennial generation is generally defined asthose born between 1981 and 2000 (Steadman,2008), and there are approximately 51 million millen-nial consumers in the USA with spending powerexpected to be $1.2 trillion by 2015 (Packaged Facts,2010). The millennial generation is reported to bemore technologically advanced than their predeces-sors (Blain, 2008). Although previous generationsnow recognize and appreciate the impact techno-logical advancements have had on the workplaceand their lives in general, millennials have alwaysknown and been immersed in technology. In sum,technology has always been a part of the millenniallife and greatly affects how this generation lives andworks (Wesner and Miller, 2008).

Within the generally acceptedmillennial age cohorthas now emerged ‘Generation C’. Born after 1990,these Generation C consumers are truly digitalnatives. They are just now beginning to attend uni-versity and entering the workforce (Booz & Com-pany, 2010). The key attributes of Generation Cconsumers are (Dye, 2007) as follows:

• They love content creation and mashing (mashingor mash-up is the combining of content materialfrom multiple sources to create new content);

• They have the tendency to form active communi-ties rather than remain passive, and as such, theygravitate toward social media sites where theycan participate in discussions about differentideas and get involved in cultural conversations;

• They have a desire to be in control of their ownlives;

• They are content with complexity; and• They have a desire to work in more creative indus-

tries and be less restricted by rigid social structures.

No matter the label attached to this group, onecharacteristic that they share in large numbers is thatthey were born into a digital world and, as such, arefrequently referred to as digital natives (Palfrey andGasser, 2008). Stamats, Inc. (2008), a higher educationmarketing firm, suggested that technology is as famil-iar as a knife and fork to this college-age market seg-ment. Additionally, it was reported that this group isthe most visually sophisticated of any generation, thegroup’s use of text messaging is up while their emailusage is down, and 69% have cell phones that areused largely to receive and deliver content, watchvideos, play games, and surf the internet (Stamats,Inc, 2008). Studies have shown that this digital gener-ation prefers to stay connected andmultitask throughthe use of technology (Rawlins et al., 2008).

WEB 2.0

The term Web 1.0 generally refers to the ‘oldweb’, where a majority of the users consumed

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

content in a unidirectional framework. There iscommon agreement in the Web industry that theterm Web 2.0 refers to platforms that are highlyinteractive and provide users with the ability tointegrate different media within their content cre-ation. Whereas Web 1.0 was characterized byone-way, passive communications, Web 2.0 istypified by a process in which people are simul-taneously the initiators and recipients of informa-tion. Harris (2009) suggested that there areliterally hundreds of different Web 2.0 platformsthat enable this engaging, interactive process(e.g., social networking, text messaging, sharedphotos, podcasts, streaming videos, wikis, blogs,discussion groups). Popular providers of thesecommunication platforms are as follows: Baidu.com, Blogger.com, Facebook, Flickr, Google,MySpace, QQ.com, Twitter, Wikipedia, WindowsLive, Yahoo!, and YouTube (Alexa, 2010).The platforms and providers enable the creation

of opportunities for influence that did not exist amere decade ago. For example, users spend over700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, withmore than 30 billion web links, news stories, blogposts, notes, photo albums, and other types ofonline content shared each month (Facebook Statis-tics, 2010). More than 24 hours of video areuploaded every minute on YouTube, and viewsnow exceed two billion per day (YouTube.com,2010). With billions of people creating trillionsof connections through social media each day(Hansen et al., 2011), Web 2.0 has created the elec-tronic version of word-of-mouth communications.

Electronic word-of-mouth

Word-of-mouth is as old a practice as are people con-versing with one another and has long been a keypart of the marketing mix for companies (Schumannet al., 2010). In a Web 2.0 world of marketing, word-of-mouth occurs on all interactive digital media sites(Gil-Or, 2010). Although it is estimated that over85% of the top 1000 marketing firms in the USA havesome form of electronic word-of-mouth strategy(Wasserman, 2006), the persuasive power behindword-of-mouth communication comes when thereference giver has no stake in the business he orshe is discussing. The receiver often gives more cre-dence to theseword-of-mouthmessages because theyare unlikely to be influenced by the business andbecause the discussant has no commercial self-inter-est (Cox et al., 2009).According to Garretson (2008, p. 12), ‘Consumers

increasingly use digital media not just to researchproducts and services but to engage the companiesthey buy from as well as other consumers whomay have valuable insights’. Accordingly, theseconsumer markets are not really about the messagesbut about conversations (Levine et al., 2001: 87):

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.

The use of social media

Conversations are the ‘products’ the new marketsare ‘marketing’ to one another constantly online. . .By comparison, corporate messaging is pathetic.It’s not funny. It’s not interesting. It doesn’t knowwho we are, or care. It only wants us to buy. Ifwe wanted more of that, we’d turn on the tube.But we don’t and we won’t. We’re too busy. We’retoo wrapped up in some fascinating conversation.Engagement in these open free-wheeling market-place exchanges isn’t optional. It’s a prerequisiteto having a future. Silence is fatal.

The consumers of media and marketing messagesare described as intelligent, organizing, and moretrusting of their own opinions and the opinions oftheir peers (Karpinski, 2005). Li and Bernoff (2008)go so far as to segment the 21st century interactivedigital consumers according to five different typesof social behaviors: Creators (e.g., publish, maintain,upload), Critics (e.g., comment, rate), Collectors (e.g.,save, share), Joiners (e.g., connect, unite), and Specta-tors (e.g., read). Over two decades ago, Feick andPrice (1987) referred to consumers who shared mar-keting information with their peers as ‘marketmavens’. Today’s market mavens, however, interactin the marketplace via the creation of consumer-generated content such as videos, music, blogs,and ads and then disseminate that content on newweb platforms (Chung and Darke, 2006). Thus,one would expect there to be multiple segments ofmarket mavens within the digital natives’ market-place—from those who create the content (Creators)to those who read the content (Spectators).

Consumer-generated content

According to Ertimur and Gilly (2010), con-sumer-generated content is a form of electronicword-of-mouth given that the resulting advertis-ing is created by consumers and not consideredcommercially motivated. Basically, a consumerhas an opinion about a product or service, andhe/she shares those views, beliefs, and experi-ences with other people via the web (Ahuja et al.,2007). This user/consumer-generated content canappear in the form of online brand testimonials,product reviews, and/or user-generated commer-cials (Steyn et al., 2010). Often referred to as ‘cus-tomer evangelism’ (Muñiz and Schau, 2011),other names such as ‘homebrew ads’ (Kahney,2004), ‘folk ads’ (O’Guinn, 2003), ‘open sourcebranding’ (Garfield, 2005), and ‘vigilante market-ing’ (Ives, 2004; Muñiz and Schau, 2007) have beenused to represent consumer-generated contentmade possible by global telecommunications.Consumers are both empowered and liberated bythe ability to both individually and collectivelycreate, publish, and distribute messages via theweb (Kozinets, 1999).

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Schau et al. (2010) suggest that members of brandcommunities are capable of creating content. Thus,regardless of whether firms and marketers like ordislike consumer-generated content, all indicationsare that such content, via consumer-generatedadvertising, is here to stay (Berthon et al., 2008).Consumer-generated content is attracting the atten-tion of marketing professionals and researchers fora number of reasons (Steyn et al., 2010). First, thecost differential between content created by a pro-fessional agency and that created by a user canbe quite large. Second, unconventional consumer-generated content can break through the media sat-uration that is prevalent in today’s environment.Third, electronic word-of-mouth can move muchfaster to the consumer than traditional advertising.Lastly, a skilled consumer may offer a more com-pelling message that has more credibility than acompany-generated message.Given that today’s college students fall squarely

in the domain of Generation C, the current researchsought to explore student usage of social mediafrom a marketing perspective. Given the profile ofthe Gen C consumer, one would expect this segmentto be highly engaged in electronic word-of-mouthvia content creation and sharing. Several researchquestions guided this exploratory research. One,we sought to focus and structure students’ thinkingon both social media platforms and providers. Thatis, what platforms and what providers do studentstend to use? Two, we asked students to think oftheir social media behavior within the context of asocial media ecosystem and provided the five majorcategories within the ecosystem for descriptive pur-poses. This led to the second research question.Where in the social media ecosystem do studentsin a marketing class reside? Finally, we wanted tounderstand actual usage as related to consumer-generated content. Although it appears that thisage group is technically capable of content creation,it is not clear that these students are necessarilyusing their skills for marketing purposes. The thirdresearch question explored recall regarding a con-sumer-generated message. That is, are studentsrecalling the content of consumer-generated mes-sages? Finally, the fourth research question centeredon the creation and dissemination of a consumer-generated message. Are students creating and dis-seminating their own messages?

METHODOLOGY

Although research has provided usage data onyounger millennials with respect to digital tools(e.g., percentage with cell phones) and online usage(e.g., percent online, text messaging up while emailis down, percent of female/male bloggers), today’scollege students, the true digital natives (Booz &Company, 2010), provide a unique opportunity for

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.

D. L. Williams et al.

studying usage practices as related to web-basedsocial interactions. From a platformperspective,whatplatforms and providers aremost popular among col-lege students? What social behavior do college stu-dents exhibit in the capacious world of social mediaactions? What are college students doing as relatedto consumer-generated content?

Because the objective underlying these questionswas to acquire a process description that analyzedthe enactment of particular social behaviors, aqualitative, exploratory methodological approachwas undertaken (Mariampolski, 2001). Qualitativeresearch, such as that used here in the form of contentanalysis, allows the exploration of social phenomenawithout explicit expectations (Schutt, 2006).

Sample

Data were collected from a convenience sample ofmillennial-aged undergraduate college students ata large northeastern university in the USA. All werestudents in their first marketing class, Principles ofMarketing. The youngest student was 19 years old,and the oldest was 21 years old. In total, 74 under-graduate students comprised two different sectionsof the course. To protect the confidentiality of thestudent subjects, no demographic data beyond age(to ensure that we were capturing only respondentsin the millennial group) were monitored. Althoughthis was restrictive as far as traditional statisticaltesting, the intent here was not to explore differ-ences between and among subgroups of college stu-dents. Rather, the purpose was to explore socialmedia behaviors in detail as reported by each ofthe students.

Analytical technique

Content analysis, one of the most popular analyticaltechniques in cultural studies and mass communi-cations research (Manning and Cullum-Swan,1994), was deemed the most appropriate analyticaltechnique for exploring process descriptions withinthe cultural phenomenon of social media. Althoughthe same type of data could have been derived frompersonal interviews with college students regardingsocial media behaviors, content analysis enabled thecollection of data from a much larger sample setwithin a short period of time (Mariampolski,2001). As a data-oriented qualitative technique, con-tent analysis uses standardized measures so as tometrically define units and use the metrics to com-pare across documents (Berelson, 1952).

Instructional instrument

The instrument used in this research was a writtenassignment distributed electronically to all enrolled

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

students approximately 3weeks prior to the first classmeeting with the completed assignment due 5 daysbefore the first class. By requiring the completion ofthe written assignment prior to the start of the semes-ter, the datawere not unintentionally tainted by class-roomprompts about digitalmedia andmarketing. Assuch, the students had no idea as to the professor’sinterests in digital media nor had they been exposededucationally to how marketers use digital media inthe marketing mix. (See Appendix A for the assign-ment distributed to the students.) Motivated by theliterature on social media, the assigned questionsfocused the student respondents on coding categoriesthat facilitated the content analysis (Mariampolski,2001). Additionally, a written assignment such as thatused here enabled the students to tell a story abouttheir social media usage experiences. According toClandinin and Connelly (1994), experiences are thestarting point and key term for all social scienceinquiry, and storytelling through the written wordenables the respondents to essentially relive theirsocial media experiences thus offering a rich set ofdata for examination.

RESULTS

The 74 student submissions were coded by twoindependent coders. The qualitative coding utilizedthe predetermined coding categories embedded inthe assigned questions. This allowed the coders totag segments of interest and, thus, mitigated theneed for achieving intercoder reliability as wouldhave been required otherwise (Sayre, 2001). Therewere four major segments of interest: social mediaplatforms, social behavior, consumer-generatedmessage viewership, and consumer-generated mes-sage creation.

Social media platforms

Social media technologies have engendered radicallynewways of interacting (Hansen et al., 2011). Asmen-tioned previously, there are literally hundreds of dif-ferent social media platforms. So as to promptstudent thinking about platform and avoid confusionover terminology, the following social media plat-formswere offered to students as examples to prompttheir thinking: social networking, text messaging,shared photos, podcasts, streaming videos, wikis,blogs, and discussion groups. In addition to discern-ing the platforms used by this group of college stu-dent consumers, respondents were asked aboutparticular providers. Provider examples includedFacebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Digg. Again,company examples were given so as to clarify whatwas meant by the question.Table 1 provides a breakdown of the social media

platforms utilized by the students. The platforms

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.

Table 1 Social media platforms and providers

Platform Number of students*

Social networking 71Text messaging 52Streaming videos 43Blogs 34Shared photos 22Wikis 12Discussion groups 9Video communication 6Podcasts 1

Providers Number of students*Facebook 69YouTube 53Twitter 31Skype 10LinkedIn 7Shutterfly 7Wikipedia 7Tumblr 6Hulu 5Flickr 4Blogspot 3Digg 2

*The column does not total to 74 because students could be usersof multiple platforms and providers.

The use of social media

used by at least 50% of the students were social net-working, text messaging, and streaming videos. Notsurprisingly, 96% of the students are active in socialnetworking with Facebook and Twitter, the provi-ders of choice for social networking activities. Usagewas difficult to assess because no parameters weregiven to the student. That is, some studentsreported usage in terms of number of minutes (espe-cially easy to do because cell phone records oftenshow per minute usage of platforms), whereasothers made broader time-related comments suchas daily or monthly. Regardless of the time elementof usage, students offered comments such as ‘I amaddicted to social media’, ‘Everyone uses socialmedia’, and ‘I use social media much less than mostpeople’. Thus, it is appears that individual studentshave developed their own metrics for what is toomuch and more/less relative to others.

Although one might think that text messagingwould be the platform used most often by studentsowing to its ease of accessibility on most cellphones, only 70% of the students reported usingtext messaging. Because ‘text messaging’ was inthe content prompt, it would seem that studentswho text message would have easily thought toinclude it in the response. Thus, this relativelylower usage rate would appear to be accurate froma self-report perspective. With that said, however,the students who do engage in text messagingappear to be avid users. For example, some stu-dents cited daily usage ranging from 20 to 100 textsper day, others reported sending/receiving 2000 to

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

3000 texts per month, and some reported theirusage in terms of hourly ranging from 1 to 4 hoursa day.Fifty-eight per cent of the students reported using

streaming video as a social media platform. How-ever, 72% of the students noted YouTube as a pro-vider, thus making interpretation based on thenumbers somewhat difficult. Because it is clear thatstreaming video is one of the top three media plat-forms and YouTube is one of the top three provi-ders, it could be that students do not necessarilysee streaming video as a social media platform forpersonal usage if they do not necessarily createstreaming video. For example, many cell phonesand cameras have video capability, but studentsmay not be using the capability for sharing materialabout themselves or their friends. Viewing stream-ing video posted on YouTube by unknown creatorsmay not strike the student as necessarily an act ofsocial media.Table 1 provides the breakdown for other social

media platforms and providers. Although not mak-ing it into the 50% or above category, 46% of the stu-dents engage in blogging. However, the time spentreading/writing blogs was not that high. Only 3%of the respondents reported using blogs daily, withweekly being the most likely occurrence. Provider-wise, Blogspot, and Blogger were mentioned as theblog providers utilized. Only one of the 74 respond-ing students in the current research mentioned pod-cast as a social media platform used currently. Thislow reported usage is interesting when comparedwith the data reported by Zahay and Fredricks(2009) in which 87% of students in a post-use evalu-ation provided positive comments about the use ofpodcasts for educational purposes. This lack of useas a social media tool suggests that students maysee podcasts as more of an educational tool than asocial, interactive tool.

Social behavior

Hanna et al. (2011) describe the transformation ofconsumers from passive bystanders (i.e., where tra-ditional media is controlled by the advertiser in afirm-consumer monologue) to hunters (i.e., whereviewers seek out company-created internet-basedmarketing campaigns and the consumer controlsthe interactivity) to active participants in the mediaprocess (i.e., where consumers create, consume,and share messages). This transformation has ledto what Schultz (2007) described as a social mediaecosystem. In the current exploratory study, stu-dents were asked to describe their social behaviorwithin the social media ecosystem. To provide con-text, the five social behaviors identified by Li andBernoff (2008) were defined, and students wereasked to denote within which category each residedand why. Additionally, the segments are not

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.

D. L. Williams et al.

mutually exclusive as students could see them-selves engaging in more than one category.

As noted in Table 2, 80% of the students see them-selves as Spectators when it comes to social mediabehavior. That is, they are avid readers of contentand are happy to let others create and disseminatethe messages. This makes sense when one thinksabout the YouTube viewership noted previously inthat students enjoy viewing the contributionsposted by others. The Creator and Joiner segmentscame in second behind the Spectators. Forty-twoper cent of the students publish, maintain, andupload content to social media sites, and 42% alsoconnect and unite with others on social media sites.This is not surprising given the impact that Face-book has on the students included in this study.Close behind this group is the Collector segmentat 40%. These students save and share informationfound on social media sites. Finally, only 31% ofthe students consider themselves Critics in thesocial media world. Thus, students are less likelyto engage in commenting or rating than other activ-ities. This is consistent with the lower than averageblogging activity noted previously, as Harris (2009)suggested that blogs are an important platform forcommenting in the social media ecosystem.

Consumer-generated message viewership

Agichtein et al. (2008) illustrated usage statistics interms of the number of clicks on a particular item. Inthis study, however, we were not attempting to dis-cern the actual statistics for a particular piece of onlinecontent. Rather, the intent was to tap into thestudents’ general recall of consumer-generated con-tent. Miller (1956) differentiated between long-termmemory and working memory and suggested thatworking memory had limited capacity with mentalactivities imposing a cognitive load on an individual.Because the written assignment was for a class andlimited in length (as well as only minimal weight inthe final grade), it was expected that students wouldnot spend a lot of time thinking and exploring con-sumer-generated content that they had viewed previ-ously. Rather, the expectation was that students

Table 2 Social behavior

Segments Number of students*

Spectator 59Creator 31Joiner 31Collector 29Critic 23

*Seventy-three per cent of the students responded to more thanone of the five segments. For example, a person might have seenhim/herself as both a spectator and a critic (or any combinationof the segments). Thus, the segments are not mutually exclusive.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

would recall (or not) something viewed and respondto the question.Eighty-nine per cent of the students could recall

seeing a consumer-generated message during thepast year. Of these, the majority (70%) was prod-uct-related messages, 16% were about a service,and 14% fell into the ‘other’ category. In the ‘other ’category were consumer-generated content aboutan event such as a charity fundraiser or sportingevent, a movie, the boycott of government bodyscanners, and self-promotion for a career.An interesting observation in the data is the unclear

understanding about consumer-generated content.Several students referenced friends who made Face-book postings/endorsements about a product whereit was a part of the summer job responsibility to gen-erate awareness/buzz via social media. The conflicthere is that if the content is created at the desire ofthe company as part of a job, then it is not necessarilyconsumer-generated content in the true sense of thephrase. Although the provider used is not owned bythe company nor does the company have to pay theprovider (e.g., Facebook) to post the content, thesource of the content is not doing it of his or herown accord. Interestingly, this reveals that manycompanies are leveraging the students’ onlinenetworks and expertise in social media to the com-pany’s advantage.

Consumer-generated message creation

With the advent of consumer-generated content, mar-keting communications about a product or companyare no longer under the purview of the marketingdepartment. The various social media platforms en-able anyone to share his or her thoughts and ideaswith a large audience. One would expect that today’scollege students, as members of the digital gener-ation, have engaged in the creation of their own socialmedia message about a product or service. The intentof the fourth question, therefore, was to gather infor-mation on the message and how it was disseminated.Thus, students who had created content were askedto describe the creation, whereas students who hadnot created content were asked to think about whatthey might do.Sixty-nine per cent of the students in the two sec-

tions of Principles of Marketing have created theirown social media message. All but one of these crea-tions was disseminated via Facebook. The socialmedia messages included event promotions for char-ities, nightclubs, campus organizations, sports teams,celebrations, and trips. Other messages were prod-uct/service reviews/promotions, restaurant reviews,and work requests. Interestingly, the social mediamessage that was not disseminated via Facebookwas created by the student as a part of his/her job.The message was created with iMovie and was disse-minated on YouTube. However, this raises the

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.

The use of social media

question again as to students’ understanding of con-sumer-generated content. Instead, students use theirown social media network to fulfill the requirementsof the job. This reinforces the fact that companies havelearned to utilize the social media ecosystem to tapinto the consumer marketplace in which ‘billions ofpeople create trillions of connections through socialmedia each day’ (Hansen et al., 2011: 3).

For the students who had not ever created a socialmedia message, the expected message content wasnot different from that of the students who had cre-ated messages already. Facebook was the mostpopular presumed means of creating and dissemi-nating messages. However, this group of studentsanticipates utilizing a wider variety of both plat-forms and providers. For example, Twitter, You-Tube, LinkedIn, and blogs were referenced. Yet, itmay be that the hopes and desires outweigh theabilities possessed by students, particularly becausethey have not engaged in the practice already.Owing to familiarity and experience with Facebook,it might still become the default platform providerof choice once the creation and disseminationprocess began.

CONCLUSION

The overall intent of this exploratory research was toexamine a variety of electronicword-of-mouthwithinthe Generation C market segment, the segment oftenreferred to in the popular press as digital natives. Themetrics derived from the content analysis provideinsight into platforms, providers, and self-report cat-egorical social behaviors. Social networking, textmessaging, and streaming videos were used by overhalf of the sampled students, with Facebook, You-Tube, and Twitter ,the dominant providers. Overall,the students saw themselves largely as Spectators inthe social media ecosystem.

Interestingly, although the students in the samplegroup fall squarely within the domain of Gener-ation C consumers and digital natives, the use ofelectronic word-of-mouth within this sample groupwas notably surprising by its relatively low exist-ence. That is, whereas students use a variety ofsocial media for interactive communication, word-of-mouth as understood within the context of mar-keting communications was not necessarily evidentin the data and stories provided by the students.Whereas the quantifiable results via the contentanalysis suggested that around half of the respon-dents viewed themselves as content creators, thestories in the written assignment offered a slightlydifferent version of what was occurring. That is,the stories were very basic with a focus on sharingpersonal content (e.g., photos) on Facebook oraccessing YouTube for viewing purposes. Althougha few students noted postings of product/servicepromotions or reviews, most stories about content

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

creation resided largely in two areas. Studentswould use social media to promote campus events,or they reported using consumer-generated contentas a requirement of their jobs. However, contentcreated to satisfy company expectations is not theintent of consumer-generated content, and usingsocial media for event invitations is not equivalentto active engagement with the consumer market-place. Yet, the fact that many of the students in thissample used their social media ecosystem to pro-mote products or services for the companies forwhich they worked suggests that companies aretapping into these social networks and using themto their advantage. However, the risk is that thepotential for persuasive power in this electronicword-of-mouth network will be diminished longterm if the reference giver does have a stake in thebusiness (Cox et al., 2009).Additionally, we saw very little reported activity in

social media sites where the students could trulyengage in discussions and conversations with peerconsumers. At the same time, only about half of thepopular providers identified by Alexa (2010) wererepresented in the data. That is, Baidu.com,MySpace,QQ.com, Windows Live, and Yahoo! were not men-tioned by any of the students as current social mediaproviders. Although some sample bias might be evi-dent in the results because Baidu and QQ are largelyChinese social networking sites, it appears that thisparticular group of students limits themselves to thepopular, yet traditional, providers such as Facebook,Twitter, and YouTube. Again, this likely reinforcesthe notion of the student’s use of social media for per-sonal sharing and/or event notifications.Although not derived specifically from the con-

tent analysis, these findings highlight an interestingarea for future examination with regard to whetheror not these digital natives are also the market seg-ment engaged in content creation within the pur-view of marketing communications via electronicword-of-mouth. For example, the students in thecurrent sample group appear content with thebasics of social media platforms and providers,and they are not engaging beyond a basic level ofsocial activity in the ecosystem. They appear con-tent with what they know and what they are doing.Thus, one has to wonder if the active participantsand creators of content in marketing’s social mediaecosystem are different from the digital nativesfound in today’s college student population. Theresearch raises identity questions as to who theactive innovators in social media might be—if notthe digital natives of the millennial generation.

Public policy implications

As noted and, not surprisingly given the location ofthe sampled students, the most social interactionoccurred on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.

D. L. Williams et al.

Inasmuch as this is a community of students andeducators, it is imperative that universities helptheir students understand the long-term impact oftheir social media postings. Crittenden and Klepper(2010) provide examples of student social network-ing postings that have become awry and led topotentially harmful results for both the studentsand university relations with it broader communityof stakeholders. While the rules or laws surround-ing social media sites are still being defined, stu-dents need support and guidance with respect tothe rules of online netiquette.

To this end, Crittenden and Klepper (2010) sug-gest several rules of netiquette:

i Postings should not depict or describe poten-tially offensive conduct.

ii Students should consider the true implications of‘freedom of speech’ (e.g., attempt to predict thenegative consequences of a social media posting).

iii Postings should pass the ‘public versus anonym-ous’ acid test (i.e., would the author want his/her name attached to the posting for the entireworld to see?).

iv Personal social media comments should beposted only via private Internet service provi-ders (i.e., posting via the university server canblur the line between a personal posting and uni-versity governance).

Limitations and future research

As an exploratory research project, the informationreported here was obtained from a convenience sam-ple. Although nonprobability samples are common inmarketing research, the usage responses reportedhere cannot be construed to be representative ofdigital natives as a whole (Lamb et al., 2011). Import-ant to future research is to compare students from avariety of colleges and universities (e.g., public versusprivate, geographic dispersion). Additionally, theanalysis here was conducted without regard to anydiscerning characteristics about the sample group.

Future research should examine the data and lookfor differences between and among a variety ofdemographic characteristics. A number of studiessuggest a disparity by gender with respect to com-puters and technology (Kim and Bagaka, 2005). Inparticular, Morrison and McMillan (2010) foundgender differences in the posting and using of con-sumer-generated content (i.e., males were morelikely to post and females were more likely to use).Thus, segmenting the data based on gender wouldallow for statistical testing of differences betweenmales and females within the five social behaviorsegments. Following Morrison and McMillan(2010), one would suspect males more likely to beCreators and females more likely to be Spectators.

Major area of academic concentration would alsobe an interesting variable for examination. In researchconducted by Educause, a student’s major was an

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

important predictor of classroom technology use(Kvavik, 2010). Thus, one might surmise that thesame differencewould be foundwith the use of socialmedia. In line with major area of study, it would alsobe informative to know whether students have takeninformation technology and/or computer sciencecourses, as knowledge in certain areas might predis-pose students to particular platforms and providers.With regard to platforms and providers, contentprompting did occur so as to provide examples to stu-dents as to what was meant by a platform and a pro-vider as it was suspected that the general populationmight not think in terms of such differences. How-ever, this might have unintentionally biased studentstoward particular purveyors.It would also be worthwhile to look for differ-

ences across years of study. Included in the currentsample are sophomores, juniors, and seniors.According to the description of a digital native, thegreater use and variety of social media would occuramong the younger students (i.e., sophomores inthis case). At the same time, however, Morrisonand McMillan (2010) found that those looking foremployment were more likely to post on socialmedia sites. Combining this line of thinking, wewould expect sophomores and seniors to use socialmedia more than juniors.Finally, with respect to demographics, the

current study did not take into account differentethnicities or countries of origin represented in thedata. The qualitative nature of the data collectionprocess and analysis via the written assignmentand content analysis process did not enable the col-lection of such data. Future research should accountfor such national effects so as to see if there arecountry differences in the use of particular plat-forms and providers and in the creation and dis-semination of content.

REFERENCES

Agichtein E, Castillo C, Donato D, Gionis A, Mishne G. 2008.Finding high-quality content in social media. http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~eugene/papers/wsdm2008quality.pdf [29 January 2011].

Ahuja R, Michels T, Walker M, Weissbuch M. 2007. Teenperceptions of disclosure in buzz marketing. Journal ofConsumer Marketing 24(3): 151–159.

Alexa. 2010. Top sites: the top 500 sites on the Web.http://www.alexa.com/topsites/global [2 June 2011].

Berelson B. 1952. Content Analysis in CommunicationResearch. Free Press: Glencoe, IL.

Berthon P, Pitt L, Campbell C. 2008. Ad lib: when customerscreate the ad. California Management Review 50(4): 6–30.

Blackshaw P, Nazzaro M. 2004. Consumer-generatedmedia (CGM) 101: word-of-mouth in the age of theweb-fortified consumer. http://www.brandchannel.com/images/Papers/222_CGM.pdf [29 January 2011].

Blain A. 2008. The millennial tidal wave: five elementsthat will change the workplace of tomorrow. Journal ofthe Quality Assurance Institute 22(2): 11–13.

Booz & Company. 2010. The rise of Generation C: implica-tions for the world of 2020. http://www.ameinfo.com/241120.html [5 February 2011].

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.

The use of social media

Chung C, Darke P. 2006. The consumer as advocate: self-relevance, culture, and word-of-mouth. MarketingLetters 17(4): 269–279.

Clandinin DJ, Connelly FM. 1994. Personal experiencemethods. In Handbook of Qualitative Research, DenzinNK, Lincoln YS (eds). Sage Publications: ThousandOaks, CA; 413–427.

Cox C, Burgess S, Sellitto C, Buultjens J. 2009. The role ofuser-generated content in tourists’ travel planningbehavior. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management18(8): 743–764.

Crittenden V, Klepper K. 2010. Social media and theb-school. BizEd May/June: 72–73.

Dye J. 2007. Meet Generation C: creatively connectingthrough content. EContent 30(4): 38.

Ertimur B, Gilly M. 2010. The impact of consumer-generatedadvertising on brand associations. Advances in ConsumerResearch 37: 286–287.

Facebook Statistics. 2010. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics [29 January 2011].

Feick LF, Price LL. 1987. The market maven: a diffuser ofmarketplace information. Journal of Marketing 51(1): 83–97.

Garfield B. 2005. Inside the new world of listenomics.Advertising Age. http://adage.com/article/news/inside-world-listenomics/47020/ [2 June 2011].

Garretson R. 2008. Future tense: the global CMO.http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/Google%20Text.pdf[29 September 2010].

Gil-Or O. 2010. Building consumer demand by using viralmarketing tactics within an online social network.Advances in Management 3(7): 7–14.

Hanna R, Rohm A, Crittenden V. 2011. We’re all con-nected: the power of the social media ecosystem. Busi-ness Horizons 54: 265–273.

Hansen D, Shneiderman B, Smith MA. 2011. Analyzing So-cial Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Con-nected World. Elsevier: Boston.

Harris R. 2009. Social media ecosystem mapped as awiring diagram. http://www.twitterthoughts.com/social-media-news-analyses/2009/9/3/social-media-ecosystem-mapped-as-a-wiring-diagram.html [2 June2011].

Ives N. 2004. Unauthorized campaigns used by unauthorizedcreators to show their creativity become a trend. New YorkTimes December 23: C3.

KahneyL. 2004.Home-brew ipod adopens eyes.WiredNews.http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/commentary/cultofmac/2004/12/66001 [2 June 2011].

Karpinski R. 2005. The next phase: bottom-up marketing.BtoB Magazine 90(5): 38.

Kim SH, Bagaka J. 2005. The digital divide in students’usage of technology tools: a multilevel analysis of the roleof teacher practices and classroom characteristics.Contem-porary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education 5(3/4).http://www.citejournal.org/vol5/iss3/currentpractice/article1.cfm [12 September 2010].

Kozinets RV. 1999. E-tribalized marketing: the strategicimplications of virtual communities on consumption.European Management Journal 17(3): 252–264.

Kvavik RV. 2010. Convenience, communications, andcontrol: how students use technology. http://www.edu-cause.edu/Resources/EducatingtheNetGeneration/Con-venienceCommunicationsandCo/6070 [29 January 2011].

Lamb C, Hair J, McDaniel C. 2011. Marketing 11e. Cen-gage: Mason, OH.

Levine R, Locke C, Searle D, Weinberger D. 2001. TheCluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. BasicBooks: New York.

Li C, Bernoff J. 2008. Groundswell: Winning in a WorldTransformed by Social Technologies. Harvard BusinessPress: Boston.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Manning PK, Cullum-Swan B. 1994. Narrative, content,and semiotic analysis. In Handbook of QualitativeResearch, Denzin NK, Lincoln YS (eds). Sage Publica-tions: Thousand Oaks, CA; 463–477.

Mariampolski H. 2001. Qualitative Market Research. SagePublications: Thousand Oaks, CA

Miller GA. 1956. The magical number seven, plus orminus two: some limits on our capacity for processinginformation. Psychological Review 63: 81–97.

Morrison M, McMillan S. 2010. Oh, user, who art thou: anexamination of behaviors and characteristics of consu-mers in the context of user generated content. AmericanAcademy of Advertising Conference Proceedings: 77.

Mr Youth and RepNation Media. 2008. Consumer 2.0: fiverules to engaging a new breed of consumer. http://ypulse.com/images/Consumers2%200_April08.pdf[29 January 2011].

Muñiz AM, Schau HJ. 2007. Vigilante marketing and con-sumer-generated communications. Journal of Advertising36(3): 187–202.

Muñiz AM, Schau HJ. 2011. How to inspire value-ladencollaborative consumer-generated content. BusinessHorizons 54: 209–217.

O’Guinn TC. 2003. (Brand) community support for the(brand) orchestra. Presentation to theMarketing Science Insti-tute Conference on Brand Orchestration, Orlando, Florida.

Packaged Facts. 2010. Millennials in the U.S.: trendsand opportunities surrounding Gen-Y adults. http://www.marketresearch.com/product/display.asp?productid=2661911 [29 January 2011].

Palfrey J, Gasser U. 2008. Born Digital: Understanding theFirst Generation of Digital Natives. Basic Books: NewYork.

Rawlins C, Indvik J, Johnson PR. 2008. Understanding thenew generation: what the millennial cohort absolutely,positively must have at work. Journal of OrganizationalCulture, Communications & Conflict 12(2): 1–8.

Sayre S. 2001. Qualitative Methods for Marketplace Research.Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA.

Schau HJ, Thompson K, Muniz, A. 2010. Fanning theflames of consumer engagement: inspiring and nurt-uring communally-embedded consumer generatedcontent. Advances in Consumer Research 37: 284–285.

Schultz D. 2007. Snackbyte: a view of the ecosystem.http://www.deborahschultz.com/deblog/2007/11/snackbyte-a-vie.html [1 October 2010].

Schumann JH, Wangenheim F, Stringfellow A, Yang Z,Blazevic V, Praxmarer S. 2010. Cross-cultural differ-ences in the effect of received word-of-mouth referralin relational service exchange. Journal of InternationalMarketing 18(3): 62–80.

Schutt R. 2006. Investigating the Social World: The Process andPractice of Research. Pine Forge Press: Thousand Oaks, CA.

Stamats, Inc. 2008. Students of today. . .and tomorrow.Report prepared for the Board of Trustees, Lyon Col-lege, Batesville, Arkansas.

Steadman M. 2008. What small CPA firms are doing torecruit and retain staff. CPA Journal 78(7): 61–63.

Steyn P, Wallström Å, Pitt L. 2010. Consumer-generatedcontent and source effects in financial services advertis-ing: an experimental study. Journal of Financial ServicesMarketing 15(1): 49–61.

Wasserman T. 2006. Word games. Brandweek 47(17): 24–28.Wesner MS, Miller T. 2008. Boomers and millennialshave much in common. Organization DevelopmentJournal 26(3): 89–96.

YouTube.com. 2010. http://www.youtube.com/t/press[29 January 2011].

Zahay D, Fredricks E. 2009. Podcasting to improve deliv-ery of a project-based internet marketing course. Mar-keting Education Review 19(1): 57–63.

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.

D. L. Williams et al.

APPENDIX A

Assignment: the digital generationStamats, a research group, said that technology islike a knife and fork to today’s college student.Labels, creatively using ‘digital’, have been appliedto your age group (e.g., ‘Digital Natives’ and ‘NetGeneration’). Marketers, of course, are extremelyinterested in college students and their use of tech-nology because college students, as consumers,comprise a large demographic in the marketplace.

You are to write a 500–750 word document thataddresses the topic of ‘The Digital Generation’. Inthis written assignment, I’d like you to be sure toaddress the following questions:1. There are literally hundreds of different social

media platforms (e.g., social networking, textmessaging, shared photos, podcasts, streamingvideos, wikis, blogs, discussion groups) at yourfingertips. Which of these social media platformsdo you use and about how often do you useeach? Of the engaged platforms, which particu-lar providers do you use (e.g., Facebook, Twitter,YouTube, Flickr, Digg, etc.)?

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

2. How would you describe your social behaviorin marketing’s social media ecosystem? That is,are you a Creator (i.e., you publish, maintain,upload), aCritic (i.e., you comment, rate), aCollector(i.e., you save, share), a Joiner (i.e., you connect,unite), or a Spectator (i.e., you read)? Why do yousee yourself in the particular category of consumer?

3. Today’s social media technology has made itpossible for consumers to create and share theirown marketing messages. Can you recall a con-sumer-generated message that you have seen inthe past year? If so, what was the content of themessage (e.g., product, service, etc.)?

4. Have you ever created your own social mediamessage about a product or service (referredto as ‘consumer generated message’)? If so,what was it about and how was it created anddisseminated? If you have not ever created anddisseminated your own social media marketingmessage, think of a product or service for whichyou would like to engage in your own socialmedia marketing process. What would the mes-sage be about and how would you create anddisseminate the message?

J. Public Affairs (2012)DOI: 10.1002/pa.