Instagram Photo-Sharing and Its Relationships with Social Rewards and Social Connectedness

摘要

Previous research has found conflicting results whether social media photo-sharing actually improves or worsens social connectedness. This work explored relationships among social connectedness, photo-sharing and social rewards on the most used online photo-sharing platform, Instagram. The study focused on photo-sharing rather than the passive viewing of photos. The aim was to investigate photo-sharing relationships with social connectedness considering differences of types of social rewards and sharing photos of oneself, which had not been analyzed before. Results from an online survey of 383 participants found Instagram photo-sharing does not have a direct relationship with social connectedness, however, it does have a relationship with social rewards that stimulate elements of face-to-face communication online. Sharing photos of oneself had a more significant relationship with social rewards. The results found positive relationships between social reward satisfaction regardless of the number of social rewards and satisfaction was only impacted negatively when negative comments were received.