An Examination of How Social and Technological Perceptions Predict Social Media News Use on WeChat

ABSTRACT

The decision to use a particular social media application for news is affected by many factors, but less is understood is how a platform’s technological features promote or impede people’s social media news use. A structural equation model derived from the Unified Theory Acceptance and Use of Technology and Task-Technology Fit models were applied to investigate what social and technological perceptional factors explain people’s news use behaviors within the context of WeChat. Results showed an application’s technological features (i.e., technology characteristics and task-technology fit) played a significant role in predicting multiple social media news use behaviors. We put forth a theoretical model that predicts social media news use based on the results.

KEYWORDS:

• WeChat
• social media news use
• unified theory acceptance and use of technology model
• task-technology fit model
• technological features‌
• closed social media platforms
• journalism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contibutors

Zhao Peng (M.A, Michigan State University) is a Ph.D. candidate from School of Journalism at Michigan State University. Her research interests include social media disclosure behaviors, news use behaviors, gender studies, and media psychology. She employs both quantitative (survey, scale development, experiment, content analysis) and qualitative (in-depth interview, focus group, textual analysis) methods to investigate interesting questions such as how attributes of social media environments influence people’s privacy perceptions and how female professionals construct their image in online spaces. She is also pursuing a M.S. in Statistics along with her doctoral degree.

Serena Miller (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Associate Professor of Journalism Innovations at Michigan State University and a former Associate Editor for Journalism Studies. Miller’s earliest research focused on media sociology, news content characteristics, and emerging media, especially issues such as news quality, “citizen journalism,” and journalism education. Her quantitative and qualitative approaches addressed fundamental questions such as who should be classified as a journalist and what should be categorized as news because the identification of these characteristics is critical in understanding journalists’ role in supporting an informed society. Today, her interests have evolved toward social science theory building and targeting concepts that need conceptual and empirical specification.