University Students Usage of Facebook: The Case of Obtained Gratifications and Typology of Its Users

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the results from the designed quantitative self-report questionnaire. It addresses two main research objectives: first, to contribute to the uses and gratifications research by exploring the gratifications that research participants who belong to an Islamic culture obtain from using Facebook, and second, to inform theoretical and empirical media and communications research through proposing a typology of users based on their obtained gratifications, usage variables, and demographic variables. The findings showed that Saudi university students obtained 11 gratifications and that there are three types of Saudi Facebook users.