Motivations for sharing information in social media: A comparative analysis of WeChat, Sina Weibo, and Douyin

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore motivations for sharing information in social media in China with a comparative analysis of WeChat, Sina Weibo and Douyin. Six motivations are tested in this study with demographic and background characteristics of media users. All of these influential factors are tested under SPSS to find whether the relationships are statistically significant. It comes out that social media users are greed to be motivated by enjoyment, learning, personal gain, altruism, reputation, and reciprocity for sharing information. Gender, age, education level and frequency of sharing information have a significant and complex relationship with six motivations. These results provide detailed guidance for media providers about how to attract more Chinese active users to guarantee the success of social media. In addition, the study provides a framework to do comparison and test information behaviors of social media users in China.