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Is there more to it than posting a status update?

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using the internet, but also they are using <strong>it</strong> <strong>more</strong> often. 72 percent out of all Finnish people<br />

utilize the internet daily or almost daily. The growth in the usage is most rapid in the older age<br />

groups, as in the younger age groups almost everyone already actively uses the internet.<br />

(Official Statistics of Finland (OSF), 2010).<br />

Following different mass mediums is one of the most common activ<strong>it</strong>ies for internet users,<br />

<strong>to</strong>gether w<strong>it</strong>h email services and participating in social media. Trad<strong>it</strong>ional news services, such<br />

as TV and newspapers have started using internet as one of their communications medium.<br />

Often <strong>there</strong> is a small group of people gathering and producing the news professionally for<br />

online purposes. The news often include chat possibil<strong>it</strong>ies, commenting, links <strong>to</strong> different<br />

conversations, blogs, s<strong>it</strong>es, columns et cetera. All of this information is then shared in social<br />

media platforms. As shown in Table 5, <strong>there</strong> are no remarkable differences in how men and<br />

women behave in the internet when <strong>it</strong> comes <strong>to</strong> following mediums, but in general men seem<br />

<strong>to</strong> be <strong>more</strong> active <strong>than</strong> women in daily following of blogs and online magazines. (Official<br />

Statistics of Finland (OSF) 2., 2010).<br />

Men past 3<br />

months<br />

Women past<br />

3 months<br />

Total past 3<br />

months<br />

Everyone at<br />

least weekly<br />

Everyone<br />

daily or<br />

almost daily<br />

Read online newspapers 76 73 74 62 44<br />

Read blogs 41 39 40 21 9<br />

Table 5: Reading content online in Finland in 2010, percentage of 16-74-year olds. (Modified<br />

from Official Statistics of Finland (OSF) 2., 2010)<br />

Table 6, lookes at participating in social media content creation by wr<strong>it</strong>ing, commenting or<br />

downloading content. The activ<strong>it</strong>y rates of creating content are naturally smaller <strong>than</strong> of those<br />

who follow content posted by others. Yet, <strong>more</strong> <strong>than</strong> four out of ten Finnish people wr<strong>it</strong>e content<br />

online (email not included). Most of the content creation occurs in social networking s<strong>it</strong>es, such<br />

as Facebook or Tw<strong>it</strong>ter, or discussion forums. Wr<strong>it</strong>ing <strong>to</strong> blogs, or mediums published in a<br />

professional matter, is less common. Out of the 16–74-year old Finnish people already a third<br />

follows a social networking s<strong>it</strong>e at least weekly. Out of these people 37 percent characterizes<br />

themselves as “followers”, 46 percent as “occasional commenta<strong>to</strong>rs” and 16 percent as “active<br />

agents”.<br />

68

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