CHARACTERISTICS FOR THE BEHAVIOUR OF SOCIAL NETWORKS USERS IN GERMANY

Against the background of a comprehensive milieu analyses of Internet users, which were performed between 09/01/2012 and 09/18/2012, factors and correlations between the usage of traditional media, Internet services and social networks within the German market were analysed. It was possible to use 1,607 completed questionnaires, filled in by German users of social networks, for the analysis. The gathered information was applied to test several sub-hypotheses. These were formed to support the main hypotheses which, in turn, were created to research the transfer of existing descriptions of lifeworlds onto Internet users and to investigate how these descriptions can be extended to characterise the online environment. The analysis displays for the actual frame group that several sub-hypotheses relating to the sector of gender specific media consumption, differences between using the internet on a mobile device or a computer, usage of specific functions in combination with mobile Internet, the specific characteristics of social network users for people with business approaches, as also the transfer of offline hobbies into the Internet could be evaluated. For the analysis, the methods of exploratory factor and correlation analyses were used to support and confirm the hypotheses. These results established the fundamentals for an upcoming comparison, performed on the basis of the existing lifeworlds, which is intended to support the hypotheses in the main research of the doctoral thesis, and to transfer existing milieu theory approaches from the real world into social networks.