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International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

HCII 2021: Social Computing and Social Media: Experience Design and Social Network Analysis pp 54–73Cite as

The Faceless Vicinity: Who Uses Location-Based Anonymous Social Networks Like Jodel and Why?

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12774))

Abstract

Anonymous social networks, such as Jodel, are enjoying increasing popularity. But what are the reasons? At first, the connection of social networks, usually associated with exchanging and making contacts, and anonymity seems to be somehow contradictory. But as the user statistics of Jodel show, it works. This study explores the question of what exactly motivates people to use anonymous social networks like Jodel. For this purpose, different user roles, usage motivations, and gamification elements were examined by means of correlation and cluster analyses. To generate results for the evaluation a user survey with 874 participants was conducted, which was based among others on the Uses and Gratifications Theory by Blumler and Katz [1]. Following the classification by Shao [2], the participating users were divided into the user roles producer, commenter, rater, and consumer. The study shows that boredom and entertainment are among the most common usage reasons, while additional motivations are rather specific for each user role.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science, Heinrich Heine University, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Karoline Jüttner, Philipp Nowak, Katrin Scheibe, Franziska Zimmer & Kaja J. Fietkiewicz

Authors
  1. Karoline Jüttner
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  2. Philipp Nowak
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  3. Katrin Scheibe
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  4. Franziska Zimmer
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  5. Kaja J. Fietkiewicz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karoline Jüttner .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA

    Gabriele Meiselwitz

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Jüttner, K., Nowak, P., Scheibe, K., Zimmer, F., Fietkiewicz, K.J. (2021). The Faceless Vicinity: Who Uses Location-Based Anonymous Social Networks Like Jodel and Why?. In: Meiselwitz, G. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media: Experience Design and Social Network Analysis . HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12774. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77626-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77626-8_4

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