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Gratifying the need of an online identity: College students’ attitude towards mass media on Facebook
ANCA-IOANA TOMA | LUCIAN ROTARU | ADRIANNA KRUSZONA | ILZE RAUDZĒNA | MARTYNA DANILEWICZ
COMMUNICATION SCIENCES
UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR, COVILHÃ
Abstract Facebook has taken the spotlight in the constantly developing social media. And its impact on students all
over the globe is even better articulated, as they are part of a generation that understands, better than any
other, how valuable the Internet and its social capital are for their own development. Yet even the
Millennials are still learning how powerful these tools are and how they can include old, passive, offline
habits like reading printed press, watching television or listening to music into this social environment
that also offers them the freedom to respond, to provoke and be provoked by the media. And while doing
this, they have to be aware of what their reactions mean to their network, to their selected connections.
This paper studies college students’ consumption of mass media as it is reflected on their Facebook
timeline and in their own judgment. It draws conclusions upon the observation of 50 profiles and the
questioning of their corresponding owners. Through an analysis that is specific to the modern take on the
Uses and Gratifications Theory, linking the gratification (creating a particular social persona) with the
reasons why Facebook is generally used, the study points out that even when they refuse to react to what
the Facebook newsfeed offers them, students are very much aware of their online portrait.
Introduction
I. Social Media
Social media is defined as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and
technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated
content”1. Social media refers to online accessible platforms and sites where people share and exchange
their ideas and thoughts. Globally used social networks as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google + and
others are used by users to connect with each other and establish wide range of types of relationships.
Media like what we knew it before has transformed from one-way process where information is only
received into two-way process. On social media websites people have the possibility of giving their
opinion on particular material, thus the transformation of the audience into an active one. The Internet
was favored a place where people can actively participate in the creation and promotion of media
materials and social websites have become a key part not just in sharing, but in discovering news too.
1 Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media, Kaplan Andreas, Haenlein Michael,
Business Horizons, 2010, p. 61.
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More than this, because of the fast circulation and accessibly of information on social media, more and
more “breaking news” stories are published and distributed on these platforms.
Regarding online trends for news discovery, in the past years social media gathered an advantage and
growth in comparison with search engines. In a study published in July 2012 by Reuters Institute Digital
Report it is mentioned that 43% of the people from Great Britain between the ages of 16 and 24 are most
likely to discover news stories through social networks2.
II. Facebook as a mass media aggregator
Facebook, Inc., a company founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, has then released a product that is still
dominating the online social network services market. facebook.com is a social media website that has
passed one billion users3 in the summer of 2013. The services offered to its users include messaging,
voice and video calling, following of individuals and/or groups, companies and, most importantly for our
study, media institutions and products. They are all available in more than 70 languages and on many
mobile devices and operational systems. Its mission statement says that the network exists “to make the
world more open and connected” and seeing the strong impact it has had on people’s social identity all
over the globe, it is argued that this mission had been over-completed.
In the context of the emergence of “millennials” or Generation “Y”, Facebook’s assets have an even more
powerful effect. Given that they (the people born between 1981 and early 2000’s) are supposedly as
liberal as the previous Generation X was conservative, as attached to our music and pop culture as Gen X
was to the concept of work ethic, as smart as Gen X but with a doubled use of technology4, Gen Y is so
much more exposed to what social media networks have changed in society. For example, a study
undertaken by Millennial Branding in 2012 on 4 million Gen Y profiles has shown that this demographic
segment use their profiles not only for social interactions, but also as an extension of their professional
personality, adding “an average of 16 co-workers to their friends groups” 5
. This means that they use
technology not only for entertainment and leisure, but also to build productive relationships, a social
frame that defines and might aid them.
Social networks have been proved to serve a series of online and offline functions to their users. In 2013,
the ten most pronounced of these functions were found to be social interaction, information seeking, pass
time, entertainment, relaxation, communicatory utility, convenience utility, expression of opinion,
information sharing, and surveillance/knowledge about others6. Facebook being the tool that most people
turn to in order to achieve all of these social fulfillments, its creators have been developing new ways of
engaging people and information altogether. Half of the users in the United States, for example, get their
news from the Facebook newsfeed (Figure 1). This has become a huge media aggregator in the past few
years, with more and more media institutions, products and personalities creating pages that users can
follow and receive updates from. Moreover, Facebook is now trying to build a high-quality newsfeed by
2 http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2013/12/06/social-networks-people-using-get-breaking-news
3 Facebook Reports: http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=761090
4 MILLENNIALS:A Portrait of Generation next - http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-
confident-connected-open-to-change.pdf 5 http://millennialbranding.com/2012/01/millennial-branding-gen-y-facebook-study/
6 Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Anita Whiting and David Williams, Qualitative
Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16 Iss: 4, pp.362 – 369, 2013
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choosing what content the user should receive based not
only on his preferences but also on the quality of the
materials and the endorsement that those materials
receive from the user’s connections. They are “adjusting
the algorithm which controls what content makes it to
users’ News Feeds, serving more «high-quality» news
articles than it has in a long time” thus aiming at
becoming “the best personalized newspaper in the
world”7. Also, in the process of easing media into the
user’s life, Facebook is currently testing a read-it-later
feature for the mobile application that allows you to save
links that appear in the newsfeed and access them later,
in offline mode.
Knowing that Facebook was initially an academic
platform, that only users with an “.edu” e-mail address
has access to, it is not surprising that even today this
social network is most popular among students. “By
order of preference, Facebook was ranked #1 among the
four social networking sites followed by Twitter at #2”8
in a study published in May 2013.
Our study aims at analyzing if and how Facebook users
and more particularly students tend to act on this social
network platform as far as mass media goes. We wanted
to have an insight on what is their attitude towards the content that pages belonging to mass media
institutions, personalities and products like television series, shows, movies, radio segments and so on.
The theoretical frame is built based on the Uses and Gratifications theory, often chosen in new media
researches for its pragmatic qualities. When trying to explain to what end users try to consume or not
consume media presented to them on Facebook, we also relied on the concept of personal branding, a
marketing and advertisement technique that has become popular not only among celebrities but also
among common individuals and, of course, we wanted to see how this applies to our public – the students.
Theoretical concepts
I. Uses and Gratifications
Jay G. Blumer and Elihu Katz’s Uses and Gratifications theory (UGT) as it is known today suggests,
through a very humanistic approach, that the media themselves play an active role in choosing and using
the media. “Users”, say the two theorists, “take an active part in the communication process and are goal
oriented in their media use”9. They also state that people seek out a specific media source in order to
7 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/facebook-is-the-news-in-2-charts/282301/
8 College Students’ Use of Social Media: Site Preferences, Uses and Gratifications Theory Revisited, Bellarmine A.
Ezumah, International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 4, No. 5; May 2013 9 The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives on gratifications research, Blumler J.G. & Katz, E.,
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1974
Figure 1.
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fulfill their needs most suitably and are constantly aware or in search for new, alternative choices that can
satisfy their mediatic needs and preferences. It is an optimistic take on media, as it takes out the
possibility of an unconscious effect of media consume.
This theory has gone through three stages of creation and perfection. UGT arose in the 1940s and was
revived in the 1970’s and 1980’s by authors like Katz, Blumler and D. McQuail. It is a theory that falls
under functionalist social analysis and appeared conceptually when social scientist Herta Herzog
classified the reasons that made women consume and become fans of radio soap operas. She identified
emotional liberation, wishful thinking and learning through advice as the strongest motivations. The idea
that people could choose the medium and the content that they want to consume in order to get some
specific things out of them was, at some point in 1970, subsumed to Abraham Maslow’s Needs and
Motivation Theory, which was related to the author’s Hierarchy of Needs, suggesting that the media
actually satisfied needs from one or more of five categories: Biological/Physical, Security/Safety,
Social/Belonging, Ego/Self-Respect and Self-actualization10
. In its second stage of development, UGT
acquired four categories of uses of media, which were emphasized by Denis McQuail’s studies. Therefore
there were four motivations for people to turn to certain media products and channels: diversion, personal
relationships, personal identity and surveillance. Finally, now, in the third stage, studies are focusing on
discovering the connections between the reasons of mediatic use and the gratifications, thus aiming at
linking the result with the need in a reserved manner.
In today’s age of Internet, UGT is particularly appropriate for studying audiences, as it provides a special
sort of control over them. Under the premises of this theory, the field of online audiences can be
investigated in a tridimensional way, in terms of content, process and social gratification. When it comes
to social media, hence to Facebook, UGT explains that users’ motivations to engage in a social network
are some of the following: social and affection, need to vent negative feelings, recognition, entertainment
or cognitive needs11
. Now, actions on Facebook determined by each of these categories of needs can
speak loudly about the personality of the individual. They create an aura that the user can or can not be
aware of and brand the user, especially as a long-term consequence. Especially since Facebook is a
medium where people not only construct and maintain connections but is also one that hosts networks
that are articulated online, which means that there are connections who only get their information about
you from your Facebook timeline and daily activity.
To give an idea about what actions like sharing on Facebook means to its users, The New York Times has
undertaken a study in 2011 on 2,500 subjects that shared media products on their profile and it resulted in
a list of five emotional, psychological grounds – gratifications – on which the subjects base their online
behaviour:
Altruism. We share to bring valuable and entertaining content to others. We think about what our
friends want to know, and try to help them out.
10
Uses and Gratifications Theory. Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application. West, Richard L., and Lynn H. Turner, Boston: McGraw-Hill, 392-409, 2010 11
Generational Differences in Content Generation in Social Media: The Roles of the Gratifications Sought and of Narcissism, Leung, Louis, 2013
Publics and Audiences December 20, 2013, Covilhã, Portugal
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Self-definition. We share to define ourselves to others. Perhaps this notion is better phrased as,
“you are what you share.” People consciously shape their online persona by the types of things
they share.
Empathy. We share to strengthen and nourish our relationships. Sharing shows someone else
we’re thinking about them and we care.
Connectedness. We share to get credit and feedback for being a good sharer, to feel valuable in
the eyes of others.
Evangelism. We share to spread the word about a cause or brand we believe in.12
II. Personal branding
Self-definition can be considered either a goal or a gratification. For the sake of our study, it represents
the gratification, the satisfaction of the need to be seen in a certain way. It is very obvious in the case of
young people, students in our case, as they are more concerned about creating an image of themselves in
society and they understand, better than any other generation, that their online presence determines how
they are viewed and that they are constantly being put under a “digital microscope”, as Colin Hunter,
specialist in commercial behavioral change, calls it.13
Facebook has become a double-edged sword for its users in terms of personal branding. In a climate of
voluntary transparency, personal branding is the subtext of all kinds of Facebook activity and, of course,
other social networking. The New York Times study in 2011 also outlined six consequences of the main
motives for sharing, in the form of six Facebook personas, not all mutually exclusive. The researchers
discovered that individuals tried to build a brand through their shares, and the most common ones were
the Altruists, Careerists, Hipsters, Boomerangs, Connectors or Selectives14
.
Methodology: study I and study II Our objective was to analyze how students behave on Facebook and how they use media materials on
their profiles. To fulfill our objectives we divided our research in two parts, for each of them using two
different instruments: monitoring (study I) and questionnaire (study II).
The participants for both parts of our research were 50 students from Romania, Poland, Portugal, Estonia,
Latvia, Brazil, Germany, Slovakia and Malta with ages between 20 and 26 years old. The process of
selection was layered and proportional; we selected 10 students for every 5 categories in which we folded
up the main field of studies. We created the following categories that included similar field of study or
related in some way: Social Sciences & Languages (Philosophy, Psychology, Political Studies, History,
Languages, Journalism), Engineering & Exact sciences (Architecture, Construction, Engineering,
Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry), Management & Law (Marketing, Economics, Management, Law),
Natural Sciences & Sports ( Biology, Geography, Geology, Sports), Computer Science & Health
(Informatics, Biotechnology, Medicine).
12
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/social-media/139716/5-reasons-people-share-news-how-you-can-get-them-to-share-yours/ 14
Ibid.
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Study I
In the first part of the research we monitored the activity of our users’ Facebook profiles for one month.
The purpose was to observe what kind of media they share and associate with their profiles. For this, we
created and applied a table (annex I) with the following sections: personal posts (status updates, personal
pictures, check-ins, event attendance etc.), Internet Entertainment (funny videos, gifs, pictures, memes,
music and lyrics), media related to field of study (every post, link, photo, article, video connected with
what they are studying) and media not related to field of study (News; Economy; Technology; Lifestyle –
art, photography, fashion; Health and Sports; Culture and Education; Tabloid News – celebrity gossip,
lower Entertainment). The first two sections, personal posts and Internet Entertainment, were created to
help us understand in what way our subjects use this social media website. Also, by having all the data
from their profiles we can calculate the percent of media materials they share.
Study II
In the second part of the research we used an online questionnaire (annex II) with the purpose of finding
how our subjects select the media they share and how they interact with content on Facebook. Therefore,
we composed questions regarding the content that make them react on Facebook (comment, like, share),
aiming to find out the nature of the media, the field and the reasons behind these actions. The questions
were produced in a way that reflects the premises of Uses and Gratifications theory (UGT). Because our
subjects filled in the enquiry without any payment, we created a form that takes little time to complete,
with only nine questions (not counting the fields for name, age and gender). The manner in which the
questionnaire was built relied on the idea that the user’s behavior on Facebook in general (not only on his
timeline) is relevant to the profile that he builds. Thus, we chose to ask some questions that were related
to the user’s habits of commenting, liking and sharing, which are partly invisible on his actual timeline.
We also used a 4-point Frequency Likert Scale (1 - never; 4 - all the time) to receive ratings for four
statements that focus on revealing the subjects’ attitude towards Facebook habits.
Results and interpretation Study I
According to the aggregated results, students from the field Social sciences and Languages showed
increased activity of sharing information on Facebook. Overall they have posted 251 items of various
types. However, people engaged with Management and Law are lagging behind only for twenty posts.
Students from Engineering and Exact sciences also showed relatively high activity of the exchange of
information posting 149 times per month while fifty observed people from Natural sciences and Sports
have shared only 115 times, leaving behind only Computer sciences and Health with 106 shares.
Regarding what information has been exchanged the most, personal post predominance is indisputable.
They constitute 46 per cent of the total posted information. Media not related to studies together with
Internet entertainment make only 41 per cent of published information with one per cent difference
between these fields. Withal, materials not related to field of study make only nine per cent of overall
shares.
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Although Personal posts have been most popular
field, least preferred information differ. For stu-
dents from Social Sciences and Languages it has
been economy with only 2 shares per month. For
Engineering and Exact sciences three fields have
acquired only one share per month: Economy,
Technology and Tabloid news. Management and
Law students have not shared any information re-
lated to economy and tabloid news. At the same time, Computer sciences and Health area shows no inte-
rest in economy, technology and tabloid news. Also, seeing gathered data about Natural Sciences and
Sports students, no interest can be indicated regarding economy and technology. To sum up, while Perso-
nal posts have been shared by everyone and most widely, economical news and articles have been shared
only three times by all analysed profiles of students, making it an area in which individuals show the least
interest.
Looking specifically at Information not related with studies, culture and education takes the first place,
leaving news as second with slight difference. Lifestyle, Health and sports also do not leave observed
46%
22%
9%
23%
Personal posts *
InternetEntertainment **
Media related tofield of study
Media not relatedto field of studyNews
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Personal posts InternetEntertainment
Media related tofos
Media notrelated to fos (allof them together
Social Science and Languages
Engeneering
Management
Natural Sciences
Computer Sciences
0
10
20
30
40
50
60News
Economy
Technology
Lifestyle ***
Health& Sports
Culture & Education
Tabloid news ****
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students indifferent in contrary to technology, tabloid news and economy where we can see relatively no
activity of exchanging related information between other users of Facebook.
Study II
Our sample consisted of 44% male and 56% female subjects and their average age was 22.5 years. As far
as Facebook consumption goes, most respondents reckoned that they spend around 1 – 2 hours (36%) or 3
– 4 hours (34%). But there was a striking 27% that admitted to spending more than 4 hours on this
platform every day. This fraction of the sample would, thus, end up spending more than a full day on
Facebook per week. These findings stand as a strong proof of how much social media consumption and
people’s views on them have changed in the past 5 years, if we compare them with Adam N. Joinson’s
results in his research on the motives and uses of Facebook. His sample’s (granted, not only students)
most common responses for the “time spend on the site each week were between 1 and 2 hours (33%) and
2 and 5 hours (32.5%)[…] The proportion of users claiming more than 10 hours of Facebook use per
week was small (5.4%)”15
.
Students have shown most fidelity to blogs that have Facebook pages, given that 29 subjects are
subscribed to such content. Therefore they enjoy more media that is niched on a subject, a general theme,
which may relate to the fact that 54% of them also admitted to use Facebook for keeping up and
interacting (comment, like share) with materials related to their hobbies and personal interests. As for
traditional media adapted to online (newspapers, magazines, T.V. shows, talk-shows, series etc.) and
promoted on Facebook, their content gains almost equal attention from the students in our research, with
around 25 subscribers out of the total 50.
15
‘Looking at’, ‘Looking up’ or ‘Keeping up with’ People? Motives and Uses of Facebook, Adam N. Joinson, 2008
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Another indicator towards the idea that students tend to use Facebook pages to receive media that suits
their personal interests and hobbies is the fact that there were 8% who added other types of pages to their
list, like the ones related to games, online shops, photography, “cat entertainment”, IT, architecture
studios, art, do-it-yourself projects, companies, sports, movies and celebrities. Of course, some of these
choices might overlap with content related to their field of study, which was chosen by 35% of them as
the type of content that is most likely to make them react on Facebook through comments, likes and
shares.
We also found that the content that is getting the most reactions on Facebook are news from our subjects’
area or region (68%), social matters (54%), technology (48%), arts (46%) and culture (54%). They are
also mostly keen on sharing materials that reflect optimism and positivity and they turn to controversy for
a change, with a 20% rate of subjects that choose to put out materials with some controversial potential
and only around 10% going for utilitarian, sad, shocking or even viral content. There is, therefore, certain
reluctance in associating themselves with products that deliver an extremely negative vibe. This is also
visible in the attitude towards low entertainment forms like tabloid/ gossip news, which may reduce a
user’s credit among his connections.
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Probably the most highlighted evidence of the students’ seek for gratifications in their interaction with the
media on Facebook is the statement that they mostly like, share, comment or post media in order to either
spread the information around or recommend and endorse it, with around 60% each. We also noticed that
they don’t focus on creating social groups related to a topic but rather care for the content that they
associate themselves with by giving it to others. Only one subject stated that it is the “magnitude of the
topic and its relationship with him” that makes him react and not the gratification itself.
The part of the questionnaire that we based on the Likert Scale makes it clear that the majority of subjects
reckon that they stay away from “extreme” behavior on the social network. When it comes to how much
each of the students’ shares, posts, likes or comments matter to people from their network, 43 of them
battle between rarely and frequently. Therefore, they believe that the impact that they can make through
the way they engage media and how they appear on others’ newsfeed is important half of the time at
most. There are, nonetheless, 6% of them who, in fact, think their behavior means a lot to their
connections. 56% of the total are always careful with what they post on their profile and none of them
admitted to being totally careless about their activity. This means that even the few 8% who said that their
posts don’t have an impact on their friends still think their actions through before they do them.
On the other hand, no one considers themselves constantly active on Facebook through comments, shares,
likes and posts and 68% actually think that they rarely use these instruments while spending time on the
platform. So out of the 1 to 4 hours of daily Facebook use, only 26% of the students are frequently
engaging media into their routine, which results in a generally more consumerist, passive, even careful
attitude, we could say. Moreover, 56% of the subjects said they rarely use the interactive buttons that have
been implemented on almost every website, especially on the online versions of traditional media. Only
6% use them all the time and 36% say it is a frequent action in their media consuming routine.
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Students have shown a great deal of interest in making a point through the articles, journalistic
photography and videos that they share on a quite large scale. Most of them, 58%, leave their posts open
for their friends’ access and 34% make them public, while 8% take advantage of the option to customize
each post’s audience in order to target it specifically.
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The students from our sample mostly agreed that their personal image is affected by their activity related
to mass media on Facebook. In other words, 74% of them believe that what they choose to post creates an
image of their online persona, which eventually leads to the creation of a personal brand that is or isn’t
what they wanted people to see them as. There are, nonetheless, 10% that don’t consider their behavior
relevant to their image, but these subjects still act careful when they choose their postings and, as we have
previously noted, the posts that they interact with still fall under certain categories like sad, controversial,
positive etc.
Conclusions There is always a purpose in students’ behavior on Facebook. Whether it is a reckless or a prudent one,
whether he is an over-sharer or the type that silently scrolls through information on the newsfeed without
reacting, they manage to make their profiles speak for them. Building a personal social media brand is not
always something they can voluntarily start or stop doing, but they are relating their actions to the
external image that they want to create. Even in the case of a network dominated by personal posts, as the
one our sample constitutes, mass media still outgrows the amount of entertaining memes, funny cats,
hilarious skating injuries and other similar content on the Internet. And as Facebook is perfecting its
instruments in order to personalize and promote a more and more intuitive and clean newsfeed, students’
timelines and their overall behavior might also take a turn towards maintaining and constructing a profile
that is more neat and more accurately related to their personalities.
References
Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media, Kaplan Andreas,
Haenlein Michael, 2010
College Students’ Use of Social Media: Site Preferences, Uses and Gratifications Theory
Revisited, Bellarmine A. Ezumah, International Journal of Business and Social Science, Vol. 4,
No. 5; May 2013
The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives on gratifications research, Blumler J.G.
& Katz, E., 1974
Uses and Gratifications Theory. Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application.
West, Richard L., and Lynn H. Turner, Boston, 2010
Publics and Audiences December 20, 2013, Covilhã, Portugal
13
Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Anita Whiting and David
Williams, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16
Generational Differences in Content Generation in Social Media: The Roles of the Gratifications
Sought and of Narcissism, Leung and Louis, 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/facebook-is-the-news-in-2-
charts/282301/
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2013/12/06/social-networks-people-using-get-breaking-news
http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=761090
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-
change.pdf
http://millennialbranding.com/2012/01/millennial-branding-gen-y-facebook-study/
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/social-media/139716/5-reasons-people-share-news-how-you-can-get-them-to-share-yours/
Annexes Questionnaire
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Publics and Audiences December 20, 2013, Covilhã, Portugal
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Monitoring table template
* Status updates, personal pictures, check-ins, event attendance.
** Funny videos/pictures/gifs, memes, music & lyrics.
*** Arts, Photography, Fashion.
**** Celebrity gossip – Lower Entertainment.
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