Use of and information seeking behaviors on Facebook among Illinois farmers and farm families
type: CreativeWork
description: To what extent are farmers in Illinois using the social networking platform Facebook and for what purpose? Do they use it to seek information related to farming? If so, what types of farming-related information are they looking for? This study aims to examine farmers’ acceptance, use of, and information seeking behaviors as they engage with others through Facebook. This study makes use of the modified propositions of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to determine farmers’ acceptance and use of Facebook. To ascertain information seeking behaviors, the tenets of the Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking (CMIS) was applied. The precepts of the Uses and Gratifications Theory (U&G) were used to determine the gratifications they sought and obtained through Facebook. This study applied a mixed methods approach to gather and analyze data. First, a survey of Illinois County Farm Bureau members and followers, as well as Illinois County Extension members and followers, was conducted to gauge acceptance and use, information seeking behaviors, and gratifications sought and obtained on Facebook. Survey data were analyzed using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test, principal component analysis (PCA), Cronbach’s alpha, and multiple linear regression tests. Second, a content analysis of texts on public and group Facebook pages identified by survey respondents was conducted to understand the types of information users seek. Two undergraduate students were recruited to “scrape” text from the pages and perform coding. Qualitative coding was performed by placing mined text into one of eleven pre-determined domains based on the topic spread in the public and group pages. The coding language R, its library tidytext, and its dependencies were used to process, analyze, and visualize the texts. Regression results indicate that those who are more accepting of the technology, those who see Facebook as a rich medium of communication, and those who have signi…
abstract: To what extent are farmers in Illinois using the social networking platform Facebook and for what purpose? Do they use it to seek information related to farming? If so, what types of farming-related information are they looking for? This study aims to examine farmers’ acceptance, use of, and information seeking behaviors as they engage with others through Facebook. This study makes use of the modified propositions of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to determine farmers’ acceptance and use of Facebook. To ascertain information seeking behaviors, the tenets of the Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking (CMIS) was applied. The precepts of the Uses and Gratifications Theory (U&G) were used to determine the gratifications they sought and obtained through Facebook. This study applied a mixed methods approach to gather and analyze data. First, a survey of Illinois County Farm Bureau members and followers, as well as Illinois County Extension members and followers, was conducted to gauge acceptance and use, information seeking behaviors, and gratifications sought and obtained on Facebook. Survey data were analyzed using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test, principal component analysis (PCA), Cronbach’s alpha, and multiple linear regression tests. Second, a content analysis of texts on public and group Facebook pages identified by survey respondents was conducted to understand the types of information users seek. Two undergraduate students were recruited to “scrape” text from the pages and perform coding. Qualitative coding was performed by placing mined text into one of eleven pre-determined domains based on the topic spread in the public and group pages. The coding language R, its library tidytext, and its dependencies were used to process, analyze, and visualize the texts. Regression results indicate that those who are more accepting of the technology, those who see Facebook as a rich medium of communication, and those who have signi…
author: Carter, Jarai J
language: en
keywords: information seeking behavior, Facebook, Illinois, farmers, UTAUT, unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, CMIS, comprehensive model of information seeking, uses and gratifications, agriculture, social media, social networking sites, SNS, technology adoption, technology acceptance, mass communication, internet, online communication, farming, survey analysis, content analysis
date published: 2019-11-26T20:33:48Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:44Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105640