Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of Social Media On The Social Lives Of People With Visual Impairment (Facebook Groups As A Case Study), Itto Outini

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This present research seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of why people with visual impairment use social media. I investigate this question using uses and gratification (U&G) Theory, which was developed by Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch (1974). The theory explains what people do with media and why. The purpose of this study is twofold: it seeks to document reasons people with visual impairment use Facebook and it endeavors to reveal which variables can influence users’ decisions to use one social media platform instead of another. In particular, I am interested in determining factors motivating users with visual impairment to …