Abstract:
Social media platforms have become extensively used as communication tools and information sources among people through the advancements in online technologies. In the academic literature, beliefs, attitudes and behavioral intentions of social media users have been greatly investigated as well as their personality traits and social media usage. While Instagram has been prominent among other social media platforms as an image-based social network, limited is known about the characteristics of Instagram users and non-users related to their Instagram usage. In this thesis it was aimed to examine the relationship between personality traits and belief-attitude-intention connections of Instagram users and non-users. For this purpose, a comprehensive survey was prepared using Big Five Inventory (BFI), Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and Brief-Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Brief-FNE). As a result of this survey, data was collected from 690 respondents and results were analyzed by using descriptive, factor, cluster, correlation, cross-tab, independent samples t-test, ANOVA and multiple regression analyses. The results revealed that there were significant differences between Instagram users and non users with respect to their beliefs about Instagram usage, attitudes towards Instagram usage and behavioral intentions to use Instagram. Additionally, positive correlations were discovered between the personality traits of Instagram users and their Instagram usage that were presented in this thesis.
