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Different studies have focused on the uses and gratifications perspective to determine the motives for using the Internet and the needs met by using it. Flaherty, Pearce, and Rubin have investigated the use of the Internet as a functional alternative to face-to-face communication (250). Their study examined the relationships between motives for using the Internet as a computer-mediated-communication channel and motives for face-to-face interactions. Papacharissi and Rubin applied the uses and gratifications perspective to identify five motives for using the Internet and multivariate links among the antecedents and motives (175). The five factors their study yielded are interpersonal utility, pass time, information seeking, convenience, and entertainment (185). .
The studies of others have focused on the actual behaviors of using the Internet. The work of Howcroft provides an empirical study of the nature and usage of the Internet in a variety of organizational settings (277). Her work shows that the Internet is "useful for some people for some of the time, for some particular purpose- (277). Bakardjieva and Smith have examined how non-professional users interpret, domesticate, and creatively appropriate the Internet in order to integrate it into the relevance structures and activities of their everyday lives (67). They have identified "use genres- that were invented by users of the Internet. Their list includes participation in online support groups, holding together a fragmented national and cultural identity, sustaining globally spread social and family networks, political organizing, talking back to institutions of power, rationalizing everyday activities, and connecting local and global interest groups (80). It is apparent that there are several different uses of the Internet and that these will be used to determine the future of an ever-expanding medium.
This study will contextually analyze the transcripts of a focus group interview on the current and future uses of the Internet.
