Relating,searching,and referencing: Assessing the appeal of using GIFs to communicate

Abstract

GIF scholarship largely focuses on GIF use in online spaces such as Tumblr, but few studies explore the motivations of GIF users in other communicative contexts, like text messaging or messaging apps. Through employing a combination of Q methodology and uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, this study explores why individuals use GIFs in their everyday communication. Three groups of GIF users were identified in the analysis: (a) GIF enthusiasts, (b) searchers and (c) referentialists. Subsequently, the motivations, attitudes and opinions of each group for using GIFs were explored by supplementing the quantitative data with qualitative responses that emerged from interviews with the participants. Although each group had motivations for using GIFs that mirrored previous scholarship – communicative power, emotive quality, humor, technical affordances and cultural connection – an additional motivator (i.e., relationship maintenance) emerged. As GIF scholarship develops, the present study will provide a foundational understanding of GIFs from a user perspective rather than from studies that were drawn from online spaces.

Keywords

GIF motivations Q methodology text messages uses and gratifications

Introduction

Smartphones are ubiquitous channels of communication; in the US alone, 97% of adults owned a smartphone (Pew Research Center, 2021). In recent years, GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) keyboards were integrated into the Apple text message interface, indicating the communicative potential of GIFs. While the GIF file format has been around since the late 1980s, the use of GIFs for the purpose of communication has evolved. Many contemporary GIFs appear as short video clips, cycling rapidly through multiple frames, yet have no audio (Poulaki, 2015; Prosperi, 2019). These GIFs enhance communication, be it within listicles, social media or text messaging (Wagener, 2020). While GIFs themselves are not communication channels, they do fulfill a communicative function much like other forms of media. For instance, GIFs communicate humor to build community among online groups, setting ‘in-group and out-group boundaries’ (Miltner and Highfield, 2017: p. 4) for these users.

Research on the use of GIFs as communication media is growing. Most of the existing research focuses on the communicative power of GIFs (Bakhshi et al., 2016; Grădinaru, 2016; Gürslmsek, 2016; Hautsch, 2018; Veszelszki, 2015) and their technical affordances (Highfield and Leaver, 2016; Miltner and Highfield, 2017), but researchers have also investigated its use in specific online communities, such as Tumblr (Bakhshi et al., 2016; Gürslmsek, 2016; Hautsch, 2018; Hillman et al., 2014). The present study, however, will evaluate why individuals use GIFs for mediated relational communication and interactions. Using Q methodology (Brown, 1980) and uses and gratifications theory (Katz et al., 1974), this study explores the motivations of individuals for employing GIFs in interpersonal mediated communication by examining GIF users’ attitudes, opinions and beliefs about GIFs as a communication technology. This methodology is becoming increasingly popular as a way to investigate the nuances of media use; it has been used to analyze more traditional media such as film and television (King et al., 2021; Robinson et al., 2020), as well as social media and communication technology such as dating apps (Richardson et al., 2020; Robinson et al., 2017).

How GIFs are used

GIFs are used online as a type of communication technology. They contain images, which enables them to act as quotations (Miltner and Highfield, 2017; Newman, 2016). Tolins and Sammermit (2016) stated that the ability of the GIF to portray an action makes it quotative, whereas other displays of emotion or action in text, such as emoticons, are symbolic and abstract. For this reason, GIFs became extremely popular forms of communication in online fandom spaces as a shared language (Gürslmsek, 2016; Hautsch, 2018; Highfield and Leaver, 2016; Hillman et al., 2014; Jenkins, 2008).

GIF usage on Tumblr is prevalent in the literature because the visual nature of GIFs was compatible with the platform’s microblogging capabilities (Hillman et al., 2014). Because Tumblr is a public site, researchers have been able to easily aggregate GIF content for research (Gürsimsek, 2016; Highfield and Leaver, 2016; Kanai, 2015; Miltner and Highfield, 2017), yet few studies have examined text messaging–specific GIF usage. Although a study by Tolins and Sammermit (2016) is one example of text messaging with GIFs, the authors did not verify their interpretive analyses with users for more insight, nor did their interpretations of the text messages explore the humor nuances within the GIFs shared between texters. Thus, this study will fill some of the gaps in the research about user perceptions of GIF use in digital communication.

According to GIF research, two main types of GIFs exist: (a) the idea-expressing GIF, used for reporting news, conveying inspirational speech or presenting data and (b) the reaction GIF used to respond to something said by another individual or as a reaction to a GIF sent by someone else (Tolins and Sammermit, 2016). There are three varieties of reaction GIFs: actual, hypothetical, and argumentative. An actual reaction GIF demonstrates a feeling that the user is experiencing in the moment as a response to something said (Bakhshi et al., 2016). The hypothetical reaction GIF can be used in situations where the user wishes to portray an emotion that they would feel in a hypothetical situation, known on Tumblr as MRW (My Reaction When) and HIFW (How I Feel When) situations (Bakhshi et al., 2016; Eppink, 2014). The least-recognized reaction GIF within the literature is the argumentative reaction GIF, which is essentially used as a means of arguing. This type of GIF was observed within Tumblr fandom communities as one way to argue with others about which fandom was superior (Hautsch, 2018). Beyond their function as ways to creatively articulate reactions to situations, GIFs can also be used as an art form (Torres, 2020). While there are other established GIF typologies, this study will primarily analyze reaction GIFs, as these are the most commonly used as a form of digital communication.

Uses and gratifications of GIFs

Uses and gratifications (U&G) theory posits that media audiences and users are active in their consumption (Katz et al., 1974). U&G was first used to examine why audiences used mass media, what their needs were, and the gratification that fulfilled their needs when interacting with the mass media. The model is grounded in five main assumptions: (a) the audience is active and goal directed with its media use, (b) the audience members are active in choosing media that will satisfy their needs, (c) media compete with other media to satisfy the audience’s needs, (d) people can recognize their interests and motives and (e) value judgements on the media should only be assessed by the audience (Katz et al., 1974).

The four categories of media use proposed by Lasswell (1948) were surveillance, correlation, entertainment and socialization; however, Sundar and Limperos (2013) have posited that new forms of media require nuanced gratifications not present in the original, broader conceptualizations of uses and gratifications. Much of newer U&G research focuses on platforms (eg Facebook) rather than on the content used to communicate. Though there has been extensive work examining the U&G of other online communication, such as hashtags (including U&Gs such as amusing, organizing, designing, conforming, trendgaging, bonding, inspiring, reaching, summarizing and endorsing; see Rauschnabel et al., 2019), there is far less research on the U&G of non-textual language. When Bakhshi et al. (2016) examined the technical aspects of GIFs, they found that users preferred some aspects of GIFs more than others. Thus, they found that it was the affordances of GIFs that made them more engaging. Madden (2018) found that people use GIFs for humor and shared connection over popular culture; the research, however, appears to only mention these in a cursory manner without discussing the implications. Sundar and Limperos (2013) argue that when new forms of media are analyzed within a U&G framework, they should be studied in the context of their affordances, which are the qualities of a media that allow for different communication strategies. For this purpose, the current study uses an affordance approach to establishing the U&G of interpersonal GIF use.

GIF affordances

GIFs have become a prevalent form of communication due to several affordances: technical affordances, communicative power, emotive quality, humor and cultural connection.

Technical affordances

There are several technical affordances of GIFs, including repetition/looping, short duration and remixability – indicating that GIFs offer additional layers of meaning for messages as well as an esthetic or cultural appeal for users. Once viewed, the GIF maintains the viewer’s attention; as the images repeat, the GIF content may be perceived as increasingly humorous. The repetition directs the viewer’s attention to the GIF content, where she or he seeks to understand the polysemic meanings of the GIF – or its meaning in the context of the conversation (Miltner and Highfield, 2017; Highfield and Duguay, 2015; Highfield and Leaver, 2016; Wagener, 2020).

Closely related to GIF repetition is the duration of a GIF. Because GIFs typically contain a single message, the GIF file format forces the creator to choose content that will quickly convey a message (Eppink, 2014; Gürslmsek, 2016). The GIF does not require the receiver to devote much attention or commitment to deciphering its meaning (Ash, 2015; Bakhshi et al., 2016), thereby making it an efficient form of communication.

The technical features of the GIF not only offer affordances to users, but they also inform and shape user preferences. In one study on GIFs, researchers interviewed the users of Tumblr fandom GIFs (Bakhshi et al., 2016). They found that individuals prefer shorter GIFs that have a face in them and that every second added onto a GIF decreased chances of reblogs and likes by 16% and 20%, respectively. Following this analysis, researchers interviewed 13 participants on their use of GIFs, and the following themes were found: preference for visual content over text, preference for shorter loading time over videos, positive reaction to the lack of sound and less need for commitment and attention. This research provided insights into the user experience of GIFs; however, it did not provide a full picture of the range of opinions on GIF use.

Language and emotion

Because GIFs are visual, they can operate beyond the linguistic boundaries of text. GIFs’ communicative properties are typically associated with conveying body language and emotion, identified as embodied response, co-speech and performance affect (Ash, 2015; França De Souza and Souza Couto, 2020; Hautsch, 2018; Schneebeli, 2019; Tolins and Samermit, 2016). Typically, a GIF will include a person or object performing an action, and because GIFs move through multiple frames, the person or object appears to be moving. Thus, a GIF acts as language (Grădinaru, 2016; Hautsch, 2018; Miltner and Highfield, 2017; Veszelszki, 2015), visually replacing elaborate explanations such as ‘I’m dancing with joy right now’ with a moving picture of a person dancing. Because GIFs are displayed with a smaller aspect ratio, it is not uncommon for a GIF to focus in on an individual’s face exhibiting an emotion. While emoticons and emojis could serve a similar purpose of displaying emotion (Veszelszki, 2015), the movement of a GIF amplifies and even exaggerates emotion, making it even more communicative (Hautsch, 2018; Highfield and Leaver, 2016; Miltner and Highfield, 2017).

Culture and humor

As a core component of Internet culture, GIFs naturally call for digital remix and allusion (Grădinaru, 2016; Tolins and Samermit, 2016). Because GIFs are often created with clips from TV shows or movies, they essentially become part of a cultural vocabulary (Miltner and Highfield, 2017). GIFs communicate a literal emotion or embodied response, and the use of a pop culture reference adds another layer of meaning, as the portrayed scene influences how the receiver of the GIF interprets it (Kanai, 2015). Further, the timing and placement of the GIF’s meaning is influenced by the context in which it is placed, leaving open a possibility for dual meanings to emerge (Miltner and Highfield, 2017). For instance, the GIF can be used to change the course of a conversation; by using a GIF that doesn’t exactly match the situation, the incongruity adds humor to the conversation (Bakhshi et al., 2016). GIFs are often polysemous in that they might refer to their originating source material (ie television programs or films), inside jokes from internet culture, inside jokes from strong ties or a combination of any of the aforementioned references.

The current study

Informed by the literature on the topic, the purpose of the present study was to discover people’s motivations for using GIFs as a form of communication. Because much of the extant literature on GIFs examine them in the context of online spaces (specifically Tumblr; eg Gürslmsek, 2016; Hautsch, 2018; Hillman et al., 2014), this study contained questions and statements about GIF use as a form of communication in the context of communication technologies such as text messaging. Hence, one contribution of this study is its focus on communication in text messaging contexts.

Because we were interested in discovering motivations and opinions of frequent GIF users, Q methodology was selected as a method. Therefore, another contribution of this study is methodological; no studies exist that use Q methodology to examine the uses and gratifications of GIFs. Following the lead of recently published study (Richardson et al., 2020), this innovative method was selected due to its focus on revealing the subjective opinions, beliefs, and motivations of the audience. Further, this method uses empirical data to quantitatively group users together by their shared preferences and then supplements it with qualitative data. The following research questions formed the basis of the study:

RQ1:

When analyzing the motivations of GIF users, which unique user groups emerge from those shared motivations?

RQ2:

What are user motivations for using GIFs?

Methods

To properly assess the subjective attitudes, opinions and beliefs of individuals’ GIF use, the study deployed Q methodology (Brown, 1980). According to Valenta and Wigger (1997), Q methodology ‘uses correlation and by-person factor analysis’ (p. 503) to correlate people to others with similar opinions based on their Q sorts. As in standard PCA and FA, the data are reduced to a few factors (or components, ie, the perspective shared by each group; Zabala and Pascual, 2016). These factor loadings are correlation coefficients, as they note the degree to which each participant’s Q sort was similar or dissimilar to the composite factor array (Brown, 2004). In accordance with accepted reporting in Q methodology, the authors have labeled these groupings as ‘factors’.

First, to ascertain general viewpoints on the subject matter, a concourse of statements is collected, which includes statements from various sources on uses of GIFs, such as academic articles, websites, magazines, social media and other sources where individuals may discuss the topic of interest. A representative sample of the concourse is then provided to participants who perform a Q sort, wherein the participants must rank-order (ie, ‘most agree’ to ‘least agree’) the statements based on their personal inclinations. Following the Q sort, the participants are interviewed, which provides additional qualitative data and context for the results of their respective sorts. After the Q sorts are factor analyzed, factors are formed demonstrating groups of individuals with similar attitudes about the research topic. The researchers then interpret the factors based on the statistically strongest shared statements that resonated with each factor group and the accompanying interview responses.

For this study, a concourse was collected based on the question, ‘Why do people like using GIFs?’ Statements were collected from an exhaustive search of academic articles (e.g., Bakhshi et al., 2016; Hautsch, 2018; Miltner and Highfield, 2017; Tolins and Samermit, 2016), online forums (e.g., Reddit), social media (e.g., Tumblr, Facebook) and online articles about GIFs, the goal being to compile a list of statements that cover the range of GIF use. Collection of statements terminated when saturation was reached (Morse, 1995) and no new opinions were manifested. A total of 96 statements were collected describing why people use GIFs. These statements were then categorized by general topic, based on an affordance-based U&G framework (as recommended in Sundar and Limperos, 2013): technical, language, emotion, culture, humor, art and other. Repetitive statements were eliminated, and similar statements were combined, and a sample of 32 statements emerged. To ensure the quality of the Q set (Watts and Stenner, 2012), the statements were then presented to approximately 40 students in a university course on social media, and students provided feedback on more accurate and clearer verbiage regarding GIFs. They did not present any other uses and gratifications and affordances that were not already present in the final 32 statements. The statements were then evaluated for readability and adjusted based on feedback to ensure the correct sentiment was apparent and the independence of statements.

These statements were then provided to the participants to perform Q sorts. A total of 31 participants (ages 18–30, 19 females, 12 males) took part in this study. Because Q methodology seeks to uncover general groupings of motivations, a large, randomized sample is not needed (Zabala et al., 2018), as each participant is treated as a variable rather than as a sample of the population. Rather than focusing on group demographics such as age, sex or other experience (Valenta and Wigger, 1997), Q methodology creates subjective groupings grounded in the similarities and differences of statement arrangements by participants (Brown, 1993). Brown (1980) stated that in Q methodology, the P set is ‘more nearly theoretical or dimensional than random or accidental’ (p. 192). Thus, to ensure that the results of this study were representative of the typical GIF user, care was taken in the selection of the participants to identify those who were versed in the use of GIFs. The goal in the selection of participants in Q methodology is to have a participant pool with a knowledge of the scope of subjectivity or wide variety of opinions (Zabala et al., 2018). To accomplish this goal in the current study, each prospective participant was given a questionnaire to determine their frequency of GIF usage. Only those individuals who were determined to be regular or heavy users of GIFs were asked to participate in the study. Further, it is only necessary that the number of respondents can produce the existence of a factor (Brown, 1980); five or six individuals may produce reliable factors. Typical Q methodology requires one less participant than there are statements to be sorted.

Once deemed eligible for participation, participants read through the 32 statements and ranked them on an 11-point scale ranging from ‘Most agree/most like me’ (+5) to ‘Least agree/least like me’ (−5). Following the sort, participants were asked six follow-up interview questions: (a) Why did you pick these two statements as the most like you? (b) Why did you pick these two statements as the least like you? (c) Why do you like using GIFs? (d) When do you use GIFs? (e) Do you ever create your own GIFs? (Yes, frequently; sometimes; no) and (f) Is there anything else you want to say about GIFs? The first two interview questions provided context to the top two ranked ‘most agree/most like me’ statements and the bottom two ranked ‘most disagree/most unlike me’ statements. Each participant completed the Q sort and interview in approximately 20 min.

The data were then entered into the PQMethod computer software and analyzed. Using principal components analysis, the researchers conducted an unrotated factor matrix, which was then subjected to a varimax rotation. Three factors were extracted based on eigenvalues, the point at which the eigenvalues values began to plateau, and the percent of explained variance: factor 1 had an eigenvalue of 13.09 and accounted for 42% of the variance in the data; factor 2 had an eigenvalue of 4.01 and accounted for 13% of the variance in the data; and factor 3 had an eigenvalue of 2.23 and explained 7% of the variance in the data. All other factors explained 6% of the variance of less in the data. Each factor loading was determined reportable based on a significance level of .01. Once the factors were determined, statements with z-scores greater than +/−1.0 for each factor were considered to be significant and to most accurately represent the factor’s opinions on ‘most agree’ and ‘least agree’.

Labels and interpretations then emerged from the statements’ z-scores and were supplemented by the interview responses corresponding with the participants that were sorted into each factor.

Findings

Addressing RQ1, three distinct factor groups emerged, composed of individuals with similar attitudes, opinions and beliefs regarding GIF usage. Regarding RQ2 (ie, the user motivations for using GIFs), the interpretation of the factors was derived from the combination of item score and the results from the qualitative interviews (see Zabala et al., 2018). Distinguished by the strength of like sorts, coupled with researcher analysis of qualitative statements, the three groups were identified as ‘the GIF enthusiasts’, ‘the searchers’ and ‘the referentialists’.

Factor 1: The GIF enthusiasts

As mentioned previously, the GIF usage revealed by the data in the literature and in the present study has been driven by five motivators, including technical affordances, communicative power, emotive quality, humor and cultural connection. Factor 1, the GIF enthusiasts, wa primarily motived by the emotive quality, humor and communicative power of GIFs. Although this factor broadly exhibited each of the motivators in its GIF usage patterns, its motivations relating to technical affordances and cultural connections were less apparent than with the other factors.

Of the 31 participants, 19 individuals sorted into factor 1. Based on the data relating to the significance of the positive and negative statements, as well as the supplementary interviews, these individuals were interpreted to be especially impressed by the communicative and emotional potential of GIFs. Those participants who were grouped into this factor appeared to desire to be perceived as proficient GIF users; these motivations likely stemmed from the GIF enthusiasts’ overall Internet savviness, or fluency with the online lexicon (Table 1).

Table 1.

Factor 1: Significant positive and negative statements for the GIF enthusiasts.

Statement number	Statement	z-score
18	I like GIFs because they can convey way more feeling or emotion than emojis can	1.668
29	I like finding the perfect GIF to make my friends laugh	1.569
11	I hate that I can’t show my body language in text messages, so GIFs let me do that	1.159
10	I love how GIFs can express my thoughts better than anything else I could say	1.100
13	I like how GIFs can act out what I’m saying	1.053
15	I like using GIFs to show ‘My Reaction When…’ for hypothetical situations	1.036
14	I think sometimes a GIF is the only right answer in certain situations	1.016
6	GIFs can’t grab you attention as well as emojis can	−1.511
16	I don’t think GIFs are useful for showing my emotions in a text conversation	−1.680
21	I don’t like GIFs because they’re part of Internet culture	−1.727
28	I don’t think that a GIF is that much funnier than a normal picture	−1.774
24	I feel like I have to use GIFs because everyone else uses them	−1.797

While many of the participants across the three factors reported using GIFs primarily with friends, the GIF enthusiasts were focused on the positive social outcomes of sending GIFs (as opposed to participants in Factor 2 who were more focused on finding GIFs). One participant explained this idea: ‘When I use them, it’s because I’m trying to find something that is good for the situation because it’s funny. . . It’s easier than trying to type something’. Not focusing on the searching process but rather on a desired outcome – to make friends laugh, among other things – were primary motivators for the individuals in this factor.

The GIF enthusiasts most strongly agreed with the statement, ‘I like GIFs because they can convey way more feeling or emotion than emojis can’. While the emotional valence of a GIF appears to be an important aspect to GIF users in general, the GIF enthusiasts placed particular emphasis on the fact that they used GIFs for emotions, particularly humor. For example, one participant stated, ‘More than emojis and texting, I use GIFs so people can know how I’m saying it. I almost always only use it in a funny situation’. To the GIF enthusiasts, GIF humor was used to break up the text in a conversation and facilitate a rapport between sender and receiver. Participants in this factor, in short, appeared to use GIFs as expressive extensions of themselves. This interpretation was bolstered by the fact that the GIF enthusiasts most strongly rejected the statement that ‘I feel like I have to use GIFs because everyone else uses them’.

Also of interest was this group’s predilection for understanding the intricacies of online culture. Indeed, the participants in this group strongly disagreed with the statement that ‘I don’t like GIFs because they’re part of Internet culture’. One participant described GIFs as ‘changing all the time’, thereby making them more interesting. They often compared GIFs to emojis. To the GIF enthusiasts, emojis were considered ‘basic’, stagnant and ‘overused’.

As frequent participators in GIF exchanges, participants in this factor were also characterized by an understanding of the communicative potential of the GIF. The GIF enthusiasts understood that the video-like quality and repetition of the GIF encourages people to look: ‘A picture captures one moment . . . a GIF is so much more than that because there’s motion—it’s more moments’. They disagreed to a significant degree with the statement that ‘I don’t think that a GIF is that much funnier than a normal picture’.

Because of the format of the file, GIFs can contain scenes from popular films and TV shows, which the GIF enthusiasts used to their advantage. One participant explained, ‘I use quotes a lot when I talk to my friend, so I can send the GIF instead of having to type it out’. Because of the GIF’s visual elements, one GIF enthusiast described the use of GIFs as more like face-to-face conversation than a typical text message conversation.

Factor 2: The searchers

Out of the five motivators mentioned previously, Factor 2 – the searchers – was primarily motivated by the technical affordances and humor of GIFs. Although this factor exhibited other motivators like cultural connections and emotive quality, these were less apparent with this factor than with the others.

Factor 2 was composed of six individuals. The searchers, as their name implies, appeared to relish the sometimes arduous process of finding the perfect GIF for the situation. For this group, GIFs were not used to feel connection to others so much as for the searcher’s own personal amusement. Further, the searchers showed a strong dislike for the use of GIFs in romantic situations. For them, GIFs were exclusively useful because of their lighthearted tone and not for serious subject matter; thus, searchers would only use GIFs in certain situations (Table 2).

Table 2.

Factor 2: Significant positive and negative statements for the searchers.

Statement number	Statement	z-score
29	I like finding the perfect GIF to make my friends laugh	1.942
9	It’s fun to look through all of the GIFs to find the perfect one	1.879
5	I like that GIFs are quick and don’t take too much time to watch	1.651
15	I like using GIFs to show ‘My Reaction When…’ for hypothetical situations	1.293
27	I use GIFs as inside jokes between me and my friends	1.110
4	I like GIFs because of their animation and how they loop	1.055
13	I like how GIFs can act out what I’m saying	1.038
16	I don’t think GIFs are useful for showing my emotions in a text conversation	−1.000
19	I use GIFs to feel more connected to people when I text them	−1.098
12	Using GIFs is an easy out for me when I don’t know what else to say	−1.393
1	I use GIFs because videos sometimes take too long to load	−1.403
32	I like how GIFs can help me express my romantic feelings to someone I love	−1.802

While all GIF users must search for GIFs, not all users were so focused on the process of finding the perfect GIF. The searchers, on the other hand, reveled in the challenge; the top two statements they agreed with stated, ‘I like finding the perfect GIF to make my friends laugh’, and ‘It’s fun to look through all of the GIFs to find the perfect one’. Even though the searchers clearly enjoyed the process of searching for the right GIF, they nevertheless preferred GIFs that were quick and easy to pass along; one of the most significant statements said, ‘I like that GIFs are quick and don’t take too much time to watch’.

In the interviews with the searchers, a common sentiment was shared that the use of GIFs depended heavily on the situation. Typically, GIFs were only used in situations relating to humor. While most GIF users are aware that GIFs are a tool for humor, this group was aware that their use was focused on the appropriateness of the situation. For instance, one participant said, ‘Primarily if I’m using a GIF, it’s fun to find something that fits the situation and have everyone “haha” it in the group chat’. Another participant echoed a similar idea: ‘It’s almost situational. Something will come up that will make you think of a GIF’. The terms ‘situation’ or ‘situational’ were regularly recorded in interviews with the searchers. Especially abhorrent to this group was the use of GIFs to be romantic or serious. The participants held strong opinions about this, regarding the use of romantic memes as ‘creepy’ and ‘stupid’, stating, ‘I don’t see GIFs as romantic at all’.

Factor 3: The referentialists

Out of the five motivators mentioned previously, Factor 3 – the referentialists – was primarily motivated by the technical affordances, the cultural connection, and the humor of GIFs. The participants in this factor did not appear to be motivated by other elements, like emotive quality or communicative power, for example.

There were four participants who sorted into Factor 3, the weakest factor. These individuals were those who used GIFs for their easily accessible displays of popular culture references. They enjoyed speaking the language of pop culture and potentially had an affinity for specific fandom GIFs; however, they disliked the process of searching for the GIF, overthinking which GIF should be selected, and participating broadly in Internet culture. For the referentialists, GIFs were used to connect with friends, but the relationship was not seen by the referentialists as connection; thus, referentialists used GIFs primarily for weak ties (Table 3).

Table 3.

Factor 3: Significant positive and negative statements for the referentialists.

Statement number	Statement	z-score
23	I mostly use GIFs from shows or movies that my friends and I are fans of	2.102
20	I like GIFs because of their pop culture references	1.839
27	I use GIFs as inside jokes between me and my friends	1.537
22	GIFs of shows and movies that I love make me nostalgic	1.274
26	I have never used GIFs to create an online identity	1.051
30	I like to send GIFs to lighten the mood in a serious or awkward conversation	−1.040
19	I use GIFs to feel more connected to people when I text them	−1.105
6	GIFs can’t grab your attention as well as emojis can	−1.231
21	I don’t like GIFs because they’re part of Internet culture	−1.285
32	I like how GIFs can help me express my romantic feelings to someone I love	−1.299
2	GIFs are perfect for me because I’m lazy and they are easy to find and share	−1.389
9	It’s fun to look through all of the GIFs to find the perfect one	−1.814

The referentialists used GIFs for reciprocation, a concept that was often mentioned in the interviews with those who landed in this group. For instance, one participant observed, ‘If there’s someone who likes to use [GIFs], I will try to reciprocate that and send it back’. Those in this group used GIFs out of social obligation and thus adapted their communication patterns to fit that of those they were interacting with. These individuals may not have initiated sending GIFs, but rather steered clear of GIFs until someone else in their network of family and friends would send one first. When they did send GIFs, they would send a GIF with the other person in mind, so that the other person would understand or laugh at the GIF because of its intertextuality.

Typically, the referentialists were particularly attuned to popular culture, like movies and television shows. They enjoyed sending GIFs to friends that relived moments from programs they enjoyed. One participant described sharing New Girl and Grey’s Anatomy GIFs with friends because they were all familiar with all the characters in those shows and felt that the GIFs were funnier because of their connection to those TV shows. Another participant shared and received The Office GIFs with her family, creating a shared experience between all of them.

The referentialists also saw reciprocity as a way to avoid awkwardness. These individuals did not want conversations to end poorly: ‘Sometimes people say things that are awkward or in poor taste. You don’t really want to respond, but you have the obligation to. So, a GIF is a funny, semi-sarcastic way of responding to it. And it can help divert the situation’. However, due to fear of social scrutiny, the referentialists also worried that selecting the wrong GIF might lead to more awkwardness: ‘I think that using GIFs . . . in serious situations tend[s] to make them more awkward than to alleviate anything’. Thus, referentialists were mindful of themselves and others when they used GIFs.

Although the referentialists were focused on sending pop culture GIFs (the two most significant statements for this group were ‘I mostly use GIFs from shows or motives that my friends and I are fans of’ and ‘I like GIFs because of their pop culture references’), they typically did not enjoy the process of searching for them (ie they disagreed strongly with the statement that GIFs are ‘easy to find and share’). They variously described this process in the interviews as ‘annoying’ and ‘frustrating’. Similar to the desire to avoid awkwardness, searching for the perfect GIF but not finding it could create socially awkward situations for the referentialists: ‘You get preoccupied thinking about it, which one will they find most appealing. It takes the focus off of the original purpose, which was to make them laugh, and now you’re concerned with your own self-image’. The referentialists not only disliked searching for GIFs, but they disliked the notion of connecting with others by sending them, significantly disagreeing with the statement that ‘I use GIFs to feel more connected to people when I text them’.

Discussion

In the early years of the modern GIF era, GIFs were more commonplace among Internet denizens (Bakhshi et al., 2016); since then, GIFs have become pervasive within interpersonal mediated communication as well, such as in text messages or messaging apps. Participants in this study viewed their GIF use through the lens of the needs they fulfilled. As mentioned previously, five U&G motivations for using GIFs emerged from the review of the literature: technical affordances, communicative power, emotive quality, humor and cultural connection. One additional U&G motivation emerged in our data: relational maintenance. These categories were also informed the 32 related statements that were collected and distributed to the participants of this study. The data then revealed three factors of GIF users: GIF enthusiasts, searchers and referentialists.

GIF uses and gratifications

Q methodology lends to a deeper understanding of phenomenon using the U&G theory (Katz et al., 1974) because it forces participants to reflect of their active consumption of a media form (Katz et al., 1974) – both in terms of sorting statements and then reflecting on the statements they most agreed with. As they stated, GIFs do compete with other communication media language, such as emoticons and emojis, but some people choose to use GIFs because they are more effective in communicating the needs of the users. In taking an affordance-based U&G approach, as suggested by Sunday and Limperos (2013), our Q methodology opinion groups not only describe individuals but their actual use of the technology, which allows for a deeper understanding of the communication technology itself rather than just the communicator themselves. In the case of this study, the three factors of GIF users all actively consumed GIFs to fulfill certain gratifications and needs, which we review below.

GIF enthusiasts use GIFs to fulfill their need for emotional and humorous communication. Unlike the other two factors, the GIF enthusiasts used GIFs as a means of articulating emotion and self-expression (ie statements related to these motivations ranked highly with GIF enthusiasts). Although these GIF enthusiasts appreciated GIFs for the technical affordances they offered, they appeared to be more agnostic to the technical affordances of GIFs than were the searchers. Indeed, the searchers felt the most strongly of all the groups about the importance of technical affordances.

In addition to using the search function for the ‘perfect’ GIF to send, the searchers also liked watching GIFs because they could be consumed quickly. Elaborating in an interview, one participant described it this way: ‘We live in such a fast-paced world, and I need to get across what I want to say quickly and understand it quickly’. This finding is corroborated by Bakhshi et al.’s (2016) results, which indicated that people preferred shorter GIFs. Interestingly, though, the searchers did not appear to prefer GIFs over videos based on loading time, indicating that it is possible that individuals in this factor did not consider GIFs and videos to be comparable forms of communication.

The referentialists appeared to have a strong impulse to use the affordances of GIFs for cultivating cultural connections (ie exploiting the ability of GIFs to provide short quotations of pop culture texts). They used GIFs, in other words, to reiterate their fandoms, similar to other users previously studied (Bakhshi et al., 2016; Hautsch, 2018; Tollins and Sammermit, 2016). One referentialist explained, ‘I love pop culture and my people I use GIFs with do as well, so it’s kind of fun to throw in pop culture references that I know that they’ll get what not all others will get’. Although similar findings have been discovered in other studies, the Q methodology employed here allows for a more nuanced profile of these users to emerge. While referentialists appreciated the potential for sending familiar pop culture references to their friends via text message, for example, they also appeared to despise the process of searching to find those GIFs. These ostensibly contradictory findings indicate the level of complexity that can characterize GIF usage habits.

GIFs and relational maintenance

One additional affordance-focused use of GIFs not previously mentioned emerged after the data was analyzed: relational maintenance. Based on the qualities of each of the factors, it appears that each factor exhibits different levels of awareness regarding the utility of GIFs for relationship building. The GIF enthusiasts were mindful of how they used GIFs to speak to others, as evidenced by the statements they selected as representing themselves. One participant stated, ‘Every person you text you have a different relationship with. I know what references or what GIFs make them laugh’.

The referentialists were also aware of the potential of GIFs for relational maintenance, although perhaps less so than the GIF enthusiasts. To the referentialists, the ability for GIFs to assist them in building relationships with other people was more important than the content of the individual GIFs, hence their repeated mentions of reciprocity in the interviews. One participant described the role of GIFs in their personal relationships this way: ‘The reason I downloaded the GIF keyboard in the first place is because my family started using GIFs, so I felt like I had to reciprocate that. I usually don’t send GIFs until someone else sends it to me first. Then I feel like it’s okay to reciprocate’. For them, their use was more influenced by social pressure to reciprocate with a GIF, especially since they did not like having to search through GIFs.

Finally, the searchers were the group who placed the least amount of importance on the relational potential of GIFs. The searchers used GIFs mostly for their own personal amusement. Although they ranked the statement “I like finding the perfect GIF to make my friends laugh” highly like the GIF enthusiasts, the researchers interpreted this data as the participants placing disproportionate emphasis on the first half of the sentence. Though the searchers ranked highly the statement about GIFs being inside jokes between friends, they also indicated that they did not use GIFs to feel connected to people (ie disagreeing with the statement that ‘I use GIFs to feel more connected to people when I text them’). These seemingly incompatible perspectives suggest that the searchers perceived GIFs as content more acceptable for weak ties than strong ones. One participant provided a clue for understanding this apparent contradiction: ‘I can feel connected with someone without using GIFs or emojis’. In sum, the searchers did not place much importance on the relational dimensions of sending GIFs, the GIF enthusiasts seemed to find them of great importance, and the referentialists landed somewhere in between. In any case, the potential for GIF usage to affect relational maintenance contributes yet another affordance-focused U&G motivation for using GIFs.

Conclusions and limitations

This study provided a number of important contributions to both the GIF literature and the U&G literature: 1) we contend that GIFs are ubiquitous digital language, and therefore worthy of study and 2) Q-methodology is useful not only for understanding people’s opinions but is also an effective tool for understanding communication technology, and U&G is still a irrelevant theory in today’s digital media atmosphere. There are several limitations to the study worth mentioning as well. First, it is possible that other groups exist that were not present in the sample. This sample, for example, did not place a priority on recruiting multilingual speakers for the study. Though many GIFs do not contain text, it is nevertheless probable that non-English speakers have different uses for GIFs. This concept has not been explored, and thus future research should explore cross-cultural uses of GIFs. In addition, this method does not account for changes in opinion over time that may occur, as the time of technology adoption may affect one’s opinions of GIFs. The sampling of this manuscript, however, follows the standards of validity, sampling and reliability methods of Q methodology established in previous work (Callahan et al., 2018; Richardson et al., 2020; Robinson et al., 2008).

Despite the limitations of this study, there are a number of strengths, including the theoretical contributions. First, we expanded the list of affordance-based U&G to include the affordance of relational maintenance, meaning that communication technology has the function of relational maintenance in the perspective of the users. And second, using the affordance-based U&G approach (Sunday and Limperos, 2013) allows for a more communication technology-focused approach to Q methodology in that our opinion groups describe actual user use of the communication technology. Thus, this manuscript offers both a descriptive explanation of various GIF users and provides a wider understanding into the affordance-based behaviors of users.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Scott Haden Church

Jesse King

Clark Callahan

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