Instagram Use among Czech Young Generation during COVID-19 Lockdown Period with Restricted Travel and Services

Abstract

The paper focuses on the social network Instagram and its use by Czech university students during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns with restricted travel and services in comparison to typical Instagram activity in the pre-pandemic period. As Instagram specializes in visuals, it is perceived as an attractive online tool for promoting a wide range of products and services, including hospitality services and tourism destinations. The research aimed to determine which aspects of the use of this social network were affected by the pandemic lockdown period in 2020 among the young generation of active Instagram users. The analysis of data collected from a survey of 1138 respondents, for example, showed that students often started to follow new topics - especially in the areas of politics, health, personal development, sports, or hospitality services - in the context of the pandemic and its associated restrictions. At the same time, they started to spend more time on Instagram daily, typically 1-3 hours longer than they did in the pre-pandemic period. The analysis findings suggest that this social network should be seen as an increasingly important tool for effective online communication with the younger generation with tertiary education.

Generation Z's perception of privacy on social media: Examining the impact of personalized advertising, interpersonal relationships, reference group dynamics, social isolation, and anxiety on self-disclosure willingness

“…On the contrary, if they consider that the risks outweigh the benefits, they probably will not disclose. The theory is thus based on the assumption that personal data has an economic value for consumers (Kim et al, 2019a;Stolicná & Pinke, 2020), and consumers can rationally assess this value (Dusek & Sagapova, 2022;Kezer et al, 2022).…”

“…Surprisingly, although many consumers express concerns about protecting privacy, they often offer data in exchange for relatively small benefits (Dusek et al, 2022;Kezer et al, 2022). This privacy paradox thus becomes a key topic in discussions about consumers' self-disclosure and, therefore, research into the reasons why they continue using online services that require their data or why they do not adequately protect their privacy (Barth & de Jong, 2017;Kezer et al, 2022;Kokolakis, 2017).…”

Innovation of the production process of engineering companies in relation to business portfolio

“…The authors state that based on this knowledge, companies subsequently determine the direction, goal and approach to innovation. In the context of unpredictable changes (e.g., the Covid-19 pandemic), not only customer behaviour changes (see Sagapova and Dušek, 2021;Dušek and Sagapova, 2022;Konečný, Kostiuk and Ruschak, 2022;Pollák et al, 2022;Pollák et al, 2021;Xiao et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2022;Skare and Riberio Soriano, 2022), but as Ashrafi et al (2019) also state, only such companies that are innovative and at the same time strategically oriented and managed have increased resistance to crisis phenomena and are looking for new ways to achieve permanent economic prosperity. The introduction of a mechanism for regular evaluation of the company's position will make it possible to identify potential problems in business activity already in the initial stages, which will allow the companies to develop and implement a set of innovative measures to solve problems and to neutralize them (Tyukhtenko et al, 2021;Phadermrod, Crowder and Wills, 2019).…”

COVID-19 staycations and the implications for leisure travel

“…The analysis of social media and online communities or conversations has played a critical role in the investigation of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism and hospitality, with a huge amount of studies already published. Research using social media has been used to track the emotions of tourism and hospitality employees with data from Reddit ( Park et al, 2020 ), the perception of cruise tourism in the aftermath of COVID-19 outbreaks on cruise ships has been examined using data from Twitter ( Muritala et al, 2022 ), the impact of COVID-19 on Airbnb ( Boros et al, 2020 ), and the use of Instagram by young people unable to travel during lockdown ( Dušek and Sagapova, 2022 ), to mention a few.…”