An Investigation of Social Media Use in Saudi Arabia (original) (raw)
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The Use of Social Media in Arab Countries: A Case of Saudi Arabia
Social media or what is called social websites has become a crucial method for communication development and a key driver in the way individuals and organisations across the globe create a collaborative environment. Despite the fact that social media are broadly used among individuals, it is not well understood how cultural issues and individuals motivations influence their social and professional use. This paper aims to explore and examine the use of social media among individuals in Saudi Arabia using a quantitative approach to investigate and understand the effect of cultural restrictions on individual's motivation , users' attitude, intention behaviour and their actual use. Based on the study findings, individuals' attitude and behaviour towards the use of social media are discussed followed by suggestions for future work.
Investigating the attitude of the average Saudi towards the Social Media
It could be easily claimed, that the use of social networks has entered the era of maturity after almost a decade from their birth. The large technology vendors are all the more interested in getting involved in the Social Media game unable to afford the case of being left out of these easy, compact and huge potential markets. Many studies see the light of publicity and they all are somehow associated with this matter. This exploratory and mainly qualitative study of several parts aims to reveal not just some demographics facts related with the usage of the social networks but to delve deeper into the hidden details of this usage and, possibly, shed light into the positive and negatives of this usage both from a users but also from a business's perspective. In this first part the effect of the personality of the average user on his/her attitude towards the Social Media is investigated. The scope of the whole study is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia mainly because of its particularit...
An Exploratory Study of the Profile of the Saudi User of Social Media 1
2016
The use of social networks is entering the era of maturity. The large technology vendors are all the more interested in getting involved in the Social Media game unable to afford being left out of these compact and huge potential markets. This exploratory quantitative study aims to reveal those demographics facts related with the usage of the social networks in Saudi Arabia that form the profile of the local user. The findings show a general agreement with the main conclusion of other public surveys in the country pointing to a heavy use of the social networks, at more than 85%. They also suggest that the younger the individual the more likely it is to get involved in the Social Media and in the case of female individuals, though slightly less in population, but seemingly more intense use of them. Education does not seem to affect the frequency of the use as long as the individual are at least basically educated. Likewise income and employment status only indirectly affect this use ...
Objectives / Methods: The study attempts to describe the effects of social networking in Saudi everyday life and consumer behavior. The data were gathered from a peer-moderated and pre-tested questionnaire (appendix) that was, then, made available on- and offline. Findings: The results suggest that Saudis are making very heavy use of the Social Media Networks mainly because they want or need (or both) to socialize and enrich their cultural life as much as possible given the general lack of other opportunities available especially in non-central cities. They don’t seem to care or understand the possible negative issues associated with the extensive use of social networking. Conclusions: These suggestions are meant to lead to more systematically organized studies in the near future from the local authorities in an effort to better facilitate the organization of the online social community in the country and form policies aiming to mitigate possible threats from over-engagement.
AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THE PROFILE OF THE SAUDI USER OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The use of social networks is entering the era of maturity. The large technology vendors are all the more interested in getting involved in the Social Media game unable to afford being left out of these compact and huge potential markets. This exploratory quantitative study aims to reveal those demographics facts related with the usage of the social networks in Saudi Arabia that form the profile of the local user. The findings show a general agreement with the main conclusion of other public surveys in the country pointing to a heavy use of the social networks, at more than 85%. They also suggest that the younger the individual the more likely it is to get involved in the Social Media and in the case of female individuals, though slightly less in population, but seemingly more intense use of them. Education does not seem to affect the frequency of the use as long as the individual are at least basically educated. Likewise income and employment status only indirectly affect this use since they affect the amount of free time one has to get involved with the social networks. Finally, as expected, the more one is connected to the Internet the heavier the use of the Social Media.
Examining the level of trust of Saudis towards the Social Media
It is a known fact that Saudis make very heavy use of all types of information technologies, especially smartphone texting and social media socializing. The question is what are the deeper qualities of this behavior and how do they impact the Saudi society overall. This is one part of the study of Social Media impact in Saudi Arabia and is focusing on the motives or obstacles for revealing, or not, one's true identity over the social networks. The results of this preliminary qualitative study suggest Saudis are reluctant to accept the motivations for such an action but they don't seem to agree with the proved concerns related to the threads associated with it.
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Use of Social Media by Online Newspapers in Saudi Arabia
DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology
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Social Media Usage Behaviors of Individuals: An Application in Eskişehir
Web 2.0 transformation, which represents a new era in Internet applications, provided an interactive platformmore than ever before with its opportunity to enable create and share content by users and has changed the user's role as an active participant instead of passive audience of the contents. Social media, that gains a huge popularity in consequence of Web 2.0 transformation, gradually reaches users everyday and stands out as a highly effective communication platform. In this study, social media usage behaviors of individualswere studied in the case of the province of Eskişehir. Data were collected through a questionnaire conducted with 401 persons and both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the analysis.
International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, 2017
Social network sites (SNSs) have gained popularity over the last decade. Students use SNSs according to their personal differences, which are influenced by cultural and demographic factors. This paper proposed a model that included four basic factors that act as predictors of continuous use of SNSs. The factors are personal, social, educational and entertainment. The first objective of this study is to investigate the influence of the predictors on the dependent variable. Results indicated a full support of our proposed model, with an R 2 = 0.296. The second objective is to explore the differences between US and Jordanian students. An Analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was conducted and results yielded significant cultural differences and stronger than gender Motivations for using social media 49 differences. The test yielded 17 significant differences compared to 10 based on gender. This research calls for more research that tries to explore what cultural factors cause such differences.