Uses And Gratifications: Motivations Of Facebook Users On Political Participation

• Main Author: Tan, Sze Chuan
• Format: Final Year Project / Dissertation / Thesis
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: HM Sociology; JF Political institutions (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.utar.edu.my/4550/1/CMB%2D2020%2D1305952%2DTan_Sze_Chuan.pdf; http://eprints.utar.edu.my/4550/

Political participation has been regarded as one of the essential factors in determining the health level of democracy. The arrival of social media especially Facebook have opened a fairly free and interactive platform to Malaysian to involve in the online of offline political participation. This research focuses on Malaysian Facebook users age between 21-59 years old to investigate the influence of Facebook gratification needs (Uses and Gratification Theory) and demographic variables on Facebook political participation and offline political participation. Data was collected through snowball sampling process and a total of 388 respondents answered online questionnaire. Descriptive and structural equation modeling approach were used to analyse the data with Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23 and Smart PLS 3.2.8 software. Result shows that, there is a significant influence between entertainment need and online political participation. However. There is no significant influence shown between informational need, social need, recognition need and both online and offline political participation. Beside some of the demographic variables like gender, education level and race also indicated significant influence on political participation.