Impact of Social Media Usage Patterns on Political Awareness, Political Participation and Voting Behavior of Pakistani Youth
Abstract
Media is a source of information, political awareness and change in voting behavior. The media significantly influences
politics. Social media research is gaining ground across the world, as it has become a mainstay in the field of
communication. Spending time online plays no significant role in political participation. The Uses and Gratifications
approach is used in this study. The students of Islamabad’s universities is the population of study. A sample, 1431 students
was selected through multistage probability sampling technique. The data shows that there were 697 male participants,
making up 66% of the total sample. There were 359 female participants, making up 34% of the total sample. These results
suggest that a significant portion of the participants in the study were young people, with the majority being between the
ages of 15-19. The results show the correlations between social media usages (SMU), social media patterns (SMP), social
media political awareness (SMPA), social media political participation (SMPP), and social media voting behavior
(SMVB).The Pearson Correlation coefficients show the strength of the relationship between the variables. Results of the
statistical model show that there is a positive relationship between social media usages (SMU) and political awareness
of youth. This indicates that there is a significant effect of social media usages for political awareness. on political
awareness of youth. The survey respondents were asked to choose the social media platform that they believe is most
effective in creating awareness on political issues. The results indicate that the majority of the respondents, 60.6%, believe
that Facebook is the most effective social media tool for political awareness. The most notable findings were that young
people who used social media more frequently tended to prefer using social networking apps over in-person interactions
with family and friends.
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