- Title
- The perceived impact of social networking sites and apps on the social capital of saudi postgraduate students : a case study
- Creator
- Alghamdi, Abdulelah; Plunkett, Margaret
- Date
- 2021
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/175534
- Identifier
- vital:14996
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.3390/fi13010020
- Identifier
- ISBN:1999-5903 (ISSN)
- Abstract
- With the increased use of Social Networking Sites and Apps (SNSAs) in Saudi Arabia, it is important to consider the impact of this on the social lives of tertiary students, who are heavy users of such technology. A mixed methods study exploring the effect of SNSAs use on the social capital of Saudi postgraduate students was conducted using a multidimensional construct of social capital, which included the components of life satisfaction, social trust, civic participation, and political engagement. Data were collected through surveys and interviews involving 313 male and 293 female postgraduate students from Umm Al-Qura University (UQU) in Makkah. Findings show that male and female participants perceived SNSAs use impacting all components of social capital at a moderate and mainly positive level. Correlational analysis demonstrated medium to large positive correlations among components of social capital. Gender differences were not evident in the life satisfaction and social trust components; however, females reported more involvement with SNSAs for the purposes of political engagement while males reported more use for civic participa-tion, which is an interesting finding, in light of the norms and traditional culture of Saudi society. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Relation
- Future Internet Vol. 13, no. 1 (2021), p. 1-24
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Rights
- Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Rights
- Open Access
- Subject
- 1303 Specialist Studies in Education; Culture; Postgraduate; Social capital; Social networking sites and apps
- Full Text
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