Facebook use for Political Information and Political Participation among Pakistani Youth

Abstract

Facebook is a leading social networking site across the world. Facebook has allowed its users to access political information and can freely express their views to others. Presently, there are almost 32 million Facebook users in Pakistan. Majority of them are young people and they use this platform form retrieving political information and expressing their views about Pakistani politics. This study was designed to see the effect of students’ age and academic performance (GPA) on their political participation; to investigate a relationship between general Facebook use and political participation of the students; to examine specific use of Facebook for seeking and sharing political information and its relationship with political participation of the students. The research was conducted with social sciences students studying at International Islamic University Islamabad. 158 undergraduate students were randomly selected from sociology, education, political science and mass communication. The results showed that Facebook use for retrieving political information determined political participation of young Pakistani Facebook users. Nonetheless, Facebook use for general purposes, age and academic performance of young adults did not predict their political participation. The possible implications of these findings are also discussed.