Studying Facebook as a Source of News (Case Study of Afghan Youth)

Abstract

The main claim in this research is "studying Facebook as a news source". Facebook is now a news source like other media, and users become members of the Facebook virtual network in order to access the events of the day. The method of this research is a survey, and the measuring tool is also a questionnaire. After completing the questionnaires, the findings were obtained and analyzed at the descriptive level through SPSS software. The statistical population of the research includes all Facebook users in Balkh Province, Afghanistan. The sampling method in this research was based on the use of available people, and finally 500 people completed the researcher's questionnaire. The results of this research showed that the majority of users of the Facebook virtual network are young people, and Facebook has become a serious source of news among users, and in fact, the purpose of using Facebook for most of the respondents is to receive daily news. In other words, the importance of using other features of Facebook are secondary. It should also be noted that the main source of news for users was Facebook at first, and then it included television, radio, news agencies and printed publications. The lack of Facebook filter, the diversity of its news, the ease of producing news, the speed of news dissemination, the freshness, the brevity of the news, the speed of access, the ease of access, the production and consumption of news by autopilots, its universality, freedom of expression, are the important factors in the tendency of users to Facebook news in Afghanistan. The uncertain atmosphere (economy, security, politics) has greatly increased the need of the people of this country to the events.