Use of Social Networking Sites for Citizen Journalism

Abstract

Social networking sites have become important platforms for obtaining political information. Nevertheless, a crucial inquiry in this context pertains to the reliability of social networking sites (SNS) as a political information source. This study investigated the extent to which politically engaged online users perceive social networking sites (SNS) as trustworthy. The positivist philosophical stance was adopted to explain the phenomena. Moreover, the deductive approach was intricated in this study to test the framed hypotheses. A digital survey strategy was used for individuals who frequently engage with social media platforms. The data was electronically collected from October 19 to November 1, 2023. The target population for this study was active social media users in Pakistan who were between the ages of 18 and 34 and data was gathered using the purposive sampling technique. The ultimate sample comprised 384 users via using the cross-sectional study design. This study found social networking sites (SNS) the least credible among the various traditional and online sources. The strongest indicator of social networking site (SNS) credibility was found to be the extent of reliance on these platforms. Moreover, it is concluded that utilizing social network sites (SNS) can be an as effective means to convince voters to support their campaigns.