An Application of Uses and Gratification Theory Towards the Saudi Citizens' Motivations on Social Media to Consume News via Their Mobile Devices: A Survey of Al Madinah Community

Abstract

This dissertation aims to better understand how Saudi citizens, particularly Al-Madinah citizens, consume their news via social media platforms. This dissertation employed the uses and gratification theory and adopted a quantitative method through the use of a descriptive online survey (Qualtrics) to answer the research questions and hypotheses. Therefore, snowball sampling tactics were used to reach 233 participants who received the questionnaire between January 15th, 2022, and July 15th, 2022. This dissertation's findings indicate two major motivations for news consumption: information seeking and personal preferences. This dissertation also finds that Saudis, particularly Al-Madinah citizens, tend to consume news via social media urgently, and they tend to consume their news about social events first, followed by the royal decrees' news, then sports news. Furthermore, this dissertation also finds that Saudi citizens in Al-Madinah prefer E-news accounts, which leads to a full belief in consuming news content that is quick, concise, and easy. The findings of this dissertation reveal that being updated about specific fields via specialized organization accounts on social media is a great encouragement for Al-Madinah citizens to consume news. Last, findings also reveal that citizens of Al-Madinah use (X)Twitter as their primary social media platform to consume news, followed by WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Instagram.