Use of Social Media as an Alternative News Sources Among University Students

ABSTRACT: Recently for young adults, Social Network Sites, such as Facebook and Twitter are supplementing and to some extent replacing the traditional media, particularly the newspaper as far as news taking is concern. The study is based on the Uses and Gratification Theory and seeks to explore the extent to which university students uses the SNS, particularly Facebook and Twitter to gratify their news taking needs. The research is conducted at the Eastern Mediterranean University with approximately 16000 students and located in the Mediterranean region, 200 university students were selected from three different faculties to participate in the study. Findings show both Facebook which is leading and Twitter the second to be increasing in popularity and preference as sources of local, national, regional and international news among university students, while use of the newspaper by the same group is in the decline, suggesting an inverse relationship between Twitter and Facebook on the one hand, and the daily newspaper on the other as a primary source of news among young adults. The study concludes that even though the social networking sites have become prominent primary sources of news for the youth, the much publicized death of the newspaper may, however, not be as imminent as earlier thought. Keywords: Social media, Social network sites, Newspaper, and Uses and Gratification Theory. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………