THE MOTIVATIONS OF UTAR STUDENTS IN SHARING SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS’ SCANDALOUS NEWS ON FACEBOOK


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Authors

  • Tey Yong Xin Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
  • Teh Boon Teck Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
  • Edwin Michael Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59287/ijanser.380

Keywords:

Social Media Influencer, Scandalous News, Uses and Gratifications Theory

Abstract

The advancement of social media empowers different industry to explore to a new era. For example, the evolution of the journalism, which changing from offline and traditional to online and digital news. Plus, it develops a new career, Social Media Influencer. The influence of Social Media Influencer cannot be underestimated because Forbes stated that about 92% of the netizens trust a Social Media Influencers instead of television commercial or traditional celebrity. No matter these Social Media Influencers are doing good or bad conducts, their every move has attracted the attention of netizens. Hence, the flourishing development of Social Media Influencer offers many news values for the journalists to produce the news contents. This is because Social Media Influencers offers two news value for news media, which are human-interest and prominence. However, previous research usually put the light on the news sharing behaviour of the readers rather than focus on a specific news beat. So, the researcher aims to investigate the motivations that drive UTAR students to share about Social Media Influencers’ scandalous news on Facebook. By focusing the study on particular news types, this study provided a new insight for academics or organization in knowing how the Social Media Influencers scandalous new influence the netizens’ sharing motivation. This study applied the Uses and Gratifications Theory. This quantitative survey method used Google Form to target 200 UTAR students. The result of this study found that the core motivation that drive UTAR students to share Social Media Influencers is the entertainment gratification, followed by the information-sharing needs, and the least is socializing gratifications. Meanwhile, the interest level of UTAR students toward the scandals of Social Media Influencers is high. 

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Author Biographies

Tey Yong Xin, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

Department of Journalism, Faculty of Arts and Social Science,  Kampar Campus, Malaysia

Teh Boon Teck, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

Department of Journalism, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Kampar Campus, Malaysia

Edwin Michael, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

Department of Journalism, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Kampar Campus, Malaysia

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Published

2023-04-08

How to Cite

Xin, T. Y., Teck, T. B., & Michael, E. (2023). THE MOTIVATIONS OF UTAR STUDENTS IN SHARING SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS’ SCANDALOUS NEWS ON FACEBOOK. International Journal of Advanced Natural Sciences and Engineering Researches, 7(3), 123–131. https://doi.org/10.59287/ijanser.380

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