Implications of social media on end-user personality

• Main Authors: Abdul Hamid, Norsiah, Ishak, Mohd Sobhi, Mohmad Yazam, Siti Syamsul Nurin, Ismail, Syamsul Anuar
• Format: Monograph
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Utara Malaysia Press 2014
• Subjects: P Philology. Linguistics
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/14413/1/Nors.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/14413/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Social media are playing an increasing role in today’s living.In Malaysia, the usage of social media has shown a significant growth in the last few years.The importance of studies concerning social media and personality is increasing day by day in line with the popularity of social media use, yet research into social media use in relation to personality traits remains rather limited.The existing literature on social media usage and its implications on end-user personality in Malaysia are also limited.The current research outlined two objectives, which are to identify the profile of social media usage among users in Malaysia, including experience, frequency of use, purpose, and reasons of social media usage, and to examine the effects of social media usage on the five factor personality traits.The study employed a cross-sectional survey using self-administered questionnaire which was distributed among university students who use social media via printed and online questionnaires.The population of this study is students in one of the public universities in Malaysia.The selections of subject being studied have been carried out based on active use of social media in everyday life. Drawing upon the Five-Factor Model of personality traits, a research model that examines the effect of social media on personality traits was developed. Questionnaires for the social media profile are adapted from Pew Internet Report and the Five-Factor Model items were adopted from the International Personality Item Pool.Result shows that majority of the respondents spent below RM150 on telephone and Internet while more than 95% owned notebook computer and almost 79% owned smartphones.The highest score for purpose of using social media is to communicate, either with friends or families.The research model has been validated through survey data collected from 382 social media users, and the analysis results provide evidence to the hypothesized relationships.The current study generates new knowledge on the literature of social media and personality traits; it also sheds lights on the social media profiling among university students. This research extends better theoretical framework to the existing literature through survey regarding the issues related to personality traits and social media.