This study aimed to uncover the influential factors of community participation in a rural poverty alleviation programme in Malaysia. A quantitative approach was used, and data were collected through a self-administered survey questionnaire from 260 respondents of the Iban community in Malaysia. The study considered 22 influential factors (18 as independent variables and 4 as dependent variables) to measure the level of community participation in decision-making, implementation, benefits sharing and evaluation. The study explored how these influential factors interacted with participation in a rural poverty alleviation programme. The results found a diversity of interacting factors within the forms of participation at the implementation level. The article contributes a dynamic and multi-dimensional understanding of how influential factors shape community participation processes. The findings are an important indicator to policy-makers and development practitioners.

This research aimed to study how social media has changed the culture of communication in Saudi Arabia. The research surveyed 400 Saudis who use social media in order to discover likely relationships between degree of expression, political consciousness, amount of social media use, apparent attitude climate, government censorship and purposes for using social media. A survey questionnaire was used to answer projected hypotheses and research questions, and the data was analyzed using SPSS software. The results found solid connections between different variances, namely the amount of social media practice, degree of expression liberty, and level of political consciousness. Also, a strong and substantial effect was found on the way that people perceive the opinion climate via social media. Furthermore, entertainment was the primary reason why Saudis use social media that prejudiced their expression freedom, political consciousness and perceived opinion climate. The study is applicable to the youth as well as the adult population in Saudi Arabia in relation to opinion and political conscience. Only a few studies have drawn attention to the link between political conscience and use of social media, and this research focuses on the novelty and genuineness of research by using the population from a Kingdom. Contribution/Originality: This is one of the few studies that have investigated the power of social media on political consciousness in Saudi Arabia when viewed from relationships between the degree of expression, political consciousness, and amount of social media use.