The Enlivenment of Public Opinion in the New Era: Exploring the Power of Social Media on Political Consciousness in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

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.

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