The Media’ Gratification for Knowledge and Recreation Among Egyptian University Students

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلفون

1 PhD Researcher at the Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University.

2 Professor and the head of the Radio and TV department, Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University.

3  Lecturer in the Radio and Television Department, Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University.

10.21608/ejsrt.2025.428455

المستخلص

Background. Mass media have been widely developed since the introduction of the internet-based social networking sites. Social media platforms offered a tremendous reward for people in knowledge seeking and recreation. Youth and university students used to devour media contents to gratify their needs for getting any type of information and for entertainment. The current study was performed to investigate the relationships between the need for knowledge acquisition as well as for entertainment and social media interactions among Egyptian university students. Needs-based theories of “use and gratification theory” and “social cognitive theory” were employed as theoretical framework. Method. A survey was conducted for quantitative study on 200 students from Cairo University who regularly used social media. Self-rating questionnaires with literature-derived statements have been constructed in two independent variables (motives for seeking information and knowledge, along with motives for entertainment and relaxation) and one dependent variable (social media interactions). Mediators such as the gender, type of the study, year of the study, and GPA ranks were introduced. The survey was conducted through Google Forms and analyzed statistically by SPSS version 20 as well as StataMP software. Results. Most of the students spent more than 2 hours per day on social media platforms. “Facebook” was the mostly used platform for knowledge seeking and “TikTok” for recreation. Participants valued the issues of privacy and credibility on using media sites. Findings regarding “Pearson’s correlation coefficients” as well as regression weights in “Structural Equation Modeling” evidenced significant direct correlations and positive impacts of the motives for knowledge seeking and recreation on social media interaction. Furthermore, indirect positive impacts were added on the motives for knowledge seeking through “GPA ranks” and “year of the study”, and on the motives for recreation through “GPA ranks” only. Conclusion. Motives for knowledge and information acquisition along with motives for recreation and entertainment drove Egyptian university students to overuse social media platforms. The “gender” and “type of the study” revealed no indirect effects while “GPA ranks” and “year of the study” showed positive indirect impacts of these needs on social media usage.
 

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