Facebook as a site of information: A study in the Indian context

With the increasing advent of social media in perpetrating changes in social and political issues, world leaders also find it necessary to be part of a social media platform to communicate with their electorates. There is a lot of information on current affairs, world news, and political propaganda movements on social networking sites (SNS). This study aims to understand how personality traits and online sociability impacts the use of Facebook as a Site of information. This is one of the first studies focusing on this aspect of Facebook in the context of an Indian social networking population. The results indicate that online sociability, gender, conscientiousness, neuroticism and frequency of Facebook usage significantly impacts the usage of Facebook as a site of information. The parameter estimates of online sociability, conscientiousness, neuroticism and frequency of Facebook usage were all found to be positive indicating that the more a person embodied these characteristics/habits, the more likely he is to use Facebook for sharing links on current affairs and thereby as a site of information.