Dependency on Twitter as a news source and perception of its Credibility to users from Egyptian Audience

Document Type : Original Article

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Lecturer of public relations, Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University

Abstract

The study aims to identify the extent to which users from the Egyptian public depend on Twitter as a news source, motives for using it and patterns of this use, as well as their perception of credibility of tweeted news. The study was applied to an available sample of 213 Twitter users from the Egyptian public, and it used Dependency Model of Mass Communication. The study concluded that nearly two-thirds of the respondents used Twitter with the motive to obtain news in general, following trending topics, and getting breaking news. It turned out that Twitter was the most frequent source respondents get news from, followed online journalism. On the other hand, half of the respondents depended moderately on Twitter as news source. Most respondents indicated that Twitter is not sufficient as a news source, and that they resort to other sources to get more details. Online journalism came at the forefront of these sources, then television, and search engines. The respondents attributed this mostly to their need to verify the credibility of news they get from Twitter. This coincides with study findings that most respondents trusted Twitter moderately. More than one third of the respondents were exposed to fake news on Twitter. The study revealed a correlation between the degree of users' dependence on Twitter as a new source and the cognitive effects resulting from this dependence.

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