The Egyptian public information seeking through social media platforms And its impact on their attitudes towards intellectual property rights

This study aims to monitor and analyze the Egyptian's public behavior of seeking information via social media platforms about intellectual property, and to identify the strategies used in information seeking and their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects resulting from this solicitation on shaping their attitudes toward the national strategy for intellectual property that came into effect in The Egyptian state in 2022. Based on the Information Seeking Theory, an e-survey was applied to an available sample consisting of (300) individuals from the Egyptian public aged 18 years and over. The results showed that most users are interested in browsing social media platforms to obtain information about the nature and importance of intellectual property only when needed, at a rate of (49.3%). The largest value for the relative importance of social media platforms in obtaining information about intellectual property was the “Facebook” platform, Followed by the YouTube platform. The most important strategies for seeking the Egyptian public for the most effective and widely used information about intellectual property from social media platforms were as follows: the search strategy, then the browsing strategy, then the monitoring and control strategy. The results showed that the effects resulting from the Egyptian public’s seeking information about intellectual property rights from social media platforms, where the order of the relative importance values of these effects were as follows: cognitive effects, then came the emotional effects, then came the behavioral effects. The results indicated that there was agreement by the majority of the respondents. (59.7%) said they did not know that Egypt is seeking to implement a national strategy to activate the protection of intellectual property rights. Among the most important difficulties facing the implementation of the National Intellectual Property Strategy are the following: the lack of deterrent executive penalties when violating intellectual property rights, followed by the decline in general awareness among the Egyptian public about the culture of intellectual property, followed by the absence of a unified body responsible for protecting intellectual property.