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• Added initial notes.
First_Monday_2017
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Nigel Stanger
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We undertook a field study using personal interviews and scale questionnaries employing qualitative content analysis and some elements of ethnography. Conventional content analysis: [Hsieh & Shannon doi:10.1177/1049732305216687 Hsieh.H-2005a-Three] “This type of design is usually appropriate when existing theory or research literature on a phenomenon is limited. Researchers avoid using preconceived categories, instead allowing the categories and names for categories to flow from the data. Researchers immerse themselves in the data to allow new insights to emerge, also described as inductive category development.” (p1279) See template p1280. Justification: There have been few studies of social media use (or even information technology use in general) in the Middle Eastern context. We investigated social media use amongst Saudi Arabian youth. Saudi Arabian culture has «various characteristics based on Hofstede». There have been several earlier studies in various Asian countries, that have similar cultural characteristics (high power distance, collectivism). We suspected that the Saudi experience would be similar, but with some local variations «which?». We wanted to investigate difference in gender experience, and also regional differences within Saudi Arabia. Sample: The sample Introduction 1.2 Research problem Alnaghaimshi (2014) conducted an investigation to build a foundational framework to explain the reasons behind Saudi women refraining from using Facebook in particular, and to investigate their acceptance and use of other social media platforms (Twitter and Instagram). Even though the research sample was small, only a quarter of the Saudi female sample population were found to be using Facebook. Investigations revealed that cultural values and group expectations are the main reasons young Saudi females refrain from using Facebook. In contrast to previous findings about Facebook use, Alnaghaimshi (2014) found that 92% of the Saudi sample population were using Instagram, the most popular of the three main social media sites among Saudi participants. This was surprising as Instagram is all about sharing photos, a behaviour that is subject to serious cultural restriction in Saudi Arabia. The question arises about what makes Instagram acceptable culturally, despite being based on sharing visual content that can be culturally sensitive. Using Alnaghaimshi’s (2014) research as a starting point, this project will conduct a deeper investigation into the role of cultural and religious influences on youth Saudi social media users. Also considered is whether adopting features of social media that match the cultural and religious norms of Saudi users is critical for social media platforms to be successful in that region. Cultural influences and norms are explored at three levels: national, regional and gender. 1.4 Topics for investigation Prior investigations of user engagement reveal that focused attention, positive effect, aesthetics, novelty, endurability, richness, control, reputation, and trust are necessary factors and conditions that help to recognise and promote user engagement with technology (Khare & Rifkin, 1997; Jennings, 2000; Read, MacFarlane & Casey, 2002; Mui, Mohtashemi, & Halberstadt, 2002; O'Brien & Toms, 2008, 2010; Rozendaal, Keyson, & de Ridder, 2009; Attfield et al., 2011). It is clear that as for any technology application, these factors would be also important elements to engage users with social networking platforms. However, an important question can be considered when developing comprehensive and effective social media platforms that suit the needs of users from different countries: Are aesthetic and technical factors alone intrinsic to the willingness to engage with social media in a non-Western setting, or are there other factors that need to be considered? Ho, Raman and Watson (1989) argued that culture is important to information technology design: Information technologies are socio-technical in that they consist of people (the human or "socio" side), non-human resources (the technical side), and the interaction between these two. They cannot be culture-free because the cultural factor associated with the human component will always be present. An information technology that is appropriate in one national culture is not necessarily appropriate in another. (p. 119) That cultural differences are important is also supported by Marshall, Cardon, Norris, Goreva and D’Souza (2008), Marcus and Krishnamurthi (2009), Kim, Sohn and Choi (2011), Jackson and Wang (2013). In the Saudi context, user engagement with social networking platforms has more to do with cultural values, norms, and restrictions. Alnaghaimshi’s (2014) found that young female participants reported that they did not engage with Facebook because Facebook, from their cultural perspective, did not align with community values. Indeed, one participant reported that she preferred to engage with Instagram despite it being difficult to use, because it was culturally acceptable and widely used by her group members. Not only that, Alnaghaimshi (2014) found that family and religion interrelated with cultural influences on young women’s use of social media sites. Saudi participants reported that their family and religious beliefs strongly influenced what they shared and with whom they interacted on social media sites. Additionally, participants reported that their cultural values and family rules usually caused them to avoid exploring personal emotions in public, and to avoid communicating with male strangers. Unexpectedly, participants were found to use Instagram widely even though it is an image-based platform and shows content that could be culturally sensitive. It was not surprising that participants tended to refrain from posting personal photos of themselves. What was surprising was that they often posted photos of not only their immediate family’s children but also of their extended families’ children, with attached comments including the child’s name, age and relationship to the user. However, Alnaghaimshi (2014) focused on religious and cultural influences on social media use among young Saudi women only; gender differences were not explored. The influence of geographical region was also largely unexplored because the majority of Saudi participants were from the western part of Saudi Arabia. In order to enhance our understanding of the cultural influence on Saudi use of social media, the following framework questions are therefore posed to guide the direction of the research: Question 1. Are the technical factors of social networking platforms and applications the only factors that need to be considered when designing for an engaging experience with social media platforms? In other words, how important is it to give equal weight to both sociocultural and technical considerations? Question 2. To what extent do community identity, social and cultural factors (e.g., gender, religious belief, family) influence the acceptance and engagement of Saudi users with social networking services? • Does gender separation offline also apply to the online setting? If so, to what extent does it have an influence and what is its nature? Question 3. Is the influence of Saudi culture on youth social media use regionally dependent, and if so, how? Question 4. What makes some social networking platforms and application culturally acceptable despite being based on shared content that could be culturally sensitive? • Why do young Saudi women users tend to post photos of children while at the same time protecting their own identity while using social media sites? The answers to these questions build on the previous work by Alnaghaimshi (2014), by providing an empirical insight into how Saudi youth engage with social media and identifying what influences their engagement. 1.5 The study location area and population This study examines cultural influences on social media use among both young Saudi females and males in the age range 18–26, from three of the main regions of Saudi Arabia. These three distinct cultural areas are the middle, east, and west regions of Saudi represented by Riyadh, Dammam, and Jeddah respectively. It was known in advance that it would be difficult to recruit male participants inside Saudi Arabia for interviews as the researcher is a young Saudi female and dealing with males is usually subject to significant cultural restrictions. Conducting such interviews in Saudi Arabia could be possible only if done by a male. However, this was not an option for this research due to limited financial resources, and finding and training the right person could have been a lengthy process. Consequently, the research participants were drawn from both female Saudi Arabian nationals living in Saudi Arabia and Saudi males living in New Zealand. Saudi female participants were recruited with the help of the Assakina Campaign for Dialogue (http://en.assakina.com/). Assakina is under the supervision of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments. It was established in 2003 to promote moderation and to counter extremism that might proliferate online on social media sites, forums and groups. Assakina recruited female participants by advertising through its network of contacts within tertiary educational institutions in Saudi Arabia; it also provided interview locations in the three regions. Saudi male participants who are in New Zealand for study were recruited through student network. However, there is a possibility that travelling and exposure to New Zealand’s culture introduces other values to young Saudis and modifies the influence of their culture on their use of social media. This is an area that does not appear to have been widely studied. Alnaghaimshi (2014) stated that: In the research we questioned whether living in an individualistic culture created different influences on how young Saudi women engage with social media… After interviews and profile analysis, the way each group engaged with social media was compared but no clear differences were found among the Saudi participants. The participant who had been living in an individualistic culture for the shortest period, 15 days, had a similar experience with and behaviour on social media as the participant who had been living in an individualistic culture for six years. (p. 75) To ensure that both Saudi males and females were influenced by the same cultural values, we first examined whether an individualistic culture limited the influence of Saudi culture on males’ use of social media. This was done by splitting the Saudi male participants into two sample groups: (1) Saudi males who had been in New Zealand for less than one year and thus had limited exposure to other individualistic cultures, and (2) Saudi males who have lived in the New Zealand cultural setting for more than one year. Both groups were compared to discover any similarities or differences in cultural influence. Both groups’ experience and use of social media services were later compared with Saudi female participants living in Saudi Arabia. 1.6 Social media platforms to be examined The research aims to examine Saudi youth’s use of a variety of types of social networking services. The platforms chosen for this study are different in their modalities of communication. 1. Twitter: Unlike other social networking services, Twitter users can interact with others without the need for social connection authorisation. Twitter’s default settings are public; users’ messages or tweets can be searchable not only by members but also by the public. In Twitter, users usually categorise their messages using a tag (# symbol), which is known as a “hashtag”, making messages easily searchable. However, Twitter is a short-message service (SMS); each tweet is limited to 140 characters. A social media report (The Arab Social Media Influencers Summit, 2015), the first report of its kind on social media use in the Arab World, shows that Twitter is the fifth-most-used social media platform in the Arab World and the third-most-used platform in Saudi Arabia. The use of this microblogging service has been examined by many researchers (e.g., Honey & Herring, 2009; Borau, Ullrich, Feng, & Shen, 2009) in different academic fields because of its popularity as a digital communication tool. 2. Instagram: In 2015, Instagram, the free photo and video-sharing tool, became the fourth-most-popular social networking service in the Arab World (The Arab Social Media Influencers Summit, 2015). However, in the Saudi context, Instagram has been found to be the most popular service among young Saudi women (Alnaghaimshi, 2014). What is unique about this tool is its visuality. Users can take photos and videos, apply various filters to them and then instantly share them on multiple social networking services such as Twitter. Several studies have examined the use of Instagram (e.g., Jang, Han, Shih, & Lee, 2015). However, to the researcher’s knowledge there are no studies examining cultural influence on the use of Instagram. 3. Snapchat: Snapchat, a self-destructing message app, has a different sharing method from Twitter and Instagram; Snapchat is more like a personal and temporary form of sharing while Twitter and Instagram are more of a public and persistent form of sharing. This app has been ranked as the third-fastest-growing social messaging app with a particularly strong appeal among teens (GlobalWebIndex, 2015). What makes this app different is because it provides its users with a unique feature that makes shared content, either photo or video, dissolve after a few seconds of display. The user who shares the content is the one who chooses the display length; that is, how many seconds are taken to display the whole content before it is removed from recipient access. Additionally, it allows a user to choose who can watch the shared content. This app is affording its users a higher level of communication control and a higher level of confidentiality. Not much is known yet about Snapchat use and users’ motivations for engaging with it; little work has been done on the use of this app (e.g., Roesner, Gill, & Kohno, 2014). However, as far we know there is no study that has examined the cross-cultural use of Snapchat. These three social media platforms or services differ in many ways such as content sharing, privacy features and the retention of information. However, all three are some of the most well-known digital communication media used globally. 1.7 Importance of study This research is expected to be particularly useful for the following groups: • Workers and developers in the social media field: The findings of this study could be used by social media providers as a reference in order to enhance their services in the Arabic region in general and Saudi in particular. • Scholars who are interested in the phenomena of online interaction and online identity: The research findings can create a foundational framework that provides an explanation of different aspects related to Saudi youths’ online interaction and behaviour. • Saudi governmental and non-governmental organisations that are responsible for youth affairs and issues and have official pages on Facebook and Twitter: The research results could help them to increase traffic to their pages. • Businesses that have activity in Saudi Arabia and use Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat for advertising: The research findings can be used by marketing practitioners to develop a stable social media marketing and advertising strategy that can be used within business practice to attract young consumers. 2.3.2 How is Arabic culture different? In our research, we closely examine the relationship between social media use and Saudi cultural norms, and given that in a Saudi context religion and culture historically influence each other, Islamic values and practices are understood to be critical for understanding Saudi culture. To help in distinguishing between the two variables of religious influence and cultural influence, adopting a scale that measures religious influence on social media use would be a starting point, because asking people directly how religion influences their actions and decisions could be a question that is hard to answer. Research to date suggests that the two main measures of influence of religion on people’s lives are either a religiosity scale (to measure whether the person has any religious belief) or a religious commitment scale (for those who are already following a religion), and then only on influence in offline settings (e.g., Roof & Perkins, 1975, as cited in Hill & Hood, 1999; Sethi & Seligman, 1993, as cited in Hill & Hood, 1999). This research adopted a religious scale as a helpful guide to observe religious influence on participants’ usage of social media sites. The scale should be commensurate with the online setting. Given that no scale has been found to serve this study’s objective, the researcher was encouraged to design her own scale (discussed in section 3.2.5). 3.1 Research exploration approach: Ethnography Cultural elements guide group behaviours, and understanding these is critical to defining the environmental elements that influence Saudi youth engagement with social media sites. Given that this research is aimed at analysing the effects of cultural values on Saudi youth acceptance and use of social media, ethnography has been chosen as the research methodology. Ethnography as a methodology is appropriate for providing a detailed, in-depth description of particular social-group behaviours and practices that might not be accessible by a quantitative research process. Ethnography is defined by Murchison (2010) as “a research strategy that allows researchers to explore and examine the cultures and societies that are a fundamental part of human experience” (p. 4). An ethnographic understanding of culture is developed through close observation, exploration and interpretation of beliefs, behaviours, and practice from the group point of view. In ethnography, the nature of the inquiry dictates the research design. The research is exploratory, without preconceptions or hypothesis. Ethnography is a highly flexible constructivist process that greatly depends on fieldwork. The fieldwork is usually conducted in the subjects’ natural setting. The data collection during fieldwork depends on observation, which is subjective by nature, and what subjects say about their own actions, experience, opinions and those of others: “The ethnographer is both storyteller and scientist; the closer the reader of ethnography comes to understanding the native’s point of view, the better the story and the better the science” (Fetterman, 2010, p. 2). For this study, we are attempting to explore and to understand how Saudi youth engage with social media sites and to what extent culture influences such engagement, by collecting descriptive and narrative data derived from stories and opinions that reflect youth experience with social media platforms. Furthermore, given that these platforms are originally designed for Western users, the research attempts to gain a sense of whether platform design conflicts with Saudi users’ cultural interpretations and values. This research aims to create rich descriptions of Saudi youth experiences with social media, to interpret and build theories about the effects of cultural values on Saudi youth engagement with social media, rather than posing and testing a hypothesis of such engagement. The research approach therefore tends towards a qualitative approach. 3.2 Research design This project began with open questions, and the researcher presumed that she knew little about the influence of culture and religion on the participants’ choices, actions and behaviours while using social media platforms. Accordingly, we sought to learn from participants how culture and religion influence their engagement with social media platforms. We asked an initial and open set of research questions, and focused on the relationships between users' cultural and religious values and norms and their engagement with social media (see Figure 2 illustrating the study design). In the earlier stages of research design, while research data collection tools were being decided and developed and data analysis methods selected, all the potential ethical issues and concerns when involving human subjects and exploring sensitive areas of the research topic were addressed. Before collecting data, we ensured the ethics oversight process was completed for the study by taking several measures (more details will be given in section 3.7). Given the research locations and to allow for intermittent data analysis, data collection was divided into several episodes. Male participant interviews were done over two weeks in New Zealand. Text translation and preparation was done throughout these two weeks. To explain the collected data, coding was the key for developing an emergent theory. Accordingly, the researcher then took two more weeks for data analysis during which close reading of text and coding of key events, actions, feelings, beliefs and terms occurred (the steps taken during the data analysis will be discussed in section 3.5). Data collection and analysis (four episodes) Figure 2: Study design Once the first data collection and analysis episode was completed, the researcher travelled to Saudi Arabia where female interviews took place. In each of the three regions the researcher spent two weeks; interviews were done in one week followed by one week for close reading and coding. Once all the interviews were completed the researcher spent one more month focusing on the codes and making decisions about which of the initial codes were related to another, which contributed most to the analysis and which were most prevalent. After moving back and forth between the identified codes and comparing codes against each other, coded expressions, interpretations and ideas in data were grouped together into higher and wider categories. The identified categories were developed and refined through regular meetings and discussions with supervisors. The main categories were then clustered, the literature reviewed and compared with study results to gather support for the outcome, and finally, conclusions drawn and documented. In other words, the main themes identified (see section 5.3) and the conclusions drawn came from both collected empirical data from words, images, and symbols, and from the investigator’s prior theoretical understanding of the phenomena under investigation. In summary, the conceptual framework that was drawn from identified categories or themes revealed that the influences of religious and culture values and norms on Saudi youth engagement with social media platforms could be grouped into five aspects: acceptance of a social media platform; motivation for using a social media platform; determining the nature of engagement with social media; self-presentation; and intention to continue using social media. Chapters 4 and 5 will address these influencing factors and how they impact on Saudi youths’ relationship with social media platforms. 3.3 Research Data Collection 3.3.1 Interviews 3.5 Research data analysis 3.5.1 Text analysis Because of the relatively small sample size, textual analysis was done manually during data collection. Data was analysed in an iterative manner; and all the texts were susceptible to re-reading, as Dey comments: It is more realistic to imagine qualitative data analysis as a series of spirals as we loop back and forth through various phases within the broader progress of the analysis…At any particular phase in our analysis, we may return to re-reading the data or look forward to producing our account. The qualitative data analysis tends to be an iterative process. (Dey, 2005, pp. 272–273) It is important to clarify the term ‘text’ here mean any content that can provide a meaning or inference that the researcher can interpret, whether it is written text, photos, or even symbols. Given that our research is exploratory, the data analysis phase moved from specific information and measures to broader generalizations and theories. The data analysis procedure went two stages as shown in Figure 2. Figure 3: Data analysis process 3.5.1.1 Data analysis stage one: General inductive approach Thomas (2006) stressed that one of the purposes underlying the development of the general inductive analysis approach is “to develop a model or theory about the underlying structure of experiences or processes that are evident in the text data” (p. 238). The general inductive technique aims to create a number of categories that can capture the key aspects of the research data. The research themes or categories emerge through in-depth reading, rereading, and comparison of the raw data. “Inductive analysis refers to approaches that primarily use detailed readings of raw data to derive concepts, themes, or a model through interpretations made from the raw data by an evaluator or researcher” (Thomas, 2006, p. 238). Using this approach, research data analysis went the following steps (Thomas, 2006; Urquhart, 2012), which have been customized to fit the project’s nature ( see Figure 3): I1. Text preparation: After translating the interviews, the researcher prepared interview scripts in a common format and made a backup of these scripts. Then, the researcher gave each participant a unique code, which hid their real identity. Participants’ responses to the religious and cultural scales are also backed up. Additionally, the researcher sends a friend/follower request to each participant to ensure that all the participants’ profiles are accessible. I2. Close reading of text: The content of interview scripts, scale responses, profile and public data were read carefully in detail, as suggested by Brumett: The close-reading critic reveals meanings that are shared but not universally and also meanings that are known but not articulated. The benefit of revealing such meanings is to teach or enlighten those who hear or read the critique… A critical close reader is able to expand people’s knowledge of socially shared meanings by calling their attention to meanings that not everyone shares… A critical close reader is also able to call to people’s attention meanings that they know but have not articulated. (Brummett, 2009, p. 17, 18) I3. Open coding: After reading data closely line by line and comparing each participant’s interview and scale responses to his/her profile contents, the researcher attached codes to the data identifying what was suggested by the data. I4. Selective coding (creation of key categories): Once the researcher has finished open coding, the data is meticulously reviewed and emerging themes or categories defined. I5. Overlapping coding and uncoded text: The researcher then continued revision of identified themes to reveal any categories that were similar and could be combined. Additionally, the researcher reviewed text, especially uncoded text, to discover if there was anything relevant to the defined themes and whether they raised any new themes. I6. Refinement of category system: Finally, the researcher re-reviewed the identified themes and looked deeper into these themes in order to make decisions about which themes or categories were the most important to consider and which to marginalize. Once this was done, appropriate quotations from the source text were extracted to provide support for each theme. 3.5.1.2 Data analysis stage two: Grounded theory Given that the research explores Saudi youth engagement within their own context rather than relying on a pre-set theoretical basis, an extensive review of identified themes from the first stage was carried out to develop general conclusions. Grounded theory results in the generation of new knowledge in the form of theory; therefore, areas where little is known about a particular topic are most deserving of research effort. (Birks & Mills, 2011, pp. 16–17). Once important themes were identified through the general inductive process, they were further analysed using the grounded theory approach, which involved two steps (Urquhart, 2012), as shown in Figure 3: G1. Theoretical coding: In this step, an extensive review of identified themes or categories was done to define the relationships and underlying links between these themes in order to develop a tentative conclusion. G2. Building theory: The final summary or conclusion of the research findings was drawn from considering relationships between identified categories to reveal new knowledge. This new knowledge contributed to building a conceptual framework to explain the nature of Saudi youth engagement with social media platforms. 3.5.2 Data scale analysis SPSS, a commonly used statistical software package in qualitative research, was used to assist with data scale analysis. This software was chosen for this project for its capability to handle and to perform analysis of a large amount of data. Details of the analysis may be found in Section 4.3. 3.6 Research challenges The project has faced several challenges in the preoperational, data collection, and analysis stages. In general these challenges, discussed below, slowed process somewhat. 3.6.1 Government agencies or institutions and hosting the researcher Conducting data collection inside Saudi Arabia was a challenge as it required both Saudi scholarship approval and finding a governmental institution willing to commit to hosting the researcher. Since the research explores two sensitive and overlapping variables that define Saudi community identity, culture and religion, this raised barriers and made the task harder. The mission of finding a hosting institution and getting Saudi scholarship approval took almost three months, which slowed the project. However, after this period of negotiations and correspondence, al-Assakina agreed to collaborate with the researcher for hosting and for recruiting female participants. 3.6.2 Finding study participants Finding study participants was the main challenge during fieldwork, for two main reasons. First, because of delays in getting approval to carry out the fieldwork, the researcher started the work in Saudi Arabia in July 2015. This fell in the middle of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, during which people worship intensively. The end of Ramadan is followed by three days of Muslim celebration “Eid al-Fitr” and recruiting participants at this time of the year was a major challenge. Second, even though al-Assakina assisted with advertising for female participants through its network of contacts within tertiary educational institutions in Saudi Arabia, not many were willing to participate. Their reasons were their cultural values: they did not find it easy to talk freely with someone they had not met. To convince young Saudi participants to sit down and talk about their opinions and experiences with social media, the researcher and al-Assakina had to work closely with families to convince them to allow their daughters to participate in the research. So, rather than conducting interviews in universities as planned, many families were visited in their homes. The challenge was that many of these families are new to the idea of collecting data for research purposes; additionally, the audio recording raised a challenge for the community because of privacy concerns, which slowed the data collection process. Despite this, a total of 18 interviews were conducted in Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah over two months. Similarly, for male participants who were recruited in New Zealand, encouraging them to talk about their experience with social media required some effort as the researcher is female and that made it harder for some of them to feel comfortable, all because of the gender separation and cultural restrictions about communication between male and female. 3.6.3 Translation As all of the interviews were conducted in Arabic, translating the interview transcripts was the other major challenge in the data analysis stage. Translating an intensive amount of detailed information was time-consuming. To speed up the translation process assigning a third party in the translation task was the best solution. However, it was not easy to find unpaid volunteers who had good language skills, were strongly committed to the translation task, and could meet the deadline. More challenging was ensuring that the translator did not change the meanings of participants’ responses. To ensure accuracy, each translator proofread a different translator’s work and compared the translated transcript with the content of the source audio record. 3.7 Ethical and data security considerations Protecting and respecting participants' rights of privacy and confidentiality is a critical aspect of this research. Even though participants were free to reveal as much or as little information about themselves as they wanted during the interviews, all information was treated as sensitive. Given this, and to meet the University of Otago’s ethical research standards, the researcher gained two ethical approvals: “ethical B” for scale pilot testing and “ethical A” for data collection overseas (see Appendices I and J). Participants’ rights to protect their identity and ensure data confidentiality and security were taken into account when designing the research methodology. Identifying information of research participants in raw interview data, scale answer sheets, and profile analysis data was removed during the transcription and analysis process. Participants’ identity was handled carefully and securely, with each participant being assigned a unique non-identifying code. Their real identity was kept confidential and available only to the researcher. Additionally, audio-recorded interviews were available only to the researcher, supervisors and the translators. The third parties who participated in the translation task signed an agreement that described their responsibilities to ensure data confidentiality (see Appendix K). An additional security measure was adopted during data sharing and storage: an encrypted cloud storage service known as ‘Syncplicity’ was used for sharing and storage while in the field, as suggested by University of Otago IT Support. 4.1 Introduction Building on the theory of Hofstede's collectivism and power-distance cultural dimensions, the current study examines how national culture, gender culture, regional culture, as well as Islamic teachings and beliefs have an influence on Saudi youth adoption and use of social media platforms. Initially, this project had 28 individuals subjects. However, the study participant number was narrowed down to 27 participants because one did not meet the study criteria. The study analysed a total of 27 interview scripts and a total of 54 responses for both religious and cultural scales. Additionally, the study conducted an in-depth analysis of 68 various social media accounts belonging to participants. This chapter will discuss the results of analysing participants’ profile content and the responses of both interviews and scales, as well as observational results of related events. «Table 2, Section 4.2» 5.10 Who does what: A closer look at the personas of young Saudi users Based on the study results, realistic and practical representations of Saudi youth users have been created. These personas are synthesized from observing and investigating the behaviours, attitudes, motivations and preferences of real users. The developed personas can be considered as a reflection of our understanding of the nature of Saudi youth engagement with social media and the surrounding cultural, religious and family values that have a direct influence in shaping their interaction and participation in these platforms. As Cooper (1999) comments, “persona are not real people, but they represent them throughout the design process. They are hypothetical archetypes of actual users. Although they are imaginary, they are defined with significant rigor and precision. Actually, we don’t so much “make up” our personas as discover them as byproduct of the investigation process” (p.124). Developing such personas is an attempt to communicate real-world considerations revealed by this study to social media developers and marketers who use these platforms for business purposes and for targeting the Saudi youth audience. To engage more users, these personas can be used as a guide to develop, design and evaluate new user tools or to enhance existing features and tools. We present below the personas developed from this research. «breakdown of persona characteristics» 6.3 Implications 6.3.1 Implications for businesses Advertisers and marketers who aim to build relationships with Saudi clients need to realise that their target consumers have specific characteristics and needs that are highly influenced by their cultural values and Islamic teachings. What can work for other customers, such as Europeans or Americans, may not work for Saudis. Building social media strategies is not just about identifying which social media platforms that target markets prefer to engage with or the language they use for communication; it is deeper than that. Careful consideration needs to be given to the types of topic and content that they best engage with and the terminology that they normally use. Understanding such aspects might become critical for social media strategies. This section proposes several recommendations for businesses that are currently targeting or aiming to target the Saudi market. Using social media is one such channel to communicate with their target customers of Saudi youth. After selecting which platforms marketers want to engage on, they might need to consider the following: 1. Building a social media strategy based on common cultural beliefs and values rather than on platform type. Not all users come from the same background. Users across cultures use each platform differently and behave online differently. 2. Understanding how cultural values and norms influence the way that Saudis behave and communicate online is essential for developing a successful social media strategy to engage target consumers with corporate pages on social media platforms. The best way to do that is to involve people from that culture in the early stages of planning and designing a social media strategy. 3. Customizing and creating corporate page content that shows cultural sensitivity and conforms to the restrictions of target consumers. An example is to avoid using photos of women or religious content because these content categories are highly sensitive to Saudis. 4. Addressing customers as part of the group (i.e., collectivistic) rather than as individuals. Putting more emphasis on the group's benefits, success, traditions and values would be received positively by customers. 5. Choosing suitable media content. For written content, the use of words that refer to group, family, unit and interdependence can create a positive impact. Visual content, photos and short videos are the most preferred contents among Saudi youth. Using photos that show modesty, dignity, and community and family coherence can have a strong influence on consumer decision-making. Use of short comedy video clips can help to create a positive atmosphere to communicate with consumers. Also, images related to nature (e.g., landscape) and food are the preferred visual content by young Saudis. 6. Making use of positive power-holder opinions and reviews of the product is a focal point to attract more consumers. Given that Saudi Arabia is a country with a high power-distance score, power-holders’ opinions are taken seriously and respectfully and people do not rely only on statistics, figures and facts to make their decisions. 7. Evaluating proposed content with people from the target culture before publishing the content is the best approach to ensure it meets with the prevailing cultural values and avoids any misconceptions. Testing to observe the reaction and attitudes towards content can be conducted in an environment free from any of the cultural taboos. 6.3.2 Implications for social media developers By understanding the impact of Saudi cultural values and restrictions on the way that Saudi youth uses social media platforms, it is clear that it is critical to take cultural influence into account when designing a platform’s tools by recognising these values and restrictions. Cultural influence is a guide to designing engaging social media platforms. This section will discuss some significant designs principles. Asymmetric environment as a way to boost engagement with social media platforms The cultural orientation of a social media platform that targets Saudi youth needs to facilitate an indirect communication style. In other words, relationships between users need to be built based on attention only, and need to be either one-way or two-way. Even though that it can be argued that by their nature social media platforms aim to help people to socialize, creating an "asymmetric" social media environment does not facilitate meaningful relationships between users. However, because of the nature of Saudi youth engagement with social media platforms, we believe that creating an "asymmetric" social media environment, which allows users to have either one-way or two-way relationships with other users, encourages people from that region to engage with the social media platform without having to be an active content creator. Also such an environment would work better for those who are less open to self-disclosure such as Saudi youth. An asymmetric environment can easily turn the attention from expressing oneself and defining one’s personal identity to what other users are doing and looking at, as suggested by the personas developed during this research (see section 5.10). Additionally, an "asymmetric" environment can help to address the strengths and types of relationship among users, which is a fundamental need for many Saudi female users. With a culture such as the Saudis’ that sensitively deals with the interaction between males and females for both cultural and religious reasons, an "asymmetric" environment could be more culturally acceptable to these women, as they can follow whomever they want, without the need for reciprocity and without the need to create close relationships with those whom they follow. Privacy is a critical matter The study found that participants are generally not satisfied with social media privacy features. Several privacy concerns have been reported including unwanted people snooping on their accounts and misuse of profile data by unwanted and unknown accounts. To satisfy their need for privacy, the vast majority of participants actively take further steps to protect their privacy, such as concealing or even falsifying personally identifiable information while online. Social media platforms wishing to cater to these needs could upgrade their profile privacy setting to give users more options. For example, a "Hidden setting" could be added to the other existing options (public setting and private setting), and a PIN can be given to the user if they choose to keep their profile hidden. Adding such options means restricting access only to those whom the user chooses from his or her offline network. It is believed that this setting option will work well with Saudi youth by enhancing their engagement and acceptance of a social media platform. More management and control makes all the difference Based on our research findings, giving users more control over their data can override cultural restrictions regarding shared content; Snapchat is the best example of that. Giving users more control can improve their engagement level. This study provides two suggestions that can be considered to raise users’ sense of control on social media platforms: Rather than shared content being time-limited (e.g., in Snapchat’s case) or time-indefinite (e.g., in Twitter’s case) it would be better if the user is given the choice of whether content is to be permanent or temporary. Giving such an option will provide better control of content sharing. To improve users’ ability to control their network and to reduce the dilemma of managing multiple accounts, it would be better if a user were given the ability to assign his or her followers or friends to different groups that are not visible to each other. Content will be shared only with the group/s that he or she selects. Giving users such a facility could help to improve users’ levels of engagement, where a user’s focus is on one account instead of spread across multiple accounts. Facebook has similar function to control which groups of followers can see a post (e.g., Public, Friends), but the control provided by this feature is not as strong as what we propose here. Fostering positive self-image is a fundamental demand Saudi youth are collectivistic and thus are highly sensitive about their personal image and how it will be received by their group. In the females’ case, public self-image while using social media platforms affects not only them personally but also affects their whole family. Deriving from their concern regarding their image, Saudi youth, both females and males, reported that they actively take steps to ensure that their self-image will be received positively; for example, when they get a friend request they tend to check the requester’s account to ensure that it does not contain culturally inappropriate shared content, as they consider followers are reflections of them. Participants also react seriously when reading any negative comments in their accounts; deleting such comments is essential to them and, in some cases, they even block a commenter from accessing their account again. Management of public image is critical for Saudi youth. Maintaining a positive image puts more pressure on them that might affect their engagement because of their tendency to minimize their network size and decrease their sharing behaviour. This study proposes two methods in order to foster and help users to manage their image while using social media: Do not display comments in a user’s profile without their consent. A notification message must be sent to the user to whom the comment is directed, and the user will be given the option to accept or reject the comment. In the profile give the user the option of keeping his or her entire network or selected members of the network shown or hidden. In the case when the user chooses to hide a specific member or follower, the hidden member’s comments, likes, and so on, will not be shown to other members of the network. 6.2 Study limitations Despite the pioneering explorations of this study, there are several limitations to the study that must be addressed. The first is that the study is limited in its generalisability to Saudi youth aged 18–26 years only. The second limitation is that the study data were collected in only three regions in Saudi Arabia (middle, east, west), which means that the data are limited in terms of their regional generalisability. Furthermore, the scope of the project is small because of both limited timeframes and challenges that the project faced during the data collection stage. Moreover, besides those limitations there are also other potential limitations regarding the nature of the research and the research sample. In research on human subjects, there will be always a concern about the degree to which participants are honest and unbiased in their responses. Accordingly, it could be said that in this research, like any other research that relies on self-reported data, there are potential biases in participant responses. Given the sensitivity of the phenomena under investigation, participants may respond to interviews and scale questions in a way that they want to be perceived or in what they believe to be a socially desirable way. Undoubtedly we are, to some extent, unable to completely assess the participants’ responses to questions; self-reported information we collected is about participants’ feelings, attitudes, beliefs, opinions and experiences towards social media platforms, which means it is difficult to ensure that everyone provides an honest response, one that is honest for them. This research is qualitative research, and by its nature somewhat subjective. However, as mentioned earlier in section 3.2.2, the best available way to overcome or to reduce this dilemma was by accessing and analysing participants’ online profile contents, where possible, to give credibility to participants’ interview responses. Content analysis helps us to gain a sense of participants’ online practice and behaviour. Additionally, because of cultural restrictions about communication between males and females in Saudi Arabia, it can be said that a Saudi female interviewing a Saudi male may have a potential impact on male responses. Nonetheless, it must be recalled that all those interviews were conducted in New Zealand, which means that male participants were to some extent used to a more open culture in this respect. However, despite these limitations, the study findings provided a number of implications for both businesses and social media developers, and also several recommendations for further research. These will be discussed next.
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