A STUDY ON SOCIAL NETWORK BLOGS AS POLITICAL TOOL ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY STUDENTS PERSPECTIVE

Mohd Fadli Abdul Karim bancik80@gmail.com Massudi Mahmuddin ady@uum.edu.my Mohd Zairol Yusoff zaruly@gmail.com

All the developing countries like Malaysia accept the fact that communication has been as important as a policy tool and act as a conduit in plan development. New media such as Internet and blogs have caused communications through intermediate computer faster moving steps in era borderless nation. A blog website updated frequently and combines text, images, and links

to other web pages related to its topic Guo (2008) states that blog is an online public diary, which can

open for readers comments and also users can write anything
Mortensen and Walker (2002) blogs are frequently updated

websites, usually personal, with commentary and links.

Blog search engine Technorati (2009) a blog as a personal journal on

the web, records 112.8 million blogs in the world, 1.6 million blog updated every day

MAIN OBJECTIVE

Identify the effectiveness of the political blog from UUM IT students pers

SUB OBJECTIVE
study the acceptance validate the correlation of UUM IT students acceptance and credibility determine student perception impact determine student credibility

BLOG
Blogs (weblogs) as regularly updated websites, usually personal, with
commentary and links. Tennant (2008) classify a blog: A blog is a way to publish to the Internet frequently, without skills.

technical

A blog is updated frequently, with chronologically-ordered, dated

posts. A blog is written in a personal voice. A blog allows the audience to interact. As a publisher, your content is distributed much more broadly website.

than on a

POLITICAL BLOG
A political blog comments on politics or contains information relating to politics. Walker (2003) described political blog as `a soapbox` and a

suitable attractive media for voicing out ideas, comment and thoughts on political topics Political blogs not only take time and effort to write and maintain but they also more likely to have technological savvy required to start blogging. Political bloggers not only have to take time to formulate and write their blogs.

As a result, the level of free time an individual has should be an

important variable in predicting whether or not they blog.

POLITICAL BLOG IN MALAYSIA

Ulicny (2008) finds Malaysian government is tightly controls the press. Reporters without Borders (RSFranked Malaysia 124th out of 169 countries surveyed in its 2007 Press Freedom Index, its worst rank

since the index was inaugurated in 2002.

Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (AKM) contains provisions prohibiting the publication of false, obscene, fraudulent,

threatening with the intention of harass, abusive, harassing anyone or

do like some blog writers in the country. If available a web page / blog illegal, action will be taken by pointing your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to block websites that are illegal under the provisions of national prevention permitted During the period January 2008 to July 2009, a total of 470 websites were found guilty action restrictions imposed by the Internet Service

Main theories on user acceptance and perceived a system: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAT)
TAM (Davis, 1986) :

User Acceptance Theories

Goal: to predict and diagnose design problems before the users

have experience with a system. TAM has: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Perceived usefulness is being directly impacted by perceived ease of use. UTAT aims to explain user intentions to use an IS and subsequent usage behavior: Holds that four key constructs: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions - Venkatesh et.al. (2003).

Perceived Usefulness

External Variables

Attitute Towards Behavior

Behavorial Intention to use

Actual System Use

Perceived Ease of Use

Figure 1: Original Technology Acceptance Model (Davis,1989)

Public Acceptance
(Hsu, 2008) try to find what motivates people to participate in blog activities. Based on the theory of reasoned action, he developed a model involving technology acceptance, knowledge sharing and social influences.

The results indicated that ease of use and enjoyment, and knowledge sharing (altruism and reputation) was positively related to attitude toward blogging, and accounted for 78 percent of the variance.

In our option of credibility indicators we will use (Rubin and Liddy, 2006) effort as a indication point.

The four factor plus indicators for each of them are:

Bloggers expertise and offline identity disclosure. Bloggers trustworthiness and value system. Information quality. Appeals and triggers of a personal nature.

Universiti Utara Malaysia has 3 colleges and only one selected which is College of Art and Science where there is an IT student, undergraduate and postgraduate. These target population is chosen because the political blog mostly related to the above mentioned groups. The analysis is done on questionnaire of 100 respondents. Questionnaire contains 5 (five) sections and 26 questions. There are eighty questionnaires have been returned back from one hundred questionnaires that have been distributed. This is show that the response rate is high which 80 percent from the selected sample is.
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

Correlation Test

T-Test

Mean Test

Demographic Background Qualification

Qualification Frequency Degree 67 Master 13 Total 80 Percent Valid Percent 83.8 83.8 16.3 16.3 100.0 100.0 Cumulative Percent 83.8 100.0

Valid

Table 3: Distribution of students based on program studies

The distribution of the respondents based on program studies is shown in Table 3. 83.3 percent of the students are undergraduate students, while 16.3 percent of them are postgraduate students.

Knowledge on Blog
Know about Blog Frequenc y 79 1 80 Percent 98.8 1.3 100.0 Valid Percent 98.8 1.3 100.0 Cumulativ e Percent 98.8 100.0

Knowledge on Political Blog

Political Blog Frequenc y 52 28 80 Percent 65.0 35.0 100.0 V alid Percent 65.0 35.0 100.0 Cumulativ e Percent 65.0 100.0

Valid

Yes No Total

V alid

Y es No Total

Table 4: Distribution of students based on knowledge on blog

Table 5: Distribution of students based on knowledge on political blog

Almost every IT students know about blog. While another 65 percent of the respondent have knowledge on political blog and compare to 35 percent. The distribution of the respondents know about blog is revealed in Table 4 and 5

respectively.

Strongly Disagree Freq. % S1 A S2 A S3 A S4 A S5 A 4 5.0 7 8.8 18 22.5 21 26.3 16 20.0

Disagree Freq. 15 23 26 15 13 % 18.8 28.8 32.5 18.8 16.3

Neutral Freq. 28 22 23 28 26 % 35.0 27.5 28.8 35.0 32.5

Agree Freq. 12 11 9 19 23 % 15.0 13.8 11.3 23.8 28.8

Strongly Agree Freq. % 9 3 3 4 11 8 14 5 3.8 5.0 13. 17. 11.

Mean

2.79 2.40 2.44 3.15 3.38

Table 7: Student Perceived of Usefulness of Political Blog Based on the Table 7, 26.3 percent of the students said that they are fans of blog but 38.8 percent of the students said are not. Student who are fan of political blogs are 17.6 percent and 55.1 percent are not. Total students who are used to like political blog cover 16.3 percent of the students while the majority of the student (55.0 percent) do not use. The results show that most of the students who are fans of blog but are not fan of political blog in the same time. 37.6 percent of students said they agree political blog influence them about politics nowadays and 27.6 percent of them said they do not agree. 46.3 percent of the students said they agree, political blog can influence people in general election while 21.3 percent of the students believe that the blog does not. However, the students accept that political blog can influence them about politics nowadays and also political blog can influence people in general election.

Strongly Disagree Freq. % S1 A S2 A S3 A S4 A S5 A 1 1.3 3 3.8 4 5.0 13 16.3 13 16.3

Disagree Freq. 12 31 13 6 9 % 15.0 38.8 16.3 7.5 11.3

Neutral Freq. 29 20 32 30 31 % 36.3 25.0 40.0 37.5 38.8

Agree Freq. 18 13 23 34 29 % 22.5 16.3 28.8 42.5 36.3

Strongly Agree Freq. % 8 3 8 7 10 10.0 3.8 10.0 8.8 12.5

Mean

2.95 2.53 3.23 3.45 3.48

Table 8: Students Perception of Political Blog

The results show that students like to use blog but not on political blog and most of the students agree the existence of this political blog will increase the interest of the public to be more knowledgeable and not bias to only one party only. Based on the results it show that students feel that political blog will encourage them to find about current news or issue about political latest news at the time. It means that most of the students have good perception on political blog.

Strongly Disagree Freq. % S1 A S2 A S3 A S4 A S5 A S6 1 1.3 2 2.5 6 7.5 2 2.5 4 5.0 4 5.0

Disagree Freq. 17 23 21 9 13 14 % 21.3 28.8 26.3 11.3 16.3 17.5

Neutral Freq. 47 39 38 39 28 30 % 58.8 48.8 47.5 48.8 35.0 37.5

Agree Freq. 8 9 15 20 33 29 % 10.0 11.3 18.8 25.0 41.3 36.3

Strongly Agree Freq. % 4 5 4 6 4 6 5.0 6.3 5.0 7.5 5.0 7.5

Mean

2.89 2.85 2.98 3.14 3.30 3.31

Table 3.9: Respondents Belief of Political Blog Based on the Table 9, 15.0 percent of the students believe a blog. However, 26.3 percent of the students said they do not believe on blog. 23.8 percent of the students said they believe most of the information on political blog but 28.8 percent do not believe it. 32.5 percent of the student believes information on the blog is very important while 18.8 percent of the student did not believe information on the blog is very important. 46.3 percent of student agree that if said that the existence of political blog will increase beliefs of them to look concerning political news in different political view while 18.8 percent of them did not agree of the statement. 43.8 percent of the student agrees that if said that the existence of political blog will increase beliefs of people to look about political news in different political view while 18.8 percent of the

Acceptance Acceptance Pearson Correlation Sig (2 tailed) N Pearson Correlation Sig (2 tailed) N 1 80 0.521(**) 0.000 80

Belief 0.521(**) 0.000 75 1 80

Belief

**. Correlation is significance at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

Table 10: Correlation Test

Table 10 indicates the signification relation between acceptance and belief. Based on the results it is showing that acceptance variables has a significant relationship variable of belief towards political blog as the Pearson Correlation or r = 0.521 and based on Guild Rule of Thumb the strength of relationship is moderate relationship because it is situated between 0.4 to 0.7, and significant at 0.05 (2 tailed) level. The significant level is 0.000 which less than indicated significant level 0.05/2 or 0.025.

Question S1P S2P S3P S4P S5P

Std Deviation 1.200 1.067 1.006 0.899 0.900

Std Error 0.134 0.119 0.112 0.899 0.900

Significant Level 0.680 0.019 0.748 0.960 0.288

Table 11: Summary of ANOVA test for Perception variable ANOVA was performed to test the hypothesis. Table 11 shows the summary of ANOVA test for H1. It shows that the significant level for S1A is 0.251, S2A is 0.201, S3A is 0.149, S4A is 0.990 and S5A is 0.611. The results show that null hypothesis for H1 cannot be rejected because most of the significant value is more than (p value > 0.05). It means there are no significant different between undergraduate and post graduate for acceptance variables towards political blog.

Table 10 shows the summary of ANOVA test for H2. It shows that the significant level for S1P is 0.680, S2P is 0.019, S3P is 0.748, S4P is 0.960 and S5P is 0.288. The results show that hypothesis null for H2 cannot be rejected because most of the significant value is more than (p value > 0.05). The results show that there are no significant different between undergraduate and postgraduate for perception variables towards political blog.

Question S1B S2B S3B S4B S5B S6B

Std Deviation 0.842 0.915 0.871 0.978 0.892 0.894

Std Error 0.094 0.102 0.097 0.109 0.100 0.100

Significant Level 0.215 0.102 0.064 0.106 0.479 0.983

Table 12: Summary of ANOVA test for Belief variable

Table 12 shows the summary of ANOVA test for H3. It shows that the significant level for S1B is 0.215, S2B is 0.102, S3B is 0.064, S4B is 0.106, S5B is 0.479 and S6B is 0.983. The results prove that hypothesis null for H3 cannot be rejected because most of the significant value is more than (p value > 0.05). The results show that there no significant different between undergraduate and postgraduate for belief variables towards political blog.

This chapter represented the end result of the survey that have adopted and collected. This chapter reported and analyzed the respondents demographics on gender, age and qualifications, the students acceptance, perception and belief towards business blog.

Particularly, students like to use a blog but not restricted for political blog only. They agree political blog can gives more information about political scenario in Malaysia to the people.

Today most of the people are concern to use website and blog to communicate or exchange information. Students also believe that the existence of political blog will

increase beliefs to look about political news in different political view.

The significance of this study is to understand about what are the perceptions, believe and user acceptance of student IT UUM on the topic of political blog. An understanding of political blogs as a new media is important because it lays foundation for discussing the use of this technology in knowledge generation and exchange. That will provide view and useful information on how the student gathering data and accept the data from political blog as their source and believe in political scenario in Malaysia Based on the result of the study, there is necessity to organize this part of

work in other colleges of UUM. The study can be further extend to study the
perception and acceptance of political blog among all students in all university in Malaysia since student of institution of higher learning plays

important role in nation development.

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