The reliance of the people of Zawiya on Facebook pages as a source of information during the fuel crisis: A field study

Abstract

This study aimed to measure the level of reliance among the audience of Zawiya City on Facebook pages for obtaining information about the fuel crisis, identify the motivations underlying such reliance, determine the extent to which the audience follows the information published on these pages, and assess their level of trust in that information. The study adopted a descriptive survey methodology and employed an electronic questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The questionnaire was administered to a purposive sample of 426 Facebook users residing in Zawiya City who had previously followed information about the fuel crisis through local Facebook pages. The collected data were analyzed using frequencies and percentages, rank means, the Chi-square goodness-of-fit test, and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient to examine the relationships among the ordinal indicators.

The findings revealed that 87.4% of the respondents considered Facebook their primary source of information either always or often, while 81.0% reported relying on Facebook pages to a high or very high degree. Moreover, 64.3% expressed a high or very high level of trust in the information published on these pages, whereas 75.8% indicated that the information was always or often consistent with reality. Regarding the frequency of following updates, 58.5% of the respondents reported checking updates several times a day, while 93.0% followed them either several times a day or whenever needed. Speed of news dissemination and direct updates ranked as the leading motivations for relying on Facebook pages. Information concerning fuel availability locations and operating fuel stations constituted the most frequently followed type of information. Spearman’s rank correlation analysis revealed statistically significant positive relationships between information consistency and trust, between reliance and trust, and between following updates and reliance.