Bangkok Youth’s Communication Behaviors on the Social Media Site, Facebook and Their Media Literacy

Abstract

The objectives of this research are three-fold 1) to study Bangkok youth’s communication behaviors on the social media site called Facebook and to study their media literacy 2) to compare youth’s communication behaviors based on characteristics of population 3) to study Bangkok youths’ correlation between communication behaviors on Facebook and their media literacy. This research is a survey study. The participants of the research are 400 youths who use Facebook aged 15-25 years old selected by means of random sampling. Data analysis was done using percentages, averages, T-Test, One-Way ANOVA and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient in the statistical packages.
The research results show that most survey participants were females aged 19-22 years old with a bachelor’s degree. In general, the participants used Facebook every day. In terms of their communication behaviors, overall they used Facebook to post pictures, and comment on posts the most often followed by to send someone’s friend request, chat, and do some activities of their interest such as playing games and sending music to someone. Regarding, the participants’ media literacy, overall, it was rated as high in terms of media accessibility, news analysis, and the interpretation of the symbols and content. The hypothesis testing results are as follow, youth with different characteristics of population did not exhibit different communication behaviors on Facebook. Bangkok youth with different characteristics of population had different levels of media literacy and 3) there was a positive correlation between the youth’s media literacy and their communication behaviors. The correlation was statistically significant at 0.05.