Facebook vs. Twitter: Social media platform selection for news consumption among undergraduate students

Social media platforms are used by various age groups. Each social media platform has its own targeted age group, as the user's preference for interface, content and visual varies. Therefore, it is important to identify the preference of age group. Metadiscourse is a term for words that are used in a sentence to indicate the direction and purpose of a text. Each social media platform has different types of metadiscourse, depending on the audience. Hence, the objective of this study is to analyse and identify the social media platforms that students prefer to obtain news and what influences their decision in choosing these platforms. Social media platforms in this study are viewed from the perspective of the media ecology theory by McLuhan (1964). The social media platform chosen by students is mainly influenced by the ecosystem of the media itself. The quantitative part of the study administered a questionnaire to 110 students from the Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur (IUKL) to identify and analyse the type of social media platforms that they prefer and interviews were then conducted to support the quantitative findings on what influenced their choice of social media platforms. The findings show that Twitter is the preferred social media platform. Various factors influence the students' choice, which are (a) personal bias, (b) less political influence, (c) trustable source, (d) family/relatives not using the same social media platform, (e) ease of identifying fake news and (f) friends' recommendation. It is hoped that future research can further explore the effectiveness of having different types of social media platforms for friends and family and the benefits for the user.