Social Media Usage Behavior and the Political Participation of the Elderly in Mueang Trang District

Abstract

This research focused 1) to study the social media usage behavior 2) to study the level of political participation and 3) to compare the level of political participation of the elderly in Mueang Trang district by demographic categorization. This research employed a quantitative approach with the sample of 400 elderly persons who lived in Mueang Trang district. The instrument used for the collection was a questionnaire with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient 0.975. The statistical tools for data analysis included frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test and one-way ANOVA. The finding found that the elderly used a smartphone for online media tracking and political participation in various forms. The average level of political participation is overall ranked at high ( =3.63, S.D. 0.878), in which the political participation for the political interest was the highest average scores, and followed by political behavior, political voting, political rallies, and participation in political activities with political parties and political groups respectively. The results of comparing the level of political participation, when classified by religion was not different. But sex, age, marital status, education level, occupation, income, location of residence and residential had a significant difference in learning needs at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels.