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Social networking sites (SNSs) allow social interactions and discussions with people in everyday life (Choi & Park, 2013), while others use SNSs to share personal information (Solove, 2007). Despite SNSs arise from different forms, a common attribute among them is the expression of ideas pertaining to the general purposes to educate or influence (Workman, 2021). SNSs dominantly pervade everyday life by enabling communication among users and collecting huge amounts of data for companies to use for commercial purposes (Lomborg & Bechmann, 2014). Besides, the spillover effect of SNSs can have impact on employees’ work and non-work satisfaction (Farivar & Richardson, 2021). SNSs have various effects – either beneficial or deleterious, depending on the context of use (Labban & Bizzi, 2020). Generally, online social networking site platforms have become deeply involved in a wide range of public activities (Helberger et al., 2018), and its impact can spread across various fields – communication, education, economics, marketing, social and politics. Reuter et al. (2020) highlight that SNS involves both good (participation, volunteerism) and malicious (fake news, rumors, suppression, political persecution) in nature.
Importantly, SNSs are crucial for communication between government and citizens (Van De Velde et al., 2015). However, social networking sites are increasingly critical for people to share political information and discussions (Choi & Park, 2013), and are increasingly recognized for emergence and rapid scaling of social movements (Leong et al., 2020). Obviously, information and communications technology (ICT) tools have enabled civic engagement in modern democracies (Nair et al., 2012), involving citizens and politicians (Abdelghaffar & Hassan, 2016). The SNSs agenda often move faster than compared to offline media and printed newspapers (Kruikemeier et al., 2018). According to Diehl et al. (2015), the news from social networking site platforms tend to have the greatest impact on political persuasion. Social networking sites, arguably, contribute to the dominance of contentious politics due to individuals who may express dissent political disagreement or persuasion (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2018). This indicates that SNSs are fundamental to expose political information. The flow of information on the Internet, on the other hand, allows people to express themselves to stay connected and communicate (Solove, 2007). Jensen et al. (2007) stressed that a healthy civil society has been regarded as vital to a healthy democracy, and there seems an effect orchestrated by the role and use of Internet. Overall, SNS plays a significant role during crises and conflicts (Nganji & Cockburn, 2020).