The Impact of Facebookers’ Posts on Other Users’ Attitudes According to Their Age and Gender: Evidence from Al Ain University of Science and Technology

Abstract

This study aims at exploring the reasons that drive many Facebookers to share negative posts on Facebook, with a special focus on their gender and age. It also aims at identifying the negative attitudes and feelings that negative Facebook posts might evoke in Facebookers. Thus, a mixed-methods approach was adopted employing both a five-point agreement Likert scale questionnaire and semi-structured interviews which were conducted with 40 participants. Based on the participants’ responses, the results show that many Facebookers write posts to satisfy different needs including receiving compliments and attention, sharing daily updates, showing off, and deliberately teasing others, all of which have been found to trigger feelings of jealousy, hatred, annoyance, demotivation, inferiority, and sadness. The study concludes with recommendations for further research.