اعتماد الجمهور الكويتي على وسائل الإعلام أثناء الأزمات : فيروس كورونا المستجد مثالا

الملخص EN

The study aims to identify the extent of the Kuwaiti audience's dependency on mass media during the COVID19 crisis.

The study used available sample of 1031 from Kuwaiti citizens (471 men, 560 women), age ranged 15-75 years (m=34.73, SD=12.51).

The study also used an electronic questionnaire including 5 annexes related to the personal data,which are : Mass Media Usage Scale, News and information Seeking Scale, Media Dependency Motives Scale, and Mass media Dependency impacts.

Descriptive and Inferential statistics were used.

Twere used as a major statistical tool for T-test, F-test, Scheffe test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and multiple regression test.

The results show that the daily rate of using new media among Kuwaiti is higher than the rate of using old media which reflects their following for the COVID19 news on the new media more than the old media.

Besides, the results also found that understanding and guidance motives were the most important motives for Kuwaitis to follow COVID19 news.

Moreover, the cognitive impacts were higher than emotional and behavioral impacts.

Data shows also that there are significant relationships among respondents' demographic variables (gender, age, marital status, job, place of residency) in the scale of intensity of using media, follow up scale, motives scale, and impacts scale, and intermittent relationships with statistically significant among the four scales.

Finally, it may be concluded that new media can play vital roles in times of crisis as evidenced by the intensity in social media daily usage due to their high-speed component in delivering news and incidences on how to deal with the crisis.