Moderating Role of Personality Traits between Social Media Use and Political Participation among Young Adults

This study seeks to explore the moderating effect of personality traits (conscientiousness and openness to experience), between the social media use and political participation among the young adults in Pakistan. The study followed three phases: Phase I focused on the translation and validation of the instruments of measurement; Phase II was a pilot study; Phase III was carried out to test the hypotheses using a primary sample of young adults (N = 500) comprising men (n = 250) and women (n = 250), the sample was chosen by using convenient sampling technique. To measure all of the variables, standardized tools were deployed, which included the Social Networking Usage Questionnaire by Gupta and Bashir (2018), Political Participation Scale by Gopal and Verma (2017), and the Urdu-translated sub-scales of Conscientiousness and Open to Experience sub-components of the NEO-Five Factor Inventory designed by Costa and McCrae (1992).The results showed that the relationship between the use of social media and political participation could not be moderated by conscientiousness and openness to experience in a significant manner. It indicates that the core significance of social media in influencing their political behavior lies in young people, and the likely impact of their unique personalities is minimal to this effect. Limitations and suggestions on the future researches are mentioned.