Opening the Black-Box of Facebook Use in Palestine: An Empirical Study

Since its emergence, the popularity of Social Network Sites (SNSs) has been increasing, and investigating the use of SNSs in different contexts has been a fruitful research topic. Nevertheless, there is inadequate research about the impact of specific cultures on Facebook usage, such as the Arab culture. In this study, we investigate the effect of Arab culture on Facebook usage by Palestinians. We identify a set of 17 constructs that we investigate in the context of Facebook, e.g., enjoyment, relationship maintenance, awareness, trust, privacy concerns, education, family ties, and gender perception. To measure the effect of culture on these constructs, we created a survey with around 190 distinct questions in total that we conducted among Palestinian Facebook users to identify their tendency of Facebook usage. We gathered 580 valid participations in our survey . Our results show that religion affects how Palestinian users use Facebook. Our results also show clear impact of gender perception on the behavior of Facebook users in Palestine. Moreover, our respondents indicate a correlation between using Facebook and ruining family ties and relationships.