<p class="Default"><em>Going by the proposition of the Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), people are motivated to use media by various psychological factors and for obtaining different forms of gratifications. However, as social media continue to play an essential role in shaping the sociability and bridging social connectivity and interactions among its users, therefore, this study seeks to incorporate social influence and social interactions as the social gratification sought in social media utilization, as well as both bonding and bridging social capital as social gratification obtained from social media utilization. An online survey was conducted among 400 users of Instagram </em><em>in Nigeria. </em><em>The data analyzed with PLS-SEM revealed that social influence and social interaction significantly motivate social media utilization. Also, social media utilization is significantly associated with bonding and bridging social capital. Impliedly, this study shows that social media is a social and networking tool which is stimulated by social factors and for achieving social purposes such as getting help, support and community engagements.</em></p>
Healthcare is a core issue for all individuals, societies and states. There are continuous and aggressive efforts everywhere to improve healthcare conditions for people. With the rise of the World Wide Web, every sphere of life has gone through a huge revolution and so has the field of medicine. As people get more and more access to the internet, the trend to search for information related to health has also gone high. According to web data, almost 4.5% of all internet search is related to healthcare. 72% of the US and 71% of the European internet users have searched for information related to health during the past year. This is overwhelming. Mobile phone devices have further pushed this trend to new heights. But the point of caution is that internet users have started to get self-diagnosis online. Not only that, but the tendency to order medicine online has also gone up. ‘Pharmaceuticals’ is a huge part of the medicine industry. Just like any other business going online during the recent decades, the pharmacies have also gone online and against any apprehensions, they have met an overwhelming success there. There is an ever-growing number of online customers for internet pharmacies. The convenience of home delivery is always alluring and comparatively, the economical cost is an added benefit. But along this success came some serious issues forcing the authorities to enact regulations. This paper expounds on the historical development of internet pharmacies, their rapid growth during recent times, their advantages, concerns and regulatory actions to keep them under control. It also contains a bit of advice to the customers to avoid monetary and physical harm from illegal pharmacies online.
Excessive social media usage can be harmful to the mental health of individuals. The core objective of the study was to inspect the effects of social media usage on mental health. Secondly, to find out the mean differences of gender, social media and mental health. A cross-sectional research design was utilized to fulfil the study objectives. n=1067 students from six different universities in Punjab, Pakistan, were selected through a multi-stage sampling technique. Data was collected through an adapted questionnaire comprised of three distinct parts, i.e. socio-demographic profile, social media integration scale by Maree (2017) and Goldberg depression scale (1993), to check the social media effects on mental health among youth. Attained replies were analyzed by using SPSS analysis software version 21. Furthermore, to check the direction and consistency of the relationship among these variables, Pearson correlation was applied, which demonstrated a negative relationship between social media usage and mental health problems at p<.000. This study concluded a negative influence of excessive social media usage on mental health among youth in public universities of Punjab, Pakistan.
<p class="Default"><em><span>It is no doubt that the popularity of ICTs in developing countries has increased the use of internet-related social networking sites along with news information consumption, production, and news distribution. As such, there has been a huge shift in the trend of news consumption from conventional media to an online newspaper. It has also been tocied that male and female youth are equally inclined to use internet for different reasons. Thus, in recent times scholars have started inspecting online newspaper consumption-related behavior, with an emphasis on young boys and girls in a way this group is one that can last longer. However, very few studies have paid attention to gender differences in motivating factors for online newspaper consumption in Pakistan. To address this gap, by using a cross-sectional design, a survey was conducted on university students from three public universities of Pakistan because university students are tech-savvy and mostly internet users. These three universities are representative of rural and urban population. Questionnaires were used to collect data which was analyzed using Partial Least Squares-Multi Group Analysis. Hypothesized results discovered that in terms of online newspaper consumption, there was no gender differences found in online newspaper consumption among Pakistani youth.</span></em></p>
Daily newspapers in the world are shrinking in many dimensions. All big or small newspapers are getting smaller in size, business and news circulation. The speed at which newspapers are shutting down is not much different from the early 20th century. Thus, most newspapers are shifting from conventional setting to online/ digital newspapers only. Since the last two decades, the business of newspaper has declined as many newspapers have migrated business and appearance online to retain print readers via online only consumers and attract new ones who are just netters in the world. This change has been noticed in all countries. Pakistan is also one among those countries in which new technology is being adopted in the field of media. Due to information communication technologies, most of the Pakistani print, electronic media organization has switched to online to keep pace with the developed world. Hence, most of the conventional/traditional newspapers become digital newspapers along with print publications. Therefore, this paper discusses the history and development of online newspapers. Digital media has the power to attract many young news consumers because of its convenience, ease of excess, update 24/7 and availability at any time. These features are the prime source of newspaper decline and a major source of digital media growth.
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