Factors influencing news consumption through social media among Kenya’s millennials: a case study of Safaricom Kenya Limited

Abstract

The major aim of this research was to study factors affecting the use of news media among the millennials at Safaricom Kenya Limited. Four definite objectives guided the study: first was to find out the effect of cognitive needs on social media consumption among Millennials; identify the influence of affective needs on social media consumption among Millennials; highlight the impact of personal integrative needs on social media consumption among Millennials; and determine the influence of medium appeal needs on social media consumption among Millennials. The study adopted the descriptive research design. The study target population was 3,231 staff from Safaricom and the sample size was determined as 355 respondents. The process of data collection was achieved through the use of structured survey and analysed with SPSS. In order to summarize the data and observe data trends, descriptive statistics comprising of average, frequencies, standard deviation and percentages were used. The findings show that social media's medium appeal characteristic influenced social media consumption and cognitive characteristics most strongly. The affective and the personal integration attribute were found to be insignificant as a factor that influences news consumption over social media by the Millennials. However, all the four predictor variables had a positive correlation with respect to the news consumption by the Millennials at Safaricom. The use of social media was also found to influence positive attitudes and perceived utility in acquiring information, knowledge and understanding. There have been no significant differences in the age and gender of Millennials social media usage intention. The research concludes that social media is no longer a competitor to the mainstream media houses as sources of news. The study recommends that marketers incorporate social media as a key marketing platform that requires adequate resource allocation.