Statistical Properties of a New Social Media Context Awareness Scale (SMCA)—A Preliminary Investigation

Dana Rad, Valentina Balas, Ramona Lile, Edgar Demeter, Tiberiu Dughi and Gavril Rad
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Dana Rad: Faculty of Educational Sciences, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, 310130 Arad, Romania
Valentina Balas: Faculty of Engineering, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, 310130 Arad, Romania
Ramona Lile: Faculty of Economics, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, 310130 Arad, Romania
Edgar Demeter: Faculty of Educational Sciences, Psychology and Social Work, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, 310130 Arad, Romania
Tiberiu Dughi: Faculty of Educational Sciences, Psychology and Social Work, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, 310130 Arad, Romania
Gavril Rad: Faculty of Educational Sciences, Psychology and Social Work, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, 310130 Arad, Romania

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: In the Internet of Things era, or in the digitalization and mediatization of everything paradigm, where context awareness computing is on the rise, people are also facing a new challenge, that of being aware of the digital contexts, in all situations when surfing the internet’s ocean of row information. The emerging social media context awareness competency refers to a new emerging skill regarding the trust load people give to a specific social media context they encounter. Since it is an emergent competence, it cannot be understood as standalone. If the digital context would not be available, we would not develop such a competence. Being a competence, it must be defined by three core elements: Knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Consequently, we have operationalized the competence of social media context awareness in terms of social media literacy, social media communication process understanding, social media content impact awareness, and social media confidence. An online questionnaire was created under the Erasmus+ project Hate’s Journey, addressing a convenience sample of 206 online youth respondents from Turkey, Spain, Latvia, and Romania. Our team has computed a reliability analysis on the social media context awareness scale designed with four items referring to social media literacy (m = 3.79, SD = 1), social media communication process understanding (m = 3.77, SD = 0.9), social media content impact awareness (m = 3.88, SD = 1), and social media confidence (m = 3.45, SD = 1). Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and the Exploratory Factor Analysis demonstrated the acceptable reliability of the SMCA scale, α = 0.87. Conclusions, implications, and limitations are discussed in the context of social sustainability.

Keywords: social sustainability; emerging digital competency; mediatization of everything; social media context awareness; social media literacy; social media communication process understanding; social media content impact awareness; social media confidence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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