Social media political campaigns: Perceived credibility of political leaders of Pakistan among university students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.71085/rjhsa.04.03.109Keywords:
Social Media Dependency, Perceived Credibility, Political Leaders, University Students, Media Dependency Theory, Pakistan, Political CommunicationAbstract
The purpose of this research is to understand the linkage between social media addiction and perceived credibility of three key political figures of Pakistan including Imran Khan of PTI, Shahbaz Sharif of PML-N and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari of PPP among the university students of Pakistan. Two additional constructs; perceived influence of social media campaign features and overall impact of social media campaigns on political perceptions are explored as extended constructs. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was employed and data were obtained from 300 respondents. Pearson correlation analysis was used to test for associations between social media dependency and each dependent construct across all three leaders, using IBM SPSS. The findings show that social media dependency is significantly a positive predictor for perceived credibility for all leaders and dimensions. Imran Khan (PTI) was getting the most consistent and positive credibility associations, especially on the trustworthiness dimension, getting endorsement by 67.3% of the respondents who termed him as the most active leader on social media. The most consistent expertise-based associations were done by Shahbaz Sharif (PML-N), while Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (PPP) had the weakest associations regarding the three dimensions. All the hypotheses were accepted that is, dependency towards social media and sensitivity to social media's features positively predicted the overall attitudinal impact. Respondents were particularly convinced that social media is the most credible way to communicate about politics, with 74% choosing that answer.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Ismat Zahra, Dr. Saima Kausar (Author)
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