Varia Ranah - Sorotan Ilmiah Perkhidmatan Awam

98 Varia Ranah: Sorotan Ilmiah Perkhidmatan Awam Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012; Rice, Moffett, & Madupalli, 2013; Zhang, Johnson, Seltzer, & Bichard, 2010). Social media also provides various opportunities for public relations practitioners to interact with the general public (Curtis et al., 2010). For instance, the use of social media tools can provide information about citizens’ opinions, emotions, intentions, behaviours, and characteristics (Chun & Reyes, 2012). Because of the different inputs made possible by social media, public service improvement is evident in information sharing, public service provision, and decision making (Chun & Reyes, 2012). According to Kemp (2012), 90% of Malaysian Internet users have access to social media sites. Malaysians are considered as ‘very friendly ‘online as they have the highest average number of friends on social networks in the world. Malaysian Facebook users have an average of 233 friends which is nearly 80% higher than the global yardstick. Malaysians also prefer to surf the Internet than to watch television, and they are spending twice as much time on their online activities. 80% of Internet users in Malaysia stream online video content each month and 51% have an active YouTube profile. With the popularity of social media growing steadily in Malaysia, it is expected that one third of the country’s Internet traffic is caused by social sites. According to Factbrowser (a compilation of statistics collected by various sources) citing Burson-Marsteller (2012), Malaysian netizens view social network sites 14 billion times every month. Factbrowser citing comScore (2011) stated, YouTube accounted for 67% of all online videos viewed in Malaysia. A survey conducted among Klang Valley (Malaysia) youth showed that about 90.21% of respondents said that communicating with friends and keeping each other updated within their social circle is the main reason for the usage of social networking sites (Wong FeiMun, Lean Mei Li, & Prasana Rosaline Fernandez, 2011). Another study revealed that Malaysians spent about one third of their online time in social networking sites. Furthermore, Malaysians are increasing the importance of social networking sites in their social life as the central activity (comScore, 2011).