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Jordan fourth in Facebook penetration in Arab world — report

By Mohammad Ghazal - Jun 28,2014 - Last updated at Jun 28,2014

AMMAN — Jordan ranked fourth in Facebook penetration among Arab states, with males constituting 59 per cent of users, according to the sixth edition of the Arab Social Media Report.

Titled “Citizen Engagement and Public Services in the Arab World: The Potential of Social Media”, the report indicated that Facebook penetration in Qatar was 60.9 per cent, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 58 per cent, Kuwait (48.3 per cent) and Jordan (47.9 per cent).

According to the report by the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government’s Governance and Innovation Programme, there are some 3 million Facebook users in Jordan, 19.5 million in Egypt, 8 million in Saudi Arabia, 7 million in Algeria, and 5 million in the UAE.

The regional online survey, which covered 3,654 respondents, was administered in 22 Arab countries and ran from February to May 2014. 

Of the total Facebook users in Jordan, about 71 per cent are aged between 15 and 29, while 75 per cent post comments in Arabic, according to the report.

Jordan came sixth in terms of Arabic usage, preceded by Yemen, Libya, Palestine, Iraq and Egypt respectively, while it was ninth in using English to post comments (38 per cent) and 13th in French usage, with only 2 per cent of users doing so, according to the report.

The total number of Facebook users in the Arab world stands at 81.302 million, while the average for Facebook penetration in the region is over 21.5 per cent, the report said.

The percentage of female users in the country stands at 31.75 per cent, which is still significantly lower than the global average of roughly 57 per cent.

Globally, Facebook boasted 1.28 billion monthly active users by the end of the first quarter of 2014.

The report revealed that Arabs have positive attitudes towards interacting with the government through social media, with 55 per cent of the respondents saying they strongly support the government’s use of social media for the design and delivery of public services. 

They also agreed that social media facilitates better accessibility to government entities and public sector officials. 

However, according to the report, social media is still used in the Arab region as a one-way information source for the majority of users. 

Only 2 per cent of respondents reported visiting official social media pages or using their personal social media accounts for sourcing information on public services. 

Of the 63 per cent who do utilise government social media pages, 74 per cent only use it to access information on public services and entities.

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