Uses and Gratifications of Political Information: Student Perceptions of Information from the 2014 Tunisian Elections

People use diverse sources of information to obtain political information. We apply uses and gratifications theory (UGT) to illustrate how the use of different political information sources influences perceptions of information satisfaction related to the Tunisian elections of 2014. An online survey of 175 university students in Tunisia, with a 58% response rate. We use partial least squares structural equation modelling to test our research model of hypotheses relating content, process, and social gratifications to information satisfaction. We find that content, process, and social gratifications constructs combine to explain 41% of the variance in information satisfaction. Content gratification has the strongest influence (p=.505) followed by similar levels of influence of process (p=.163) and social (p=.140) gratifications. Social gratifications are partially mediated by process gratification. Limitations of our study include our online survey method and our sample of university students. However, our respondents experienced the uprising, the election campaigns, and voted in the elections, suggesting their perceptions are valid, if not generalisable to all of Tunisia. Practically our study suggests that individuals searching for political information should 1) determine how they’ll know information is accurate, 2) maximize the number of different activities for information-seeking rather than focusing on the frequency of a few activities, and 3) know that information sharing contributes to information satisfaction. The dominance of content gratifications, i.e., information reliability and accuracy, is important for information providers, such as, government and political leaders. Our study provides evidence that UGT is useful in the novel context of emerging political situations.