The effectiveness of websites in instilling community awareness among the public, a field study

Abstract

Electronic websites in their various forms and styles have made a huge leap in relationships and participation between the public, and this is confirmed by all studies and statistics that indicate a large and tremendous increase in the number of website users in general and in Iraq in particular. What the issue of awareness represents, which constitutes a basic and primary function of electronic websites, aims to improve the behavior of individuals to raise it to civilization with the rest of the goals of community institutions.

     And instilling and shaping civilized behavior in the life of Iraqi society is an important issue because it is positively reflected on the health, social, cultural and political aspects of the individual, and this is what electronic websites of all kinds perform in terms of high effectiveness in using all communication patterns targeting the individual and society in order to develop it by launching a comprehensive development in which societies achieve their humanity.

     The research sought to achieve several objectives, focused on identifying the form of websites used by the public, revealing the most important social issues and topics that the respondents follow through websites, and knowing the extent to which websites contribute to increasing the societal awareness of the respondents. This research is classified as descriptive research in terms of type, as the researcher used the survey method to access the data, analyze it, process it statistically, and then classify it. The researcher used the scientific research tool, the questionnaire, and the form was distributed to a sample of (200) individuals who were selected according to the multi-stage cluster sample method from those who use websites from the audience of the central city of Nasiriyah, who are the research community. The study reached several results, the most important of which are:

1- The most important websites that the respondents are keen to use to follow up on societal awareness topics are social networking sites, with a percentage of 54% in first place.

2-The vast majority of the respondents indicated that websites contribute significantly to increasing their knowledge and societal awareness, with a percentage of 48%.

3-The research results showed that the vast majority of the respondents believe that "educational institutions (school, university)" support websites in instilling community awareness, and their percentage reached 47.3%.

      The study came out with several recommendations: The necessity of including community awareness topics in school curricula, such as the subject (nationalism), in order to raise individuals socially. The necessity for all media colleges and departments to hold seminars on social awareness, and the extent of the correlation between the media and the development of community awareness. The necessity of conducting similar research and studies on different segments of society