Understanding Malaysian Youth's Social Media Practices and Their Attitude towards Violent Extremism

The exploitation of social media to spread propaganda and violent extremism has become a serious issue, including in Malaysia. This study attempted to examine youth's social media practices and factors that influence their attitude towards violent extremism on social media. To achieve the study aim, an online survey involving 400 respondents was conducted. The findings revealed that, youth like video content the most, followed by written content, infographic and images. Information seeking continues to be an important purpose for using social media. While youth's attitude towards violent extremism is moderate, this study found that, information or argument quality, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are factors that could influenceattitude. Considering that social media technology is constantly changing, it is proposed that, future studies in countering violent extremism to continually look into youth's social media usage, particularly in understanding different social media platforms, types of content and message design.