Digital civic participation among students of Omani higher education institutions during the Covid-19 crisis and light of some variables

The research aims at identifying the reality of digital civic participation among students of higher education institutions in Oman during the period of the Covid-19. In addition, the research attempts to discover the impact of a set of variables including gender, educational institution, income level, college, and the number of accounts in social networks on students' digital civic participation. Furthermore, the study aims to develop a proposed future vision for promoting digital civic participation in Omani higher education institutions. The study will adopt a mixed methodology based on providing a broad survey of the literature along with in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data that will be collected during a course of the study. Thus, the maim tool of the study will be a questionnaire to collect basic quantitative data regarding the students' use of the internet with a focus on participation in civic activities both online and offline and before and during the Covid_19 pandemic, with a sample of the students of higher education institutions of both sexes. The questionnaire will help to uncover the practices of students with regard to internet, their motives for civic participation, and how the internet help them to pursue their interests in these areas and their response to Omani civil content which has been published online during the COVID-19. The gathered data will be depended by conducting a set of focused interviews with a sample of students who responded to the questionnaire focusing basically on the impact of higher education institutions in developing civic participation among the students. A representative sample of higher education institutions and the variables of the study will be taken into consideration during chosen the sample of the study. After collecting the data, appropriate statistical methods will be used to process it.