Excessive social media use has become a growing concern due to its potential to affect self-perception, particularly through lowered self-esteem and a heightened fear of negative evaluation. With the increasing tendency for individuals to curate idealised online personas, understanding the psychological factors that drive this behaviour is critical. This study applies Self-Discrepancy Theory, Social Comparison Theory, and Gender Schema Theory to explain how self-perception, constant comparisons, and internalised gender norms drive online behaviours. A survey of 400 active social media users in Pakistan was conducted, and the data were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). This study revealed that false self-presentation significantly heightened the fear of negative evaluation, which mediated its influence on excessive social media use. Social comparison, contrary to expectations, boosted self-esteem while also fuelling excessive use, as individuals sought validation online. Gender also appeared to play a moderating role, with women experiencing a stronger link between social comparison and self-esteem. However, gender did not moderate the relationship between false self-presentation and the fear of negative evaluation, suggesting similar psychological effects across genders. This study highlights that the fear of negative evaluation and social comparison-driven self-esteem are key psychological mechanisms behind excessive social media use, while gender plays a role in shaping the impact of social comparison but not false self-presentation. This study provides empirical evidence that excessive social media use is shaped by psychological factors, such as fear of negative evaluation and validation-seeking, driven by social comparison. Interventions aimed at reducing the emotional distress associated with excessive social media use should prioritise digital literacy programs that help users identify how false self-presentation and social comparison shape their fear of negative evaluation and validation-seeking behaviours, especially in appearance-driven online environments.

Asynchronous communication by means of discussion forums plays an essential role in supporting collaborative learning. Online forums allow learners to ask questions, express their thoughts, share resources, and justify their opinions beyond the four walls of the classroom. Proponents of collaborative learning claim that this type of learning can lead to enhanced educational outcomes for students. This article examines data from an online discussion forum involving a group of students from Malaysia and the Middle East, who are working toward master's degrees at a tertiary institution in Malaysia. The purpose of the study is to understand how the students interact and collaborate in the process of learning topics that had previously been discussed in a face-to-face mode. The findings identify collaborative learning behavior among the students, including contributing, exploring, providing information, and giving feedback. Additional findings indicate that even with minimal intervention from the lecturer, the students participated actively in the online forum.

Energy demand in Malaysia is increasing over seven per cent a year, while forty per cent of the energy is supplied from conventional fossil fuel. However, a number of social barriers have mired the social acceptance of renewable energy among the users. This study investigates the current status of renewable energy, problems and future outlook of renewable energy in Malaysia. A total of 200 respondents were surveyed from Klang Valley in Malaysia. Majority of the respondents use energy to generate electricity. Although some respondents reported using solar energy, there is lack of retail availability for solar energy. The findings show that limited information on renewable energy technologies, lack of awareness, and limited private sector engagement emerged as major barriers to sustainable renewable energy development. In addition, the respondents suggest for increasing policy support from the government to make information more accessible to mass users, provide economic incentives to investors and users, and promote small-community based renewable energy projects. The study suggests that the government begin small scale projects to build awareness on renewable energy, while academically, higher learning institutions include renewable energy syllabus in their academic curriculum. The study concluded that to have sustainable renewable energy development, government’s initiative, private sector engagement and users awareness must be given priority.

Reading has taken a new dimension, where students in higher institutions are consistently required to read massive amounts of online materials to gain knowledge, complete tasks and assignments. Hence, the ability to read online effectively is becoming increasingly important, as students need to utilize, understand and respond to online materials. However, most university undergraduates lack the ability to read effectively and critically. Therefore, the present study examines university students’ metacognitive online reading strategies and navigational strategies in reading English Science and Technology hypertexts for academic purposes. Data were collected through an online survey among 55 Science and Technology students in a public university situated in the east coast of peninsular Malaysia to identify the most frequent metacognitive online reading strategies used by the students. The survey revealed that students used problem-solving strategies the most followed by global and support reading strategies. Out of the same sample, 12 students were purposively selected to be a part of qualitative data collection on navigational strategies that was conducted through individual screen recordings captured through a screen recording software. The software recorded the on-screen activities while students were using an interactive reading system named iREAD; Interactive Reading for Academic Disciplines. Based on the screen recordings, it can be observed that students mostly used mixed overview strategies followed by serial overview strategies, and serial navigational strategies when reading online materials. The findings concluded the need to teach students metacognitive awareness in order to read online materials successfully to make learning more efficient, meaningful and beneficial. Keywords:

Many Malaysian classrooms have been redesigned to include technology and foster the development of twenty first century learning. The availability of this platform and the new learning space created by redesigning the language classroom has opened up new and exciting possibilities for teaching and learning the English language. This paper will investigate if the new learning space has impacted teacher’s pedagogical strategies and student’s learning behavior and engagement for English language teaching and learning. A qualitative approach employing a multiple case study research design was taken and data was collected using classroom observations, teacher interviews and teacher and student focus group discussions from eight English language teachers and 37 students. Findings reveal significant transformations in teachers’ teaching approaches, use of class activities and on students’ learning behavior and outcomes. Technology did feature in the learner centric approach with students functioning as facilitators and allowing more student participation and interaction. The use of multimedia and online materials helped make learning more interesting and improved student attention in class. Students in turn were more focused and engaged in the collaborative tasks and also reported developing better peer relationships and learning from each other. Keywords: redesigned learning spaces; teacher pedagogy; learner behavior; technology; teaching and learning

Construction of identities can be manifested in the form of competing legitimation discourses over an intercultural issue. This study investigates the power relations between local identities and global identities over the discursive legitimation of human values in global media discourse. Yemen Times (YT) is the most circulated English-language newspaper in Yemen. YT can be voice of Yemen to the world through the use of the English language and the online version of the paper. With the notion of English and globalization, the newspaper published discourses for maxims in the context of Improve Your English series produced by a non-local journalist. A maxim is extended in the form of an argumentative paragraph that contextualizes a single value. Employing an empirical research design, the study data were built of 152 maxims. As a theoretical and analytical approach, Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is concerned with globalization, discourse, power and ideology. The study adopts these concepts to show how the processes of globalization are ideological choices that serve the interest of global agency. After identifying human values through thematic analysis, a three-dimension analysis of discourse was used to reveal the competing legitimation discourses. Clause complex was used as the unit of analysis where the focus was on the social actors of the projecting clauses. The discourse analysis reveals that local identities were suppressed or backgrounded in the texts. Global identities dominated the texts in the form of global literary discourse, global political discourse, global religious discourse, global philosophical discourse and global anonymous discourse. The exclusion of local identities shows that human values were employed in intercultural communication to serve the interest of global hegemony. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2014-1401-11