Whatsapp has emerged as the most popular social media platform among expatriates and Qatari citizens, a research paper on social media by ictQatar has revealed.

The research paper, entitled "How Qatar uses WhatsApp, Snapchat and other social networks" provides an insight into how people in the country are using social media to communicate, as well as highlighted some of their preferences.

The research included 1,000 online users in Qatar (500 Qatari and 500 non-Qatari) and interviewed them between September and October 2014.

The study found that WhatsApp is the most popular social media platform used, with 96% awareness and 87% usage across all participants, which rose to 98% and 97% respectively for Qataris.

However, only 44% of Qataris prefer Facebook, while 84% of non-Qataris use the world's most popular social networking site.

Around 50% of the social media users said the key driver of usage for social platforms was its compatibility with mobile devices.

The survey also provides information about the preferences of different age groups in Qatar and their likelihood to adopt certain media platforms over others, as well as gender disparities and similarities.

While 52% of non-Qataris use Facebook as a source of news, only 12% for Qataris used Zuckerberg's brainchild for news and information. Qataris preferred to use other platforms such as WhatsApp (34%) and Twitter (25%).

10% of the Qataris said that they receive news from Instagram compared to non-Qataris.

You can go through the complete research findings below:

Which social media platform do you use the most?