Does internet use affect public risk perception? — From the perspective of political participation

Abstract

Internet use has resulted in the flow and interweaving of risks and increased the difficulty of risk governance. Strengthening public risk perception research can not only make up for the shortcomings of traditional government-centered risk governance research but also improve the ability of risk governance. By employing data from Chinese Social Survey (CSS) and the mediating test with the process plug-in in SPSS, this paper tries to explore the influence mechanism of Internet use on public risk perception, as well as the mediating effect of different types of political participation. The results show that Internet use has a significantly positive impact on comprehensive public risk perception. Network political participation has significantly enhanced the public risk perception, while traditional political participation has significantly reduced the public risk perception. Besides, network political participation plays a mediating role in the relationship between Internet use and public risk perception.