Internet involvement, information consumption, and political participation in urban China

Abstract

The issue of whether the internet promotes political participation has always been a hotly debated topic in academia. However, current research lacks an effective classification of the modes of internet use, and it does not analyze their effect on different forms of political participation. Based on data from the 2015 and 2018 waves of the China Urban Governance Survey, this study offers an examination of the internet usage behavior of Chinese urban netizens from the perspectives of internet involvement and information consumption, as well as comparing the impact that different modes of internet use have on conventional and unconventional political participation. The results of this study confirm the “citizen-empowerment hypothesis” of internet use, and show that the “group involvement–social-information-oriented” mode of internet use has a positive effect on the conventional and unconventional political participation of urban internet users. However, the study fails to support the “time-displacement hypothesis”. It shows that the “individual involvement–entertainment-oriented” mode of internet use does not have a negative impact on the conventional and unconventional political participation of Chinese urban internet users. Similarly, the “group involvement–entertainment-oriented” mode of internet use has no significant effect on unconventional political participation. Taken together, the study shows that, in general, internet use has promoted the political participation of Chinese urban netizens, but there are significant differences between the different modes of internet use. As a revolutionary medium, the internet not only provides people with a convenient way of obtaining and communicating information, but also creates more challenges for state governance. The way in which the government should deal with different forms of political participation in the internet age will be an important research topic in the future.