Online political efficacy and political participation: A mediation analysis based on the evidence from Taiwan

Abstract

Consensus on the impact of information-oriented use of social media on political participation is lacking. Some argue a positive relationship, in that social media promotes participation through awakening the user’s agency, while others focus on the selection and disenabling effects of low-quality content. Nevertheless, both arguments focus almost exclusively on the objective conditions for participation and largely ignore users’ motivations to participate. Consequently, this article proposes online political efficacy as a mechanism linking the use of social media to political participation. Specifically, we argue that (1) the effect of the information-oriented use of social media on political participation is positively mediated through the user’s online political efficacy and (2) this mediation effect is only significant in the case of online political participation. We test these arguments within the framework of causal mediation analysis proposed by Imai et al. using data collected from the 2015 Taiwan Communication Survey.