Politinis dalyvavimas platformizacijos kontekste: technologijų kuriamų galimybių perspektyva

Purpose: In an increasingly digital civic landscape, understanding the drivers of online political participation (OPP) has become critical. This study investigates the interplay between technological affordances, psychological dispositions, and social media behaviors in shaping citizens’ political engagement online. Methods: Drawing on theories of social capital, self-efficacy, and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), a conceptual model was developed and tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) on survey data (N = 450) collected from active internet users. Results confirmed that use of social media significantly enhances online social capital, which in turn positively influences perceived benefits of political participation. Perceived ease of online participation and technological affordances also emerged as significant predictors of OPP. Notably, political self-efficacy (PSE) not only directly predicted OPP and social media use but also moderated the relationship between online social capital and political participation, amplifying its impact for individuals with higher efficacy. Findings: These findings highlight the importance of both structural enablers (e.g., digital platforms, social networks) and individual agency (e.g., self-belief) in fostering meaningful online civic engagement. Implications: The study offers theoretical insights and practical implications for platform designers, policymakers, and civic educators aiming to enhance democratic participation in the digital age. Originality: The present study offers an original contribution by addressing a gap in existing literature and proposing a novel perspective on the subject. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools were employed in the preparation of this research to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and clarity. Statement on AI Use Artificial intelligence tools were used solely to assist with summarizing the research papers for the literature review, language editing, grammar refinement, model creation, and formatting of this manuscript. No AI tool was used to generate original research content, analyze results, or draw conclusions. All ideas, analyses, and interpretations are the sole work of the authors.

This study investigates the patterns of social media use and choice among voters in Sarawak, Malaysia, and examines their impact on online political participation. By focusing on a geographically and culturally unique setting, the research aims to uncover the nuanced ways in which social media platforms facilitate or hinder political engagement across different age groups. Employing a survey and questionnaire research approach, the study gathers data from a diverse sample of Sarawak's electorate to analyze social media engagement trends and their implications for political discourse and participation through a survey and questionnaire research methodology. Key findings reveal a predominant preference for Facebook across all demographics, with younger voters diversifying their social media usage to include platforms like Instagram and TikTok, indicating a trend towards more visually oriented and interactive forms of political engagement. The study identifies a positive link between active engagement on social media (productive use) and the level of political participation, highlighting the significance of content creation and interaction in fostering political involvement. Moreover, differences in social media use and engagement patterns based on age groups suggest varying strategies for political communication and mobilization. The implications of this research are multifold, offering insights for political strategists, policymakers, and civic organizations on leveraging social media to enhance democratic engagement and political literacy, particularly among the youth. Additionally, the study contributes to the broader discourse on digital media and political participation, providing a foundation for future research in the context of Malaysia and beyond. Keywords: Social media choice, social media use, Sarawak state election, online political participation, Sarawak.

Recent years have seen an increase in political participation among young people worldwide. In light of this heightened political consciousness among youth, the process by which the young might develop political attitudes and become engaged with politics makes a worthy and important research subject. This study thus focuses on whether political socialization by family and peers can affect the online and offline political participation of Singapore youth, also taking into consideration recent changes in the local political environment. The other aspect the study wished to explore whether offline and online news exposure might have a correlation with youth political participation. AC Nielsen Research Pte Ltd. was commissioned to conduct the post-election national telephone survey. Data analysis supported that political socialization by the two sources of family and peers was significantly correlated with young people’s political participation in both offline and online forms. In addition, the results indicate that newspaper reading was associated with youth’s online political participation but not with their offline political participation. And online news exposure was found to significantly correlate with youth’s online political participation. One other result worth mentioning is the positive correlation between mother’s education and respondent’s offline political participation.

Most current studies examining the mobilizing or reinforcing role of social media for political participation focus on gender and socioeconomic stratifications and are based in Western democratic societies. Attention to religious status as a form of social stratification concerning social media use for political participation, more so in non-Western settings, is nearly absent. This study, through survey data from India, investigates the roles of political interest, social media news use, and religious status in explaining online political participation gaps. Results show that individuals with higher political interest and frequent social media news use are likelier to engage in online political participation. Next, social media news use can moderate the relationship between political interest and online political participation, exacerbating the participatory gaps between politically interested and disinterested citizens. However, we also find that these relationships are further conditional upon the religious status of the citizens. Specifically, we observe that social media mobilizes politically interested members of religious minorities more than the majority group. The findings reveal the subtleties of the effects of social media on online political participation in a non-Western context. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of political engagement in the digital age.

Previous studies suggest that social media use among the youth is correlated with online and offline political participation. There is also a mixed and inconclusive debate on whether online political participation in the youth increases offline political participation. This study uses three models of OLS, two-way fixed effects, and an instrumental variable approach to make causal inferences about the social media use and online and offline political participation of the youth. The analyses provide evidence of a significant effect of casual social media use on online political participation and no effect or negligible effect on offline political activity and voting behavior. The results from fixed effects and instrumental variable models provide strong evidence of elasticity between online political participation and offline political activity in young individuals. On average, a one percent increase in online political participation increases the offline political activity index by 0.12 percent.

The informational usage of media has been identified as one of the most important factors that facilitate citizens' participation in political activities. This relationship becomes exceptionally intriguing in the 21st century, which is characterized by a growing popularity of new media, and concurrently, a decline of political and civic engagement in many societies, particularly among young people. Research findings about the link between new media usage and political participation have been inconclusive, and specific processes through which new media usage, especially the informational usage of such media, may affect political participation remain less than lucid. In this study, we propose a theoretical framework under which political knowledge and political efficacy are used to explain the possible connection between online news consumption and political participation. Through a survey of university students in Singapore, this study shows that the young people's consumption of online news is directly related to both online and offline political participation. At the same time, the consumption of online news is also indirectly related to online and offline political participation via political efficacy. Political knowledge, however, is found to be a mediating factor between online news consumption and online political participation but not offline political participation. This study not only allows us a more holistic view of the impact of online news on young people's political and civic engagement but also contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between news consumption and political participation by incorporating both online and offline political activities in the proposed theoretical model.

ABSTRACTAlong with the explosive growth of Facebook in Cambodia in recent years, analysts have noted the rise of online civic and political participation among Cambodians on this social networking platform. Empirical research focusing on the nature and effects of such online behaviour, however, remains scarce. Through a face-to-face survey of 500 urban residents, this study explores the forms, determinants and impact of online political participation by Cambodians on Facebook. Results suggest that while online political participation on Facebook took a variety of forms, the levels of engagement varied from one form of online activity to another. The study also demonstrates that some key sociodemographic, psychological and Facebook-related behavioural factors were associated with intense online participation, including socioeconomic status, age, online political efficacy and online news consumption habits. The findings, in addition, indicate that online political engagement on Facebook was a robust predictor of offline political behaviour in Cambodia. This study adds to a growing understanding of the determinants of online political participation, while also providing insights into the potential of Facebook in raising citizens’ political engagement, particularly in authoritarian political settings.

Recently, much scholarship has investigated how social media use affects citizens' political participation, online and offline. In general, social media use has a positive but weak effect on participation. However, different use types exert a differentiated influence. While information-rich and active uses result in more participation, entertainment-oriented and passive uses lead to less participation. In this contribution, we introduce the concept of escapist Facebook use. We argue that Facebook, even if used in escapist ways, might activate users to participate politically through what we call accidental political engagement. Based on a survey of 762 Facebook users in Germany and using linear regression, we test the influence of three Facebook use types on online political participation: consumptive, participatory and productive. We find that consumptive use has a negative effect, and productive use a positive effect on online political participation. Escapism has a small positive effect. It moderates consumptive use negatively and productive use positively, strengthening existing tendencies.

Research on online political participation highlights how online platforms may facilitate or encumber political participation. In this contribution, we add to existing research on digital inequalities in online political participation by focusing on privacy concerns as a critical construct. We follow a contextual understanding of online privacy and examine a variety of online political behaviours to differentiate the distinctive roles privacy concerns play in higher- and lower-threshold forms of participation. Based on a survey of German Internet users, we find that social media use exerts a strong positive effect on political participation, especially lower-threshold forms of participation. As privacy concerns are spread quite evenly throughout the population, they contribute little to the socioeconomic stratification of online political participation. Privacy concerns relate positively to higher-threshold forms of political participation. We discuss how higher- and lower-threshold participation constitute distinct contexts for users’ considerations of privacy risks.

Political participation is an important component of democracy. The aim of this study is to reveal the tendency of citizens' offline and online political participation. As a result of factor analysis, active participation, civic participation, and passive participation are determined as the dimensions of offline political participation. Political participation on social media is determined as two dimensions which are slacktivism and following up. Cluster analysis was used to identify political participation typologies based on the dimensions of offline and online political participation. Four clusters were identified, namely politicized citizens, politically mindful citizens, politically concerned followers, and apolitical citizens. Politicized citizens explicitly express their political tendencies without any hesitation. Politically mindful citizens are aware of the manipulative power of social media so that they do not actively participate politics on social media. Politically concerned citizens only follow political issues passively, and finally, apolitical citizens do not have an interest in politics.

Scholarship on political participation and the Internet has found that Internet use may foster both online and offline political participation, while also finding pronounced inequalities in online political participation based on demographic and psychological characteristics. The article advances our theoretical understanding of how inequalities in online and offline political participation emerge through cognitive pathways, by applying social cognitive theory to conceptualize the relationship between environmental influences, cognition and behavior. Using survey data from 1,488 Internet users in Germany, we investigate how the cognitive dispositions of social media self‐efficacy and online privacy concerns mediate the effect of socio‐demographics on Internet use, and online as well as offline political participation. Results indicate that younger citizens are more likely to engage in online political participation, while older, more educated, and male citizens are more likely to engage in offline political participation. Internet use is positively associated with online political participation, which is closely related to offline participation. Self‐efficacy fully mediates the effect of education and gender on Internet use and online political participation. Thus, Internet use simultaneously amplifies and mitigates pre‐existing participation divides, depending on users’ cognitive dispositions.

ABSTRACTA considerable number of studies have investigated the influence of new media on political attitudes and behaviors. However, much of this research focuses on young people, ignoring other age cohorts, particularly Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964). To fill this gap, this research examines the influence of attention to specific forms of traditional and online media on Baby Boomers’ online and offline political participation during the fall 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. Drawing on a Baby Boomer survey panel, responses were collected during the 2012 general election to analyze the empirical relationship between attention to traditional and online media sources and political participation. Data analyses reveal that Boomers’ attention to traditional media sources, particularly television, did not increase their offline and online political participation. Instead, various forms of offline and online participation were consistently heightened by Boomers’ attention to presidential candidate websites. In addition, attention to Facebook for campaign information was positively linked to online engagement. Boomers’ attention to blogs, Twitter, and YouTube were associated with only certain types of online and offline activities.

While numerous studies have explored the participatory benefits of social media use for political participation, the empirical literature on the mobilizing role of political memes is nearly absent. In addition, most of the attention has been on Western democratic contexts. By employing survey data from an Asian context—Singapore—this study scrutinizes the impact of exposure to political memes in the interplay between political use of social media and online political participation. In addition, it investigates the contingent role of political cynicism. First, the results show that political social media use is associated with online political participation and that association is mediated by exposure to political memes. Further, moderation analyses indicate that social media use provides participatory gains only for individuals exhibiting low political cynicism. However, when such social media use facilitates exposure to political memes, it primarily mobilizes those with high political cynicism into active online political participation. The results suggest that memes can mobilize disengaged groups into active participation.

In many studies, social media use related to political information impacts political participation. However, only some have seen how different levels of social media use affect online political participation. This study aims to see how different levels of social media use affect online political participation by using the theory of source credibility. This study was conducted using a survey method by distributing questionnaires through social media networks. The population is Jakarta residents. Using purposive sampling, we obtained a sample of 500 respondents. Results showed that in the low category, apart from gender and education, the use of social media also impacts online political participation. In the medium category, besides the use of social media, gender, education, age, and political trust affect online political participation. In the high category, what influences online political participation are the use of social media, political trust, and social media credibility. The source credibility theory is confirmed only among high users.

Studies have indicated that many reasons, such as differences in resources, ideologies, and experiences, contribute to gender disparities in online political engagement. However, how environmental-related factors, especially norms about traditional gender roles, exacerbate gender inequality in online political participation remains underexplored. This study consisted of two related studies exploring the direct and underlying mechanisms of traditional gender norms in influencing an individual’s online political participation. Utilizing a cross-national dataset and the theoretical foundation of social cognitive theory, Study 1 investigated the gender participatory gap, the relationship between beliefs about traditional gender roles and online political participation, and the impact of contextual factors like societal gender inequality and the freedom of the political environment. Study 2 conducted an online survey in India and explored more of the underlying mechanisms. It supplemented Study 1 by emphasizing how sexist discrimination affects individuals’ online political participation, considering cognitive appraisal mechanisms and the role of such traditional gender norms. Both Study 1 and Study 2 revealed gender disparities in online political participation across different societies and the way beliefs about traditional gender roles shape participation. Additionally, a multi-level analysis from Study 1 found that a country’s free political environment directly influences individuals’ political participation. In gender-equal countries, the negative influence of traditional gender beliefs on political participation was more substantial than in less equal countries. Moreover, Study 2 indicated that perceived online and offline sexist discrimination could hinder online political engagement, with the cognitive appraisal of centrality as the mediator. Finally, beliefs about traditional gender roles could influence cognitive mechanisms when individuals perceive sexism. Overall, this study offers insights into understanding digital political inequality theoretically and practically.