What drives changes in expressive social media use for generational cohorts?

Abstract

Extant literature has often focused on digital citizenship amongst youths in particular instances and contexts, but is limited in addressing how such citizenship compare to other generational cohorts. Examining political expression as a particular form of actualising citizenship, the paper utilises a longitudinal approach to explore the effects of changes in political efficacy, media use, political knowledge, media trust and political talk on political expression – and the differences between generational cohorts over two general elections in Singapore. Findings indicate that while changes in mass media use, social media use, trust in instant messaging and personal communications and political talk were positively associated with changes in political expression as a whole, changes in political knowledge and trust in mass media negatively predicted political expression. With different effects observed for different generational cohorts of citizens, findings from the study contribute to deeper understandings of practices of actualising citizenship over time.