Abstract
By adopting the social capital theory, this study explored the role of traditional media use, Internet use, and personal talk in predicting civic engagement. The results from a national survey showed that despite the strong bivariate correlation between civic engagement and Internet access as well as traditional mass media use, when interpersonal talk was controlled, some of the significant relationships disappeared. This study suggested that online information seeking and political use of mass media may facilitate the collective action and have the potential to affect the health of civic society. Implications of the results are discussed.
Highlights
There has been a long history in the research of community involvement and civic engagement (Aldrich & Meyer, 2015; Almond & Verba 1963; Phua, Jin, & Kim, 2017)
By adopting the social capital theory, this study explored the role of traditional media use, Internet use, and personal talk in predicting civic engagement
Internet access was positively related with interest in public affairs (r = .15, p < .01), internal political efficacy (r = .18, p < .01), external political efficacy (r = .19, r < .001), political knowledge (r = .22, p < .001), community problem solving (r = .14, p < .01), and political activity (r = .23, p < .001)
Summary
There has been a long history in the research of community involvement and civic engagement (Aldrich & Meyer, 2015; Almond & Verba 1963; Phua, Jin, & Kim, 2017). According to the knowledge in this field, active citizens are the basic tenet of democracy in society and mass media are lauded as a critical source of political knowledge (Carpini & Keeter 1996; McLeod, Rush, & Friederich 1968). The advent of Internet has been the topic regarding its ability to promote civic engagement, with predictions emanating from three camps of scholars (Hyun & Kim, 2015; Nisbet & Scheufele 2004; Soon & Samsudin, 2015). The third one, which Nisbet and Scheufele (2004) called “reinforcement theorists”, predicted that the Internet will strengthen and enlarge the gap between the rich resources and the poor resources and only provide novel sources of information for people who are already interested in politics
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