Role of Social Media in Political Participation and Process - Research Paper Example

Role of Social Media in Political Participation and Process Over the last 20 years, the political role of digital social media and internet has become an area of concern in issues around political participation and communication. The internet had a prominent role in diffusing popular protests across Arabic countries. It also contributed to the ouster of authoritarian governments in Egypt and Tunisia, and the ungovernable state of Syria. The role of the internet in these political situations has reinvigorated interest on the use of social media and internet platforms for political mobilization, in addition to influencing people to participate in political processes. Previous research on the role of information technology on political processes concentrated on the context of consolidated Western democracies. These studies also focused on systems that support different forms of political participation. These include activities that are designed to influence the activities of a government. For instance, social media enhances political processes in Western democracies in processes such as donating money for campaign purposes. Other processes include voting, attending political meetings, canvassing and attending electoral rallies. This research paper will focus on how digital media influences political processes and participation. Based on a resource perspective, there is a positive relationship between the levels of political participation and exposure to digital media. The research paper will also show that social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have led to an exponential multiplication of the possibilities for disseminating and retrieving political information. This gives internet users a number of supplemental accesses to political information. The research paper will use a meta-analysis to confirm the positive impact of digital media on political participation. A Meso-level approach of social organization will be used to show that the internet has widened the collective action repertoires of organizational actors such as grassroots organizations and social movements (Muller and Jukam 160). The research question for this paper is “how do social media and the internet platforms contribute to the mobilization of political interests and protests?” The internet and social media offer informal and decentralized strategic toolkits for political actors to mobilize people for political participation. Literature Review The first position is that the internet influences attitudinal and psychological approaches. According to Muller and Jukam (2003), relative deprivation and traditional grievance models focus on the psychological factors that motivate people to engage in contentious politics. People who participate in acts of political violence and civil disobedience are usually discontented about a political issue (Muller and Jukam 162). The underlying psychological process or mechanism at work excites people because of unfulfilled material expectations. These people exhibit frustration, anger and resentment, which are manifested as individual protest. Huntington (2008) found that the theory of relative deprivation bears an analogy to the modernization theory. This researcher found that political instability is usually unleashed by unfulfilled economic expectations and rapid social changes. This also leads to the political mobilization of disaffected citizens (Huntington 9). The relative deprivation approach emphasizes on the primacy of material grievances, which cannot account for the mass resentment seen on a national scale. Recent studies show that material grievances are reinforced by emotional responses to escalate an aggrieving situation. Emotions that lead to reactions, such as moral outrage, anger and confusion, in the face of social injustice have the potential to trigger decisions to participate in protests (Huntington 21). Kuebler (2011) observed that strong reactive emotions have the potentials to incline citizens to engage in protests, which do not have any pre-existing affective links to personal or protest movement links. Though moral and material grievances provide a number of motives under authoritarian regimes, the propensity of a civil society to channel these motives to collective action is thwarted by the sealed nature of the public sphere (Kuebler 31). The national government controls the national narrative. In most cases, the government resorts to intimidation, censorship and persecution in order to suppress information around economic malpractices, corruption and human rights violations. In these situations, the internet provides free space for sharing information. Kuebler (2011) shows that the internet poses a threat to the authoritarian’s government control of the national narrative. Internet and web-based communication platforms enable people to expose non-governmental narrative to the public. The leakage of negative information about a government may unleash a number of effects. At the individual level, the information may function as a cognitive motivator, which pushes people to protest. In case the information is reinforced by personal experiences of abusive treatment and economic deprivation, it may also lead to protests (Kuebler 41). At the national scale of collective action or outcome, information or content that creates negative emotions has the potential to instigate the whole country to rally against the government. Milkman and Berger (2010) highlighted the fact that anxiety and anger can lead to emotional states that cause heightened physiological tension or arousal. These are the main factors that drive social diffusion and transmission. In an authoritarian regime, information that produces negative emotions can diffuse easily and quickly through the internet. This line of theoretical reasoning shows that social media and the internet provided a platform for the emotional mobilization of people against the government in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria (Milkman and Berger 7). The internet’s role in this case was to break government censorship by making information on human rights violations and corruption available to the population. The second position is the rational choice approach. According to Hendrix, Haggard and Magaloni (2009), the rational choice approach challenges the grievance approach. The rational choice approach challenges the grievance approach by arguing that grievances are irrelevant to self-interested people’s decision to participate in political processes. Grievances represent a desire to achieve outcomes that satisfy public goods such as change of government policy and reduction in inequality (Hendrix, Haggard and Magaloni 20). Under an authoritarian government, the mobilization of people to participate in protests faces a number of challenges. It is vital to note that the public sphere in an authoritarian government is usually sealed. Therefore, citizens do not have all the information that can guide their action, or opinion towards other citizens. In this environment, citizens can expect to pay high personal costs such as death, incarceration or arrest in case they contribute to unsuccessful protests. Hendrix et al (2009) observed that people will only turn out for these protests when they are convinced that the government does not have the ability to crush the protest. The threshold model required for participation in any collective action posits that people take risks depending on the participation of others (Hendrix et al 49). Information about the participation of other members of a country is conveyed through social networks, which are highly supported by the internet. The decision to risk by participating in the protests is not a personal decision. The individual is perceived to join a large number of people who have made similar decisions. This sets an example for others. The precedent set by these people has informational value, which increases with an increase in the degree of the repressiveness of the government. The information revealing potentials of a protest is maximized when it becomes costly for citizens to express their opposition to the government. These circumstances provide a foundation for protestors to transmit strong informative signals, which are likely to induce more citizens to participate. In this circumstance, social media and the internet have the potential to influence the cost-benefit calculations of people with regards to their participation in the protests. First, online information and content that shows past protest activities can trigger emotional and information cascades, which lead to mass civil uprisings. Second, event management functions offered by platforms such as Facebook inform people about prospective turnouts. The third position is the social capital and resources mobilization approach. According to Dalton and van Sickle (2005), the resource mobilization theory was developed to challenge the rational choice approach. The rational choice approach states that people engage in political activities because of their irrationality. The resource mobilization theory contrasts the grievance approach, which focused on dissatisfaction and deprivation as the main incentives for participating in political processes (Dalton and van Sickle 8). The resource mobilization theory states that affluent and open societies provide favorable conditions or environments for resentment and protests to thrive. Additionally, the existence of civil society groups and Non-Governmental Organizations provides crucial variables that link dissatisfaction with political participation and action. This allows people to freely engage in different voluntary associations. It also enables them to develop organizational and social skills, which are required for the promotion of their interests. As a country progress economically, it produces denser infrastructures for communication. In this context, the internet acts as a crucial factor that orchestrates protests. Internet use in these cases coincides with participatory dynamics, which are characterized by reduced formal relationships in a civil society. Internet communication technologies enable activist groups to interact and communicate with their constituencies regardless of distance. Methodology In 2010, violent political protests broke out in Arabic countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. These protests developed into full-scale national political movement, which were motivated by the need to oust the leadership of the day. The role-model status of the protests in the Arabic countries is widely viewed as atypical because of the successes of the protestors in an authoritarian regime. The regime tightly controlled the media and platforms that influence public opinion. This research recognizes that the mass mobilization of people in the Arabic countries, which witnessed the protests, was only possible through the use of modern digital communication tools. The first qualitative method involved the use of online semi-structured interviews on 16 Tunisian and Egyptian internet activists and bloggers. The interviews were designed with an aim of collecting information about online and offline protest activities before and during the protests. Additionally, the interviews were structured with an aim of collecting information about the nature of the digital activist networks. Findings from the first qualitative approach were used to develop a closed survey for the second quantitative step. This step was used to understand the patterns of internet use in the countries that experienced the protests, and the political behavior of citizens in these countries. Sampling The sampling method that was used for this study was online. The research conducted an online survey of internet users in Tunisia and Egypt. The survey was conducted from March 1st to May 31st. The online survey was administered using online software called SurveyMonkey. The online survey contained 34 questions, which took approximately 12 minutes to complete. Before the survey was administered, it was tested for comprehensiveness, ethical practices and applicability among citizens. Participation was promoted by using a respondent driven sampling technique. In order to build the sample, the researcher founded a Facebook group, which was dedicated to the discussion of the impact of social media on political participation and the Arab uprising. The researcher also invited internet activists and bloggers interviewed during the initial online survey to join the group. After the launch of the survey, members of the Facebook group were sent invitations to participate. The invitation to participate in the survey contained a description of the academic purpose of the study and guidelines on how to participate. The interpretation of the results was based on the realization that the participants were politically engaged in the study. The users did not allow inferences about their participation and behaviors. Meta-analytical approaches and Meso-level processes were used in the analysis of data. Most of the respondents were medium to high frequency users of social media and the internet. Additionally, network interaction amongst the respondents was high. Facebook was the most prominent social media platform amongst the respondents. YouTube and Twitter were the second and third most preferred social media and internet platforms. Most of the respondents showed informational use of the internet rather than recreational use, as is the case in western democracies. Work Cited Berger, Joseph and Milkman, Lawrence. Social transmission, emotion, and the virality of online content. 2010. Web. June 8, 2014. Dalton, Ryan and Anders, van Sickle. The resource, structural, and cultural bases of protest. Irvine, Calif.: Center for the Study of Democracy. 2005. Print Hendrix, Collins. Haggard, Steve and Magaloni, Brian. Grievance and opportunity: food prices, political regime, and protest. Prepared at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, New York, NY. 2009 Huntington, Peters. Political order in changing societies. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 2008. Print Kuebler, John. Overcoming the digital divide: the Internet and political mobilization in Egypt and Tunisia. 2011. Web. June 8, 2014. Muller, Eric and Jukam, Timothy. Discontent and aggressive political participation. British Journal of Political Science. Vol. 13, (2). 2003 159–179. Read More