Social Media and Youth Political Participation at the Time of Political Polarization: A Study on University Students in Indonesia during the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election

<p>Some studies theorized social media as fostering youth political participation by facilitating the development of online participatory cultures (Jenkins, 2009). Online participatory cultures provide young citizens with opportunities to discuss and gain information about political topics, create capacity for action by promoting digital skills and norms for group interaction, and facilitate recruitment into civic and political life (Kahne et al., 2013). Against the backdrop of this discourse, this research aims to investigate social media and youth political participation in Indonesia’s context. This project’s research questions ask: How politics is experienced by Indonesian youth and how social media is used by them to engage with political activities? To answer those questions, this research conducted a survey (n=265) and interviews (n=29) with students from three universities in Jakarta. This research adopted grounded theory approach in analysing the data. This research revealed that social media in general provides affordances for youth to engage with activities related to political conversation and social-political campaign (as indicated by the findings that social media attracts more numbers of youth participating in these two categories of activity). Thus, this research in part support propositions advocated by the thesis of online participatory cultures that social media facilitates youth political participation. However, under the specific context of ethnic and religious-based political polarization which happened during this research, this research also revealed that the salient form of social media use by youth is in fact monitoring political conversation. This activity is driven by the sense of “kepo” (the drive to asses how others are thinking, feeling, and responding to certain political issues) and has the effect on youth’s fear of social isolation (in the form of fear of breaking relationship with others). Eventually, this activity leads youth to the act of silence (in the form of refraining political expression on social media). In this case, this research (unintentionally) confirm the theory of spiral of silence proposed by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984). Finally, this research contributes to the academic discourse by providing a critical insight into the way social media could lead its users to the process of spiral of silence i.e. by exacerbating the fear of social isolation obtained from the activity of social surveillance (in the form of monitoring political conversation).</p>

Social Media and Youth Political Participation at the Time of Political Polarization: A Study on University Students in Indonesia during the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election

<p>Some studies theorized social media as fostering youth political participation by facilitating the development of online participatory cultures (Jenkins, 2009). Online participatory cultures provide young citizens with opportunities to discuss and gain information about political topics, create capacity for action by promoting digital skills and norms for group interaction, and facilitate recruitment into civic and political life (Kahne et al., 2013). Against the backdrop of this discourse, this research aims to investigate social media and youth political participation in Indonesia’s context. This project’s research questions ask: How politics is experienced by Indonesian youth and how social media is used by them to engage with political activities? To answer those questions, this research conducted a survey (n=265) and interviews (n=29) with students from three universities in Jakarta. This research adopted grounded theory approach in analysing the data. This research revealed that social media in general provides affordances for youth to engage with activities related to political conversation and social-political campaign (as indicated by the findings that social media attracts more numbers of youth participating in these two categories of activity). Thus, this research in part support propositions advocated by the thesis of online participatory cultures that social media facilitates youth political participation. However, under the specific context of ethnic and religious-based political polarization which happened during this research, this research also revealed that the salient form of social media use by youth is in fact monitoring political conversation. This activity is driven by the sense of “kepo” (the drive to asses how others are thinking, feeling, and responding to certain political issues) and has the effect on youth’s fear of social isolation (in the form of fear of breaking relationship with others). Eventually, this activity leads youth to the act of silence (in the form of refraining political expression on social media). In this case, this research (unintentionally) confirm the theory of spiral of silence proposed by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984). Finally, this research contributes to the academic discourse by providing a critical insight into the way social media could lead its users to the process of spiral of silence i.e. by exacerbating the fear of social isolation obtained from the activity of social surveillance (in the form of monitoring political conversation).</p>

Media Effects in Modern Neo-Information Society

The article proposes a systematization of the main media effects cultivated in the modern neo-information society, draws conclusions about their relationship and interdependence. Information overload, which produces information noise, becomes the cause of media effects. All sources of information noise are currently predominantly embedded in the field of the Internet, which, on the one hand, determines information liberalism, and on the other hand, as a result of the provision of illusory freedom, the overall effect of media manipulation increases. In turn, information noises give rise to such a process as information anomie. Pseudo-news precedents, differentiated into fake and post-truth, based on the motives of media controllers, are considered as manifestations of information noise. Media fraud is a radical form of post-truthization of the information agenda. The classical media effects are the spiral of silence, moral panics, information fatigue, narcotic dysfunction and compassion fatigue, which must be considered from an interdisciplinary perspective – both in the context of social sciences and natural sciences (in particular, medicine), since the influence of media on society and inspired media effects become more and more systemic, targeted, spreading to all spheres of social everyday life, unrecognized by consumers, as a result of which they often turn out to be beyond regulation and control.

Cultural Influences on Opinion Expression in an Online and Offline Context

This study compares the expression of opinion in incongruent offline and online settings regarding the issue of gender desegregation in Kuwait’s public schools. Spiral of silence theory provides the theoretical foundation for examining the impact of certain cultural factors and religious influences on the expression of opinion, their relationship to the fundamental tenets of the theory, such as fear of social isolation, and Twitter use variables among respondents to a survey. The results to a questionnaire administered to 534 public and private university students indicate greater overall expression of opinion in the offline than online context. Offline and online, the nonconformist personality variable was a positive predictor of expression of opinion, and fear of social isolation was a negative predictor. The perceived position of Islam on the issue was a predictor of expression of opinion only in the offline context. Finally, daily average use of Twitter was an additional predictor of expression of opinion in the online environment.

Are Chinese Netizens Willing to Speak Out? The Spiral of Silence in Public Reactions to Controversial Food Safety Issues on Social Media

This study examines the influential factors posited by the Spiral of Silence Theory (SoS) in shaping people’s perceptions of the overall public opinion towards food safety issues in China and their willingness to speak out. Two highly controversial issues, including genetically modified (GM) food and food additives, are examined. Using an online opt-in panel in China, we collected survey responses from a total of 1089 respondents, with a comparable age distribution to that of Chinese netizens, as indicated in the most recent census. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions were conducted to make statistical inferences about the proposed research questions and hypotheses. Findings suggest that perceived opinion incongruence, self-relevance, and self-influence significantly affected the extent to which people were willing to express their opinions on social media for the genetically modified food issue, but not the use of food additive issue. The study provides evidence of the silencing effect on publicly expressing opinions about the food safety related issues in China and clarifies the potential boundary conditions of the SoS mechanism in the context of Chinese social media where the majority of public opinions come into formation.

Online Opinion Expression about Women Serving as Judges among University Students in Egypt and Kuwait: An Integrative Study of the Spiral of Silence and Uses and Gratifications

This study integrates the Spiral of Silence and Uses and Gratifications theories to examine the willingness of university students to express on Twitter their opinions about a controversial issue, women serving as judges in Kuwait and Egypt. The analysis of a survey of 640 respondents showed that they used Twitter for information seeking, opinion formation, opinion reinforcement, and social utility in discussions, and for its democratizing capability. Democratization was the only motive to predict the expression of opinion online. When the Kuwaiti and Egyptian samples were analyzed separately, the democratization motive predicted opinion expression for the Kuwaiti students but not for the Egyptian students. Interaction effects between motivations and size of the respondent's social network on Twitter were found to predict the online expression of opinion. For example, the variable assessing the size of a respondent's social network interacted with information seeking motivation and also with opinion reinforcement to predict opinion expression online.

CRITICAL REVIEW OF J. CHAN'S MODEL OF SOCIAL COHESION MEASUREMENT: PERSPECTIVES OF ADAPTATION TO THE UKRAINIAN CONTEXT

The article is devoted to identifying the "weaknesses" of J. Chan's model of social cohesion theoretical conceptualization and empirical measurement and outlining promising areas for its adaptation to the Ukrainian context. It's summarized the necessity of refining the definition of social cohesion from the standpoint of social dynamics, supplementing the subjective component of the model with "value" indicators, diversification with projective issues in order to avoid the "spiral of silence" and Lapierre's paradox.

Swedish Media, Fundamental Values and the Opinion Corridor in the 2018 Election

Sweden is usually ranking very highly in terms of global democracy and transparency indexes. The 2018 elections in Sweden were very divisive and bitterly fought, where there was an open conflict between the mainstream political establishment parties and the anti-political establishment Swedish Democrats. Mainstream Swedish media were not neutral bystanders in the election coverage, in the months before and after the September 2018 elections. The election coverage framing featured an idealised national myth that uses the notion of various acceptable fundamental values to define it, and an idealised Swedish society. Those actors whose values and norms that do not fit these ideals were subjected to attack and derision within a concept of consensus enforcement known as the opinion corridor, which is akin to the spiral of silence.

What Bots Can (and Can’t) Do? (Model of Protest and Counter-Protest Political Mobilization)

Despite the increasing interest among scholars in the effect of Internet bots, or automated social media accounts, on the processes of political communication and mobilization in the online sphere, the extent of bots’ effectiveness and the specific mechanisms of their use remain largely understudied. The deficit of the overarching conceptual understanding and concrete results is arguably due to researchers’ aspiration to solve a problem in the empirical way, without attempting to combine data analysis with mathematical and computational modeling. Having analyzed the existing models on the topic, the authors offer their own model that is based on the spiral-of-silence theory. The key features of the model that set it apart from the existing ones are the following: a) taking into account differences in the types of motivation and costs associated with expressing protest and loyalist sentiments; b) including “partner effect” into the spiral-ofsilence mechanism; c) employing a neurological decision-ma king scheme according to which the same stimulus can prompt action and be a deterrent. On the basis of a series of computational experiments with the model, the authors demonstrate that bots are more effective in mobilizing opposition members when an individual motivated for political participation refrains from it because his local social community does not share his views. In this case, the emergence of a like-minded partner bot can destroy the spiral of silence created by this community and encourage this individual to openly express his position. On the contrary, when mobilizing loyalists, bots are most effective in relation to poorly motivated individuals. The model elaborated by the authors not only allows us to evaluate bots’ effects in a new way, but it also sheds light on how people make decisions in the framework of political communication and mobilization in social networks.