8/04/2011

Reading Summation 5 – It’s Complicated: Facebook Users’ Political Participation in the 2008 Election by Jessica Vitak, M.A., Paul Zube, M.A., Andrew Smock, MLS, Caleb T. Carr, M.A., Nicole Ellison, Ph.D., and Cliff Lampe, Ph.D.


During the 2008 campaign, there were about 65% of Social Network Site (SNS) users joined 1/5 political activities on SNS (Smith A), and research shows the main focus of SNS-politic are campaign strategy and the political use of social media technology (Sweetser KD & Lariscy RW). Also, through SNS, like Facebook, the users can share their political points of view and interact with other users, and other users can visit some political sites by connecting the share information. For political participation, there are three factors, such as access to resources, campaign recruitment, and psychological engagement. However, most of time, the political resources ignored civic skills development to applying flexibly of these resources and limited to important socioeconomic indicators. The goals of this survey are to figure out the predicting political participation on Facebook.  Some studies show that internet can offset the lacks parts of form of civic engagement (Krueger BS & Tolbert CJ & McNeal RS.), and a research shows that the internet satisfied the traditional methods of communication (Wellman B & Hasse AQ & Witte J & Hampton KN). Also, Elin points out that the internet let the users to immerse in their personal political information by providing a virtual space. Moreover, the effectiveness of peers might encourage the use of social media and the political engagement, like post information on Facebook.
This survey picked out a random sample of 4000 undergraduates students and got 683 valid responses, and there were four main questions which including what the general political activities college students are engage in, what political activities on Facebook  do college students engage in, do college students perceive Facebook as an appropriate venue for political activity, does political activity on Facebook influence general political participation, and what factors influence political activity on Facebook.  The result shows that there is a complex relationship for young people between social media technology usage and the political participation. The immersion of political participation has also increased with age, and part of the reasons is the cumulative experience of citizens. Facebook is a wonderful platform for civic skill practicing with minimal commitment of time and effort. The users of Facebook are typical Slacktivists which having the loose attitude to participate in politics. Also, highly interactivity might encourage the user to participate in politic on Facebook. Additionally, Fabeook can be the enhancer of other forms of political activity that can develop the scale and effectiveness through Facebook.


Work cited 
1. Smith A. The Internet’s role in campaign 2008. Pew Internet & American Life Project 2009. pewinternet.org/Reports/
2009/6–The-Internets-Role-in-Campaign-2008.aspx (Accessed June 20, 2009).
2. Sweetser KD, Lariscy RW. Candidates make good friends: An analysis of candidates’ use of Facebook. International
Journal of Strategic Communication 2008; 2:175–98.
3. Krueger BS. Assessing the potential of Internet political participation in the United States: A resource approach.
American Politics Research 2002; 30:476–98.
4. Tolbert CJ, McNeal RS. Unraveling the effects of the Internet on political participation? Political Research Quarterly 2003;
56:175–85.
5. Wellman B, Hasse AQ, Witte J, et al. Does the Internet increase, decrease, or supplement social capital? American
Behavioral Scientist 2001; 45:436–55.
6. Hampton KN, Wellman B. (2002) The not so global village of Netville. In Wellman B, Haythornthwaite C, eds. The Internet and everyday life. Oxford, England: Blackwell, pp. 345–71.
7. Elin L. (2003) The radicalization of Zeke Spier: Howthe Internet contributes to civic engagement and new forms of social capital. In McCarthy M, Ayers MD, eds. Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice. New York: Routledge, pp. 97–114.

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