Chapter 6: Discussion and Conclusion
Through the implementation of the O-S-O-R model, the goal of this research is to indicate the difference between the direct and indirect associations of the three identified mediums in both online and offline political participation. Indirect associations were tested for through the paths of wider view exposure and credibility. Previous research has proven direct associations of online political information use and Facebook political information use (Gaines & Mondak, 2009; Hirzalla et al., 2011; Kluver & Soon, 2005; McLeod & Scheufele, 1999; Valenzuela et al., 2009), but none have yet done so for mobile phones or through the indirect path specified in this paper.
Overall results confirm direct association in online and offline political participation, as experienced by previous authors investigating various political scenarios such as the Howard Dean campaign (Wolf, 2004), the Obama campaign (Strait, 2008), and the 2010 US elections (Smith, 2010; Smith, 2011a, 2011b). For indirect association, full association is only seen through the path of credibility for online political participation in all models, and for offline political participation in the Facebook model. Partial associations suggest that Facebook and online political information use leads to more diverse views, while all three mediums are seen to be credible information sources.
Strength of Political Ideology
In all models, the strength of political ideology is found to be an indicator for political information use through the indirect path. The strongest role is played in the model for online political information use, suggesting that a stronger political orientation is a very strong indicator for information consumption under conditions where the audience seeks for it online, which supports previous findings that it is a stable predictor of information
consumption (Cho et al., 2009; Shah, McLeod, et al., 2007). However, here the direct path is only relevant for online political participation.
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For Facebook political information use, this finding is slightly weaker in terms of significance, which brings up an argument that when the information exposure is more indirect, there is a reduced need for a strong political ideology. This goes further to support a position that an audience previously disinterested in political participation may be more likely to participate through the information source of Facebook brought about by
information exposure through the friend network (Ellison et al., 2007; Steinfield et al., 2008;
Zube et al., 2009), which they would otherwise not have been exposed to. For Facebook, this indirect role holds true for both online and offline political participation through the path of credibility. However, the direct role is limited to that of online political participation.
For mobile phone political information use, strength of ideology plays the weakest role through the indirect path. This also suggests a continuation of what is noted through the path of Facebook. There is again a reference to the friend network, which here is argued to be stronger than on the other mediums. This suggests that the strength of political ideology is less a concern when the friend becomes better known, forming an argument not previously existing in other research, to the best of researcher’s knowledge. Here the strength of political ideology also has a direct impact on both online and offline political participation, while the indirect path is limited to online political participation.
Wider View Exposure and Political Participation
Results from Figure 1 and 2 indicate that both online political information use and Facebook political information use leads to wider view exposure. For online political information use, this supports a case for the continued existence of sources like professional journalism in the online capacity. This counters claims that the mainstream media are going extinct due to social media (Parsons, 2011), and also supports the argument of Cho et al.
(2009) that the internet leads to an increase in political participation, not to a decrease as argued by some. This supports the internet as a supplier of diverse information, and forms an
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argument that the user actively seeks for additional information online. In fact, this is found to be strongest and most diverse supplier of information, exceeding that of Facebook.
Furthermore, this may suggest that many online political information sources, especially online main stream media, listservs, and blogs have begun to implement many of the same web2.0 features social media alone is being praised for. This would enrich and simplify their content (Daft & Lengel, 1983; Strait, 2008), also extended through the implementation of profiles and the use of avatars to create a predominantly weak friend network (Bente, Roggenberg, Kromer, & Eschenburg, 2008; Pena & Hancock, 2008; Yee, Bailenson, & Ducheneaut, 2009) to enrich reports with interactive comment sections.
For Facebook this path through wider view exposure is much weaker than for online political information use. This supports and argument where there is a proposed balance between strong and weak friend ties as defined by (Ellison et al., 2007), where a weaker friend network provides a diversity of views, but is weakened by the existence of a strong friend network. Here, it would seem that a strong friend network is more set in their
ideological predispositions, being less willing to accept arguments that counter their own, and more likely to coordinate with similar minded groups. There is nevertheless a wider view exposure, and the fact that it does not lead to political participation suggests that it affects this ideological predisposition by creating a certain level of uncertainty. Further notice is also taken of the nature of social media information dissemination, which occurs through a network where the ‘friend’ can be identified as a person, organisation, non-governmental organisation, or governmental organisation in possession of a profile (Zube et al., 2009).
Such identification possibly leads to the information being more credible.
The lack of support for mobile phone political information use actually supports a case where a stronger friend network leads to a lack of diversity and a stronger overall direct association on political participation, specifically in offline political participation. Mobile
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phone can then be argued to lead to a network of friends that form a closer group concerning political participation, and the strength of political ideology is less essential for them to form this position. They seem to be more likely to avoid alternative information altogether.
With all considered, especially as noted above under online political information use, a sheer mass of information seems to lead to inaction, although it does live up to the
expectations of the libertarian media theory to provide the public with a diversity of views from which they have to decide for themselves whether or not to participate (Fourie, 2001).
Arguably, for such diverse information to lead to political participation, it has to be supplied in a reduced or limited fashion by a credible source such as a gatekeeper, in the case of online information use, or an opinion leader, in the case of Facebook.
The next section will take a closer look at this credibility aspect, and test for a possible correlation between that and wider view exposure.
Credibility
Figure 1, 2, and 3 all show support for the role of the importance of credibility for the three mediums, and the following role for online political participation. This is also true for offline political participation through Facebook political use. A strong case is formed for the importance of a credible source visible within the medium.
From Figure 1 online political information use is seen as the most credible. This credibility is also related to the source of the information. For a newspaper this would be related to position of the paper, the editor, or a journalist while a blog would the source would most likely also be seen as that of the writer or the blog owner. A case is then made that these more traditional and mainstream sources are still able to hold a status of credibility.
Too often mainstream media are being accused of bias, both on- and offline (Hirschorn, 2010;
Parenti, 2004; Smith, 2010), or of favourably framing one political player over another (Christen, 2005; Druckman & Parkin, 2005; Entman, 2007). This has often brought into
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question their continuation as the watchdog for society (Caparini, 2004; Parsons, 2011).
Results in this paper, however, find that such traditional information sources online are seen as far more credible than the possible replacing source of Facebook, as one example of social media. What is more, this source also leads to online political participation, but this
association is not so strong, losing momentum after a credibility check. This implies that this medium does not have an identifiable leader to sustain political action, and the lack thereof leads to a near complete loss of the motivation to participate based on credible information.
Another aspect, as noted above, is that online political information use is also the strongest source for widest view exposure. This forms an interesting proposition, namely that an information source leading to wider view exposure may also be seen as more credible. A bivariate correlation was run to test for this, results indicating that there is a perfect positive significance between wider view exposure and credibility, r(1) = 0.124, p < 0.01, indicating that as wider view exposure increases, credibility also increases. This relationship explains 1.54 % of the variance in credibility. This finding also holds relevant to Figure 2 for Facebook. However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to further investigate this relationship, but future researchers could follow up to determine whether online political information use can lead to online political participation through the path of wider view exposure and credibility.
Facebook provides a much weaker sense of credibility, suggesting that a Facebook friend network that is relative also in for credibility perception. This returns to the structure of the friend network, and the Facebook profile (Ellison et al., 2007; Heiberger & Harper, 2008; Steinfield et al., 2008). Credibility would then go in hand with the level to which the Facebook Profile is considered to be a weak friend tie, or a strong friend tie. The weakened results found suggests that a Facebook friend network is balanced between a strong friend network, perceived as credible, and a weak friend network perceived as not credible,
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supporting the validity of the so called friend network in assisting the prediction of Facebook uses. Interestingly though, Facebook leads to a much stronger online political participation that online political information use, suggesting that the type of credibility is perhaps more stable and even able to persuade a weak friend into participating in politics online. This supports a case where Facebook provides a platform for a previously disinterested audience to spread their views, protected by the cover a profile and the grouping of similar minded friends (Gaines & Mondak, 2009), which could lead to political participation also for them as they find an audience willing that listens to them (Nisbet & Scheufele, 2004; Scheufele et al., 2004).
When also taking into consideration that Facebook has profiles and avatar, through which a person can establish the perception on an interpersonal relationship, it also becomes plausible to argue that some of these profiles, be they individuals or organisations, may act as opinion leaders through which these groups are formed and coordinated. Such a structure would also increase the level of political participation (Nisbet & Kotcher, 2009). This would perhaps also explain the presence of offline political participation. Facebook provides a platform through which opinion leaders can establish credibility and encourage previously disinterested people to participate in politics online. Then potentially also encourages them through acts of discussion and persuasion to participate in offline voting behaviour (Nisbet &
Scheufele, 2004; Scheufele et al., 2004), making this perhaps more useful as a platform through which politicians can engage the growing on community.
This also put to rest fears of persons who believe that Facebook will result in non-critical debate through the mass dissemination of potentially false information and the
resulting formation of emotion-fuelled political participation, especially offline (Roux, 2010).
Figure 2 actually indicates that Facebook has the weakest direct association to online political participation, suggesting that credibility becomes an important source prior to blind,
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emotive, participation. This supports a finding that Facebook is exactly the type of platform needed to boost a more democratic participation in politics, and that attempt to censor this medium could lead to the destruction of this credibility which is needed for the liberalisation of politics.
Mobile phone political information use is also seen as a credible source of
information, in fact much more so than Facebook and also leads to a stronger online political participation. This is probably due to the more personal nature of friend network, which suggests the users are more likely to know and trust each other. However, mobile phones have only a short research history of supporting political participation in both online and offline capacity (Tunisian, 2011), but all of it recent (Lenhart, 2010; Smith, 2010). However, when coupled with the strong direct association in offline political participation, the source’s credibility is potentially a problem, raising the fear of participation based on emotional and stereotypical views gained from false information. Political participation feeding on the fuel of sensationalism cannot lead to critical debate, and subsequent accountability, which is the essence of a democracy (Caparini, 2004; Fukuyama, 1995). Thus, while this medium is seen as credible and leading to online political participation, it is its role in offline political
participation that needs to be questioned.
Limitations
This research initially hoped to also compare two difference social media platforms, namely Facebook and Twitter, but the valid number of Twitter users reduced too dramatically compared to that of Facebook, for an unbiased comparison to be possible. This research thus acknowledge a limitation of a random sample, in that it is impossible to control how many of the sample will answer yes to a certain question.
Recognising the many great benefits of having access to a secondary dataset, such as the availability of a nationwide sample, this research also acknowledges that there are some
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limitations. This paper recognises one such limitation in that it is not possible to construct scales for some of the main variables used. These variables include offline political participation, credibility, and wider view exposure, all of which are dichotomous.
Suggestions for Future Research
Future research should focus on obtaining better datasets for the testing of Twitter, and perhaps also other major social media in use, under the same conditions as Facebook in Figure 2. This would provide for a comparison to see if the second most used social media in the United States is also able to live up to expectations of serving a growing online nature of politics, while also attempting to obtain continuous scale variants of the dichotomous
variables used in this paper. This would make it possible to increase the generalizability of findings.
Furthermore, this research found some evidence for the existence of opinion leaders on Facebook, and suggests that future research should apply some more focus to determining the precise role of these opinion leaders in establishing credibility prior to political
participation. Closer attention should also be placed on the role of the friend network of Facebook in determining when a source is considered to be credible, for example, whether the source is perceived as credible due to his status, his friendship relations, or his ability to argue a point on his profile page.
In addition, this paper also found some evidence that wider view exposure and online political information use are strongly correlated. This proposes the possibility that these mediums can also lead to political participation through wider view exposure, providing that they are also credible. Future research can also try to pursue this path analyses in order to determine its truth.
In conclusion, this paper finds strong support for both the direct in and indirect role of online political information use, Facebook political information used, and mobile phone
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political information use in especially political participation. This paper finds especially that credibility plays a role of all mediums, and is especially strong for online political
information use and mobile phone political information use, while also leading to offline political participation through the use of Facebook political information use.
Arguments are formed for Facebook to have a balanced weak and strong friend network, where there is the potential of an opinion leader that can persuade previously disinterested audience members to also participate online, and less so offline, but only if this source is perceived as credible. The case for Facebook argues that social media has the potential to become a mature participant in critical and informed political debate, perhaps even matching and exceeding that of blogs and other online political information sources.
It supports and encourages a continued online presence of government and political
candidates, but also for the voices of opposition through wider view exposure, which at this stage seems to be blocking political participation.
Mobile phones and online political information use has also been found to be significant role players as credible sources of information that leads to online political participation, but there is no indirect path through credibility or view exposure that leads to offline political participation. Since politics are increasingly going online (Smith, 2011a, 2011b), these mediums become important contributors to online political information dissemination, and potentially debate, but their potential inspire voting behaviour is not yet mature.
This research concludes that the mediums used in this paper have demonstrated a strong tendency to online political through the path of credibility, suggesting the importance of opinion leaders. For Facebook this is especially pertinent, being the only medium that leads to offline political participation. Furthermore, the continued relevancy of mobile phones for political information use has become a providing source of information, being
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able to capture videos, photos, and audio and share them online or offline. While they are not seen as a diverse source of information, they can connect to the internet and social media (Smith, 2011c), increasing their friend network to that of social media. The combinations of these sources are becoming increasingly indispensable to political participation. A constant information feed has been turned on, but one that leads only leads to political participation through a path of credibility.
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