Along comes this campaign to take back the country for ordinary human beings, and the best way you can do that is through the Net. We listen. We pay attention. If I give a speech and the blog people don't like it, next time I change the speech. (p1)
In 2004, during his political candidacy campaign in the United States, Howard Dean (Wolf, 2004) made the first historical political use of social media. Even though in practice his campaign failed to use all these media rich features that make social media so successful in gaining the attention and support of a wider audience, he succeeded in arguing the point for its continued relevance in the process of political participation. He had identified the potential of social media to open a direct channel of communication with potential voters, and promoted independent political participation where minimal input was required by the political party.
Expansive use of new online mediums continued in 2008 when Barrack Obama became the first black president of the United States. His campaign was praised for using a combination of social media and other online mediums platforms, and their features, to engage an increasingly online American public (Metzgar & Maruggi, 2009; Strait, 2008;
Vaccari, 2010). The 2010 campaign saw a further continuation of online mediums use, with the increasing political use of mobile phones indicating an increasingly mobile nature to US political participation (Lenhart, 2010; Smith, 2010; Smith, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c).
The case for the political potential of online mediums, social media, and mobile technology had been made, but was it overstated? Do they provide wider view exposure?
And are they credible information sources? By applying the
Orientation-Stimulus-Orientation-Response (O-S-O-R) model to the 2010-post election survey (November 2010 Post-Election Tracking Survey, 2010) by Pew Internet and American Life project, this research investigates this topic.
•‧
This path model is defined in the literature as a stimulus response model where a set of orientations (O1), structural, cultural, cognitive, and motivational characteristics brought by the audience is expected to influence how people experience a medium stimulus (S) (Cho et al., 2009; McLeod & Perse, 1994). This in turn produces a second set of orientations (O2), from which potential mediators emerge that are expected to have an impact on the
behavioural response (R) (Cho et al., 2009; Feldman & Price, 2007; McLeod & Perse, 1994).
This O-S-O-R model serves as a good fit to test for the important issues surrounding the increasing popularity of online mediums in US politics for not only raising the hope of an increasingly interactive debate between candidates and citizens (Zube, Lampe, & Lin, 2009), but also raising questions and alarms about the impact of wider view exposure through the unchecked reach, potentially false, and emotionally charged content available through these mediums (Roux, 2012). While previous research has dealt extensively with direct effects of online mediums on political participation (Harb, 2011; Metzgar & Maruggi, 2009), Roux (2012) raises a case for these indirect effects through the legitimate concern about whether wider view exposure actually contributes to democracy, or whether it is counterproductive. It then becomes equally important to check whether credibility assessments are done prior to political participation, or whether information is acted upon on face value (Shah et al., 2007;
Zube et al., 2009). These two variables emerge from online mediums through the online friend network, where a weaker friend network is more conducive to information
dissemination and a stronger network more conducive to political participation (Ellison et al., 2007; Steinfield et al., 2008).
In addition to direct effects mentioned above, some researchers also looked at indirect paths. Some examples include McLeod et al. (1999) who tested for the mediation effects of political knowledge between newspaper hard news, interpersonal discussion, and TV hard news and political participation. In addition Shah et al. (2007) investigated the mediating
•‧
effects of interactive political messaging and interpersonal political discussion between online hard news and traditional hard news on political and civic participation. While Cho et al. (2009) tested for the potential mediators of political messaging, political talk, and
interpersonal reflection between online and traditional news use and political participation and knowledge. Although this is not an exhaustive list, it provides a clear research gap identifying firstly the lack of research on the indirect effects of social media and mobile phones, and secondly on the mediating variables of wider view exposure and credibility originating from these. This research contributes then to the body of scientific knowledge by emphasising these aspects.
Organisational Section
This research is divided into 7 chapters. Chapter two provides a brief background of existing uses of online mediums, social media, and mobile phones in the US setting. A brief is made of its democratisation use during the Arab-Spring and its role in US policies.
Chapter three will introduce the theoretical framework used in this research, namely the O-S-O-R model and the variables that make up its different parts in this research. This section will also identify the key features of online mediums and social media that are relevant to the formation of second level orientations, and this research.
Chapter four will introduce the methodology section, which will include the source of the secondary data, as well as the operationalization of all variables.
Chapter five indicated the results of the three path analyses models that are run for the three online mediums. This section will compare differences between online and offline political participation, as well as between mediums.
Chapter six develops a discussion and conclusion based on research results, arguing for the roles and benefits of different online mediums and draws a conclusion for findings.
Here mention will also be made of some limitations and suggestions for future research.