Knowledge and efficacy

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

71

politically controversial, such as the one under discussion in this study. According to boyd (2008), with a relatively new function, “News Feed” on Facebook, when logged in, users come to this start page that lists every act by their friends within the system – who befriended whom, who commented on whose Wall, who altered their relationship status to ‘single’, who joined what group and so on. This new feature has made the information more accessible and visible on Facebook (boyd, 2008). This new feature, when first launched, caused an outraging response from a large number of users. Groups such as ‘Students Against Facebook News Feeds’ were set up in protest of what users believed to be a violation of their privacy. boyd (2008) proposed an intriguing theory which explains this reaction. In the tech world, the concept ‘private’ is often viewed as a single bit that is either 0 or 1. In other words, data are either exposed or not. However, when Facebook made a decision to make the data visible in a more ‘efficient’ manner, it became shocking, prompting users to speak of a violation of ‘privacy’ (boyd, 2008). This discussion is significant to this current study, because as mentioned earlier, same-sex marriage related issues, are still considered controversial both socially and politically in most places. Therefore, certain users may not feel completely comfortable having such information as joining a certain same-sex marriage legislation cause group exposed. This may well influence their participation in relevant activism online.

5.3 Knowledge and efficacy

Political knowledge and political efficacy and their connection with the level of conventional activism have not been able to be tested in this study, mainly due to the design of the questionnaire as well as the low response number to the questionnaire.

This is illustrated with the low reliability of each of these two constructs.

Nonetheless, the interviews reveal some intriguing aspects, which require some

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

72

explanation. As regards political knowledge, there is a high level of self-assessed or subjective knowledge about Prop 8. Most interviewees consider themselves knowledgeable. But with some specified clarification, there seems to have emerged a need to define what political knowledge really is. In other words, exactly what kind of political knowledge works best to predict a person’s level of activism in the real life?

And what kind of political knowledge can be enhanced through action online? delli Carpini and Keeter (1993) defined that even though ‘attitudes’ are still a central concept to the study of political behavior, more and more attention is being diverted the congnitions underlying attitudes. According to them, the cognitive knowledge usually takes the forms of political facts, information that citizen hold. The questions used in the survey in this study are about random facts about Proposition 8, the so-call objective knowledge. Most of them are concerned with names and numbers.

According to the interviewees, it is relatively easy to answer the questions regarding the stakeholders, such as political figures, lead organizations, and religious groups that are involved in the issue. However, when it comes to specific statistics, such as the number of states which recognize same-sex marriage, they become less certain.

For future studies, first, it is important to take into account the difference of subjective (self-assessed) and objective (factual) knowledge. They may place different weights in the prediction of political knowledge. The fact that the survey of this current study only applied objective knowledge questions which did not yield to a significant result means evaluation of political knowledge need to be re-evaluated. It is worth looking into the assessment of political knowledge, especially in terms of event or issue specific political knowledge. Is issue specific political knowledge or the assessment of it similar at all the political knowledge of general politics? If not, how are they different?

With regard to political efficacy, the interviewees are similar in that they are

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

73

unhappy with the current situation but are hopeful and optimistic about the eventual outcome. According to the Gamson Hypothesis, a person with high internal efficacy and low external efficacy is like to rise and revolt against the status quo hence a higher level of political involvement (Hollander, 1997). Most of the interviewees displayed a very low level of external efficacy due to being discontent with government policy toward Prop 8 issues. Even though they didn’t exactly present a high sense of internal efficacy either, they all carried a strong belief that things will turn out in their favor in the long run. This explains why they are all still very active in events related to Prop 8. As a result, in the future, when drawing on the Gamson Hypothesis, it will be useful to take into consideration of the concept of “prospect”, meaning how individuals feel about the less immediate but long term outcome.

Another noteworthy aspect regards the design of efficacy items in the survey.

Based on the interview results, it is evident that the efficacy items in the questionnaire are over simplified and should be extended in order to yield a more comprehensive measurement of political efficacy. For example, one of the interviewees mentioned the two levels of legislative and judicial systems. According to him, the judicial system is on the side of people against Prop 8 because it is based on the Constitution, which protects human rights, and the right to marry is considered as a basic right protected by the Constitution. Therefore, he has high efficacy towards the judicial side of the government. However, legislatively, he didn’t seem optimistic. Sharing this belief is another interviewee who believes that same-sex marriage is just not a prioritized issue for the legislators. Perhaps, in the future, research can integrate different concepts when determining one’s external efficacy.

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

74