Can online communities be social capital? The effect of online communities on individuals’ political engagement

Can WeChat really foster young people's civic engagement? Unraveling an underlying mechanism from the social capital theoretical perspective

“…Contextualized in the case of mainland China, this current research attempted to systematically explore the role of WeChat for young people's civic engagement, a significant topic that has sparked acrimonious discussion among researchers. Existing empirical studies on the association between social media use and democratic participation have been implemented mainly in Western countries and advanced societies (Kahne and Bowyer, 2018; Kim and Chen, 2016; Park and You, 2019). Surprisingly, little is known about how social media technology could facilitate social capital and civic engagement in non-Western societies.…”

“…Scholars have argued that these enhance society's entire efficiency through enhancing cooperative actions behaviors (Pang, 2021; Putnam, 2001; Xie, 2008). Cooperative actions are triggered by networking experiences between individuals of specific communities according to continuous communication, generating a feeling of trust that produces mutual benefits and good cooperation (Park and You, 2019). Early scholars argued that consistent activity with and experience within communities could generate a habit of engagement.…”

“…Specifically, one stream of research highlights the role of social capital for individual participants, and the concept could be comprehended as the actual and potential resources embedded in people's stronger-tie and weaker-tie networks (You and Hon, 2019). Comparatively, another study tradition mainly focuses on the importance of social capital for collective goals and normally indicates individuals' involvement in civic life, orientation toward politics and engagement in local communities (Pang, 2018a; Park and You, 2019; Yavetz and Aharony, 2021). Building upon this foundational insight, the conceptualization of social capital has been differentiated into three categories: structural capital, relational capital and cognitive capital (Shao and Pan, 2019).…”

“…Moreover, though the main impacts of social media use on social capital have been investigated (Ferrucci et al. , 2020; Park and You, 2019; Sun and Xu, 2019), little research has uncovered the intersection of WeChat use and other new technologies, such as the rapidly developing mobile technologies. Thus, the stream of research still needs to be further probed due to the chance that WeChat presents for enhancing civic involvement behavior because of its large user base.…”

Политическая Самоэффективность: Теоретические Подходы И Актуальные Исследования

“…ПСЭ играет важную роль не только в офлайн-, но и в онлайн-активности [Park, You, 2019]. В частности, внутренняя ПСЭ в большей степени связана с политической активностью в интернете и, например, попытками связываться с политиками и чиновниками онлайн.…”