Effects of Slacktivism on Offline Engagement: Appraising the Role of Political Facebook Memes As a Communication Tool for Young Consumers in Pakistan

Abstract

The concurrent digital media environment stipulated as participatory media culture refers the active participation of citizens in politics by using Facebook memes as a communication tool. This research appraises the role of political Facebook memes as a communication tool to further investigate the effects of slacktivism on offline engagement of young Facebook users of age (18 to 36) studying at university level from 5 metropolitan cities of Pakistan, under uses and gratification theory as theoretical ground. By utilizing quantitative approach, a self-structured close ended questionnaire was employed to get responses from 1671 respondents using simple random sampling to understand the perceptions of meme consumers. The findings suggest that Political Facebook memes effectively provide information of political issues, makes politics interesting for youth, relax mind through satire while pointing loopholes in the system, hence online engagement of users also lead them to offline engagement as it makes them interested towards politics.