Social Media and Political Engagement: Mechanism and Contingencies

The increasing use of social media has spurred hopes that social media may have the power to increase political participation, even among those who used to tune out of the political world. Research findings in the field indeed suggest a positive relationship between social media use and various forms of political participation, such as protesting and political expression. However, there is a lack of theorizing about the precise psychological processes behind this relationship. Hence, we still dont know why and under which circumstances social media may increase participation. One problem is that research in the field is dominated by cross-sectional surveys, which measure social media use and participation for only one point in time. Long-term analyses and experimental studies, which are better suited to explain psychological mechanisms and causal effects, are yet a scarce phenomenon. This projects aims at filling this pressing research gap by testing a comprehensive Social Media Participation Model (SMPM), which has been developed by the authors. According to the SMPM, participatory effects of social media use only occur if a chain of contingencies is realized: Citizens must expose themselves, either intentionally or incidentally, to political information they regard as relevant. They must identify a gap between a present state and a desired or undesired future state. If they regard the future state as attainable, they will form a participatory goal. This goal will only lead to participation, if it is considered dominant or at least compatible with other goals in a given behavioral situation. While this route is labeled explicit rout to participation, there is also an implicit route. According to the authors, political content on social media (e.g., political Facebook posts) can also subconsciously influence the goals of people and increase participation. The project is a unique attempt to test and potentially refine a novel theoretical model, which sheds new light on why, how and under which circumstances social media use increases participation. To test their theoretical assumptions, the authors propose a set of five studies composed of experiments and a long-term panel study. With this multi-method approach the authors will be able to track the psychological mechanisms and causal relationships, ultimately leading from social media use to participation. It will provide the field with a comprehensive and well-tested framework, guiding future research and further theory development.

In the project "Social Media and Political Engagement: Mechanisms and Contingencies" multiple studies were conducted to explore whether political information on social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) can increase citizens' political participation. Furthermore, it was studied whether and how exposure to political information on social media leads to knowledge acquisition. Previous studies and meta analyses found a positive correlation between social media usage and political participation. However, the specific mechanisms causing this effect often remain unclear. Particularly, it is unclear which psychological mechanisms lead to the effect and which contingencies render the effect. The project was dedicated to this research gap. In the first phase of the project, various studies conducted by the research team looked at the motivations for using social media (e.g. chatting with friends, entertainment motivations, keeping up to date with the news) and their relationship to political participation. The project also investigated the extent to which one's social network (e.g., peers) on social media and the ability to curate the content of one's newsfeed on social media influence the relationship between social media use and political participation. In the second phase of the project, the research team focused on the phenomenon of "incidental exposure" - sometimes also called "accidental news exposure". Social media is actually often used for non-political reasons, but due to the logic of the platforms (e.g. algorithms, contacts one has on the platforms) citizens sometimes stumble upon political information by accident. Researchers have argued that this is also a way for less interested segments of the population to learn about politics. In the project, the entire previous research on this topic was compiled in a meta-analysis. In addition, building on the criticism directed toward previous research, a new theoretical model focusing in particular on information processing during incidental exposure was developed and tested in multiple studies. The project makes a major contribution and goes far beyond previous research in this area. Among the key findings are that pre-exposure motivations for using social media play a central role in whether social media use encourages political participation. Furthermore, to understand social media's effects on political outcomes, the use of social media has to be conceptualized as a dynamic process in which users can constantly switch between different non-political and political goals. The project also showed that there is a positive relationship between accidentally stumbling upon political content on social media and politically relevant concepts, such as knowledge and participation, but that the strength of this relationship is massively dependent on the information processing strategy.