Halpern, D., Valenzuela, S., and Katz, J. E. (2017). We Face, I Tweet: How Different Social Media Influence Political Participation through Collective and Internal Efficacy. (Maddie)

From Digital Culture & Society

Review - Maddie Staruch

This article approached the topic of how social media affects the political engagement of those who are exposed to content across Facebook and Twitter. It is expressed that people become more politically involved once they engage in discussion, as it fosters confidence in being able to express their ideas and opinions. The authors define the two main concepts of the paper as “internal political efficacy” and “collective political efficacy” and utilize the two as a constructive framework to analyze their thesis with.

Internal efficacy “has traditionally been used to connote the perceived capacity to influence the political system” (p. 322). This incentivizes people to participate politically, as if they believe they can have an effect on changing the political realm, they are more likely to engage. Collective efficacy holds a focus on the power of a group that an individual identifies as being a part of and its ability to take political action and make a change. The paper identifies that there are few, if any, studies that have been performed that utilize these two concepts in conjunction, and the authors theorize that when comparing the effects of collective and internal efficacy at the same time, there is a positive relationship that is found between the two and active political participation.

This study offered new insight on this topic in three different ways. First off, it introduced a theoretical model that can aid researchers in understanding how social media can affect participation through defining internal and collective efficacy. Secondly, it used a two-wave panel design, whereas most studies in this field rely on a simple survey. Finally, they looked at Facebook and Twitter separately, rather than as a homogenous group of data.

The findings of this paper concluded three things: exposure to political content on social networking sites does increase political participation, having internal and collective efficacy as a framework provide explanatory power in conjunction with the data that was collected, and finally it was proven that Facebook impacts collective forms of efficacy while Twitter influences internal forms. This is due to the nature of Facebook relying on social connections and interactions (i.e. friends, liking, commenting), while Twitter is a one-to-many broadcasting tool that doesn’t rely on active, collaborative participation among many users to create meaningful discourse.

As the study is one of the first of its kind, it offers brand new insight into the effect of internal and collective efficacy when looking at them together. It is through this comparison that lead to the conclusion of how people use Twitter and Facebook for different needs, and that they result in different levels of political engagement. By concluding that there is a strongly linked relationship between internal and collective efficacy, levels of engagement in civic activities increases due to group participation and exposure.

There were a few weaknesses that were evident when reading the paper. As the study was conducted specifically in Chile, it is important to keep in mind that not all countries or cultures have the same levels of engagement or participation on social media platforms. Culturally, the political environment is different in Chile than it would be in the United States or the United Kingdom, so the findings might not be replicable in different countries, thus skewing the conclusions of the study. They also collected the data during an election year, meaning levels of political engagement and awareness would be increased in comparison to non-election years. As content regarding the election becomes more saturated across Facebook and Twitter, it is evident that political content will be more heavily engaged with than it would if it were just local political events that were being discussed.

As a result, it would be beneficial to perform the same study but in a non-election year and see how the results changed. Even conducting various studies over consistent time periods would allow the authors to track trends and changes that would provide a more accurate scope of the influence of social media on political participation. It would also be beneficial for consistency to conduct the same study in different countries using the same approach. For example, if the same study was conducted in five other countries, the trends could be compared and the data could offer insight into trends or differences between the level of engagement at different times and in different cultures.

In conclusion, this article bears heavy importance to the future of how political campaigns approach social media. Depending on the message that they want to send, politicians could target platforms like Facebook and Twitter differently to appeal to different demographics or play to the values and political engagement of people, whether they value their individual political power or the group political power. Though the study was conducted in Chile, the concepts could be applied to future studies thus furthering the information gathered and giving validity to the results found in this singular study.

Reference

Halpern, D., Valenzuela, S., & Katz, J. E. (2017). We Face, I Tweet: How Different Social Media Influence Political Participation through Collective and Internal Efficacy. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 22(6), 320-336. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12198