Making the Long March Online: Some Cultural Dynamics of Digital Political Participation in Three Chinese Societies

Yuanhang Lu*, Yi-Hui C. Huang, Lang Kao, Yu-tzung Chang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study examines the authoritarian conditioning of political expression on social media in three Chinese societiesby analyzing three parallel surveys comprising 6942 respondents from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Results demonstrate that the use of social media to gather political information triggers politically expressive use of social media and indirectly predicts offline non-institutionalized political participation. Individuals' authoritarian orientation, however, moderates such indirect effects. Only people who demonstrate low or moderate adherence to authoritarian value systems exemplify this mediation model. Those with high levels of authoritarian orientation are not exemplary. Furthermore, the extent to which social media use interacts with authoritarian orientation to build a relationship with political participation presents two different patterns across three Chinese societies. The moderated mediating effect described here exists in Hong Kong and Taiwan but not in mainland China. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)160-183
Number of pages24
JournalInternational Journal of Press/Politics
Volume28
Issue number1
Early online date28 Jun 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2023

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Communication
  • Sociology and Political Science

User-Defined Keywords

  • authoritarian orientation
  • Chinese societies
  • institutional system
  • political participation
  • social media use

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