How social media affects political action: the effects of digital network structures and motivations on movement participation

Abstract

The advent of utilizing social media for political purposes has been a significant change in recent decades. While most agree that social media can propel political change, the mechanisms underlying why social media affects political action remain unclear. This dissertation uses micro and meso-level perspectives to examine such mechanisms. Drawing from cases of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan and Black Lives Matter Sacramento in the US, the dissertation assembles survey data and digital trace data to unravel the psychological and network processes that underlie the mobilizing power of social media. It consists of three chapters that highlight different conditions by which social media affects political action. The first chapter uses structural equation modeling to delineate how social media activates certain psychological incentives that motivate participation. The second chapter uses social network analysis and demonstrates how the mobilizing power of social media depends on the type of social media networks and the type of political action. The third chapter combines social network analysis and agent-based modeling to show how the structure of social media networks can both enhance and inhibit political mobilization. Overall, the dissertation calls for the need to pay attention to the heterogeneity of political actions mobilized by social media, and the need to distinguish mechanisms by which social media affects political action.