Digitally Mediated Political Participation: Understanding the Democratic Impact of Internet Diffusion in the Asian Media Systems

Abstract

This dissertation is devoted to an examination of the democratic impact that internet diffusion has on political participation in East and Southeast Asia. To begin with, I conceptualize digitally mediated political participation in which internet use affords an unconventional pathway of individual citizens toward collective action. The mechanism of micro-mobilization lies in the technological capacity that enables structural ties to digitally networked activism. But unconventional mobilization involves contextual variation in opportunity structures across countries. Therefore, I compare eight Asian countries in relation to media systems as well as regime types: South Korea and Taiwan in East Asia, and Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam in Southeast Asia. Based on this comparative analysis, I study the mechanism of unconventional mobilization that is predicted by internet use at the individual level. Data came from three cross-national surveys undertaken in the mid-2000s and early 2010s: Asian Barometer Survey, World Press Trends, and World Values Survey. The findings show that the “Asian internet” has distinctive mobilizing features: 1) that it provides communication and organizing capacities for the individual pathway to unconventional political participation; 2) that it exerts greater effects on participation in non-democracies or poor democracies than in wealthy democracies; and 3) that it is nevertheless constrained by national mass-media systems. In conclusion, digitally mediated political participation sheds light on a new individual pathway to citizen engagement in politics that is distinct from traditional communicative or organizational structures.