Can social network sites facilitatecivic engagement? Assessing
dynamic relationship betweensocial media and civic activities
among young people
Hua Pang
School of New Media and Communication, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
Kaiyang Qin
Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands, and
Min Ji
Institute of Political Science, University of M€unster, M€unster, Germany
Abstract
Purpose – The primary goal of this article is to review the existing studies and offer clarity regarding the association between social media adoption and youth civic engagement.
Design/methodology/approach – This research systematically summarizes and reviews 42 original articles published from 2010 to 2019 with an objective of offering insightful results. Additionally, a theoretical framework was carefully designed by adopting various conceptions from citizen participation and computermediated communication research literature.
Findings – The findings demonstrate that social media usage could generally have a positive correlation with civic participation among younger generations. Moreover, the result also highlights that certain functional features of social media uses including using social media for news consumption and expression could significantly predict civic engagement.
Originality/value – Despite the ever-growing importance of social media technologies, investigations on their differential, nonlinear and even inconsistent effects on civic engagement remain theoretically ambiguous and empirically unsubstantiated. The study represents one of the first scholarly attempts to review, summarize and analyze the extant research evidence from the past ten years.
Keywords Civic engagement, Social media, Young people, Social network sites, Literature review
Paper type Research paper
（政治与公共管理学院 李广宇）
