Hanging together or not? Impacts of social media use and organisational membership on individual and collective political actions

Published date01 March 2018
Date01 March 2018
AuthorWan-Ying Lin,Xinzhi Zhang
DOI10.1177/0192512116641842
International Political Science Review
2018, Vol. 39(2) 273 –289
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512116641842
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Hanging together or not? Impacts
of social media use and
organisational membership
on individual and collective
political actions
Xinzhi Zhang
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Wan-Ying Lin
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Abstract
Do social media help individuals without organisational memberships to engage more in politics or do
they only facilitate political participation for those already involved? We examine how social media use
and organisational membership jointly affect participation. Comparative surveys in Hong Kong and Taipei
reveal that information sharing and virtual political engagement on social media mobilised users to engage in
collective political actions. The influence of social media on individual-based participation is conditional on
organisational membership, as reflected by the number of organisations joined. Organisational membership
moderates the relationship between social media use and political behaviours differently in Hong Kong and
Taipei.
Keywords
Social media, political participation, organisational membership, Hong Kong, Taipei
Introduction
People participate in politics either in isolation or collectively. As Benjamin Franklin famously
said, ‘We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately’. In fact,
not all political actions are collectively based. Researchers have distinguished between two modes
Corresponding author:
Xinzhi Zhang, School of Professional Education and Executive Development, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 9
Hoi Ting Road, PolyU West Kowloon Campus, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Email: xzzhang2@gmail.com
641842IPS0010.1177/0192512116641842International Political Science ReviewZhang and Lin
research-article2016
Article
274 International Political Science Review 39(2)
of political participation according to the number of participants involved. One mode refers to
individual-based political actions, such as voting and contacting the media or government officials,
whereas the other involves collective political activities, such as joining protests and demonstra-
tions (Ha et al., 2013; Towner, 2013; Weber, 2003). Although both types of political actions aim at
influencing policy outcomes or authorities’ decision-making processes, mobilising these political
activities demands different levels of resources and generates varying degrees of conflict between
the participants and counter-participants who hold opposing political views (Verba et al., 1971).
Informed by the growing body of literature on the political implications of social media (Gervais,
2015; Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2012), this article examines the extent to which social media motivates
people to participate in individual and collective political actions. We also investigate how the
political impacts of social media use are conditioned by people’s existing collective resources,
such as their level of organisational membership. The literature provides two theoretical routes
explicating the relationship between organisational membership and the political impact of media
and communication. Communication infrastructure theory (Kim and Ball-Rokeach, 2006) pro-
poses that the political impacts of new media use are more impressive for those who are already
politically active as organisation members or have larger interpersonal networks (Gervais, 2015;
Scheufele and Eveland, 2001). However, Neuman (2001) maintains that social media have estab-
lished new political forces that will become an explicit and crucial channel of mobilisation. Bennett
and Segerberg (2012: 739) proposes a ‘logic of connective action’, through which any collective
action is mobilised and organised via new media platforms without building on any existing social
organisation or partisanship-based manipulation or support.
With these theoretical underpinnings, we first review two types of political participation (i.e.
individual versus collective political actions). We then review how previous studies have explained
the relationship between various dimensions of social media use and political actions and the intel-
lectual debates regarding whether organisational membership makes the political implications of
social media more impressive. We also explain the research contexts of the study (Hong Kong and
Taiwan). These are developed societies with high penetration rates of social media. We answer the
research questions and test the research hypotheses by analysing data from a comparative survey
implemented in Hong Kong and Taipei and then discuss the implications of the findings.
Categorising participation: Individual versus collective political
activities
Political participation provides people with opportunities ‘to communicate information to govern-
ment officials about their concerns and preferences and to put pressure on them to respond’ (Verba
et al., 1995: 37). Such participatory behaviours are categorised according to multiple dimensions
(Verba et al., 1971). Scholars have documented these two types of political participation. For
example, contributing to an electoral campaign and contacting government officials and the media
are regarded as individual political participation, whereas joining a rally or a demonstration is
considered collective political participation (Aars and Strømsnes, 2007; Ha et al., 2013; Weber,
2003).
Rather than political participation being treated as a unidimensional concept, individual politi-
cal activities should be differentiated from collective ones. First, participants in the two modes of
political action experience different levels of social interaction from those who do not participate
in that specific political activity or from holders of opposing political views. Verba et al. (1971: 14)
specified that the difference between individual and collective political activities was the extent to
which ‘individuals [were] opposed by counterparticipants’. Ha et al. (2013) proposed that individ-
ual-based political action ‘requires people to organize their thoughts before acting’, whereas

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