Suchergebnisse

Research has shown that exposure to political satire elicits negative emotions, which in turn mobilize political participation. We conducted an experiment to extend this line of research by examining the type of exposure (i.e., exposure to counter- and proattitudinal political views) and investigating a specific negative emotion—anger—in influencing political participation. Although the literature has suggested that counterattitudinal exposure is likely to discourage political behaviors, results from this study document that exposure to counterattitudinal political satire is more likely than proattitudinal exposure to increase participation in issue-related activities through evoking one's anger about the political issue. More importantly, this indirect effect functions under the condition when people consider the issue to be personally important. We discuss the implications for the development of deliberative and participatory democracy in media genres that are emotionally provocative.

Much research in the past decade has illustrated the role of social media in protest mobilization and coordination, but few have examined whether and how social media facilitated movement continuity after the end of a protest cycle. This study contributes to knowledge about this research gap by examining levels of social media use and how social media use relates to protest attitudes—persistence, pessimism, and radicalism—among young people during movement abeyance. Analyzing a survey of university students in Hong Kong in March 2019, several months before the onset of the antiextradition bill protests, the findings show that political use of social media related to how young people evaluate the Umbrella Movement, the previous peak of mobilization in the city. Both social media use and evaluation of the Umbrella Movement shaped people's protest attitudes. Overall, the findings suggest that social media help maintain protest potential even at a time when social mobilization is generally weak.