SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE

Abstract

High percentage of political participation among young people discuss among scholars in political science reported that Malaysian young people have greater interest in political participation compared to before. How does it happen? What drives young people to participate in political activities? Social Science scholars’ believe that impact of this phenomenon toward young people leads by social media use. Objective of this study is to examine social media uses among undergraduate students. Besides, to measure relationship between social media use and political knowledge, this research conducted to study relationship between social media use and political participation among university students (n=132). Our results showed that there is a greater social media use among respondents and use to choose Facebook to get political updates, especially about opposition party (PR). They also have greater political knowledge gain from social media and highly expose toward negative news (political scandals) and it is really affect level of online political participation. Contribution of this study toward knowledge on social media and political participation among young people are; 1) young people use social media to get political update, basically for opinion expression and political expression, 2) exposure toward negative news has moderate relationship toward political participation, even though sometime political participants search or demand for negative stories, 3) greater political knowledge cause by greater political interest (effort for searching political updates) in social media.