Abstract

Political knowledge influences political behavior and political participation as the person who has sufficient political knowledge will contribute his part in political issues and get engage himself in political campaigns. Hence, a politically informed person put an impact upon others by sharing his views and information. Now a day’s social media has revolutionized the world due to its unlimited features, and it made it easier for everyone to spread the news and especially the political content. Different political parties use social media platforms to engage their voters and especially youth. This study suggests that social media plays a critical role for youngsters to disseminate information regarding politics and affects the internal and external efficacy of youth by the transmission of knowledge and political participation through social media.

Key Words

Political Participation, Social Media Usage, Internal Efficacy, External Efficacy

Introduction

Media helps in building societies by delivering ideas via communication. The different kinds of information usually transfer through a medium. Interactive patterns have been used for the development of community and human relations. However, communication builds relations between individuals in a society. Today, commutations have been turning to new media like (mobiles phones, social networking websites) from (letters, televisions, radios, newspapers) (Flew, 2002). So, to satisfy the communication need and social information, individuals use social networking sites and social media applications to make their life easier for them.

In the 21st century, many progressive countries have noted a boost in usage of ICT’s (information and communication technologies) by helping the modernization of technology. Due to frequent development and moderation in ICT, young generations in developing countries are getting information from social media due to the rapid growth of information technology. Different kinds of ideas and information may be shared across borders by using the social media platform. (Ali and Katz, 2010).

"social media" refers to "the development of platforms which connect individuals, allow them to produce and exchange content, extract and filter community knowledge, and then send it back(Lewis and Dickey, 2010).

Efficacy in politics is considered as one of the most imperative and also well-observed factors for participating in democracy. (Morrell, 2003) 

IPE is described as "A person’s perceptions about the impact (he or she) could have on the electoral procedure either as a result of his own ability and confidence or as a result of related people's skill and confidence while EPE is described as "The notion that a citizen is involved in the political process, the idea that political institutions would react or believe that one is efficient while participating in politics (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2017).

Both in politics and social life, the internet can bring rapid change. The usage of social media has also boosted political participation and political effectiveness among other nations like Egypt, Japan and Canada (Lee, 2006) 

Following (Teresi 2015), by social networking services, individuals can interact with their acquaintances, who can offer them information and ideas. Additionally, social networking sites serve as an informational repository, providing users with access to a variety of content. Secondly, it enables the simplest way of communication with a large group of individuals who are not physically connected. For the younger generation, social networking sites give an excellent opportunity to stay connected and exchange thoughts, photographs, and videos with their peers. Likewise, social media networking enables humanitarian elements of society to gather funds for the welfare of underprivileged people (Keeffe& Pearson, 2011).

It was in the recent study found that in Indonesia’s elections, social media has aided to disseminate political information. Social media has made political information a commercial commodity in election campaigns. This commodity has also spurred the creation of a new commodity called social media monitoring, as evidenced in the development of social media monitoring businesses. The rapid use of social media has made a drastic change in the new world and has made it easier for everyone to get the news at their doorstep.

The communicational happening has made the usage of social media and information technology incredibly simple. Simba (2009) conducted a research study on Obama's presidential campaign. That Obama utilized social media well to recruit new voters for his re-election campaigns. Thus, it is verified that social media is beneficial and has a significant impact on obtaining acceptance from organizations and individuals who have their best interests at heart. This enables people to readily exchange political knowledge on the country's political issues. (Kim, 2008; Wong, 2006).

Following the 2009 situation in Moldova with fabricated elections, the Twitter revolution was effectively used, with increased involvement of social media applications such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, as well as live videos and text messages on Twitter, to exchange, share, and discuss political ideas and perspectives on political involvement and participation (Hodge,2010).

Considering the background, this study intended to examine the effect of political usage of social media on the internal and external efficacy of youth.

Political usage of Social Media in Pakistan

According to a Facebook statistical analysis conducted in 2013, the number of Facebook users in Pakistan has been increased to 8,055,680, having 70 % male and 30% female. The statistics also indicate that the major age group is the young generation, which is between the age groups of 18 and 24 years. When it comes to political parties in Pakistan, social media and the internet have a progressive, circumstantial, and stimulating effect on the growth of such parties (Ejaz, 2013).

According to the data from the Napoleon Cat statistical organization (2019), the percentage of Facebook users in Pakistan is 87.68 percent, followed by Twitter at 4.63 percent, Pinterest at 2.84 percent, YouTube at 2.19 percent, Instagram at 1.96 percent, and Reddit at 0.5 percent. 

As of January 2019, the number of active social media users was estimated to reach 37 million, with active social media users accounting for 18 % of the total populace. In addition, the number of people who use social networking sites rose by 5.7 percent in 2019. According to January 2019 population data, males constituted 51.4 percent of the population while females constituted 48.6 percent. 

In Pakistan, political parties use elections to encourage the young population to vote for them. The leaders of Pakistani political parties are using social media platforms to communicate with their constituents in preparation for their campaigns. Political parties in Pakistan primarily target young people to connect with them via social media and conduct campaigns on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, among others. (Kugelman, 2012). Both industrialized and developing nations are well-known for their use of social media in their societies. Individual politicians and political parties in Pakistan maintain their social profiles on different social media platforms to communicate with the people of the nation and to present their agendas.

Michaelsen (2011) defined the introduction of new contemporary technology and the use of social media to demonstrate the influence on political discussions and people involvement in both developing and industrialized nations. As a result of the development of the internet, developed nations have had a significant impact. Social media is quickly gaining popularity among Pakistan's younger population. It is referred to be a networking and communication tool, and it may be used in five different ways. Due to the rapid development of digital media, a variety of information-delivery television channels with a wide range of programming has been created. People may use their right to freedom of expression as a result of rapid development. With the help of various media outlets, people may now get all of the information that they need (Kugelman, 2012).

According to current research, Pakistan has the second biggest youthful population in the world, after Yemen, which has had a significant impact on the country's politics in the recent past and will continue to have an impact in the future (Ittefaq & Iqbal, 2018).




Internal and External Political Efficacy in the Context of the Electoral Process

IPE may still have predictive power to forecast the immediate action as other motivating factors, and auto-activation is more effective in the prediction of unintended or routine behaviour (Bargh, 1994). Indeed, evidence indicates that purposeful action may be explained by internal efficacy, which can also be portrayed as behavioral intention in certain cases (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1981). The results of the scholarly work on political efficacy in Germany revealed that internal political efficacy may be derived from political awareness and can subsequently be used to affect different acts of political involvement, including traditional activities such as voting (Reichert, 2016) as Ajzen (2012) mentioned that IPE might also be defined as something that enhances the desire to engage in activities. This kind of intentional conduct is a critical precondition for defining real action or behaviour in many situations.

A political involvement (Schulz, 2005) refers to as "electoral participation" is one of the types of political engagement that may exist. When compared to other forms of political involvement, this action requires the least amount of time and effort. According to him, political interests, knowledge, trust, and political communication all play a role in shaping one's willingness to vote. Political interests, political debate, and media usage are all shown to be associated with internal effectiveness in the research, according to the results.

The internal efficacy influences the ability to participate in electoral activities. Furthermore, according to Reichert (2016), who performed research on respondents who resided in Germany and was 16 years old or older, internal political efficacy did not have a direct impact on the choice to vote, but it did have an indirect impact via the deliberate choice to vote.

Relationship between Political usage of Social Media and Internal/External Efficacy

In the beginning, the people who were not interested in political activities are now having changed their minds. This is because of the advantages of the internet as the internet can change their mindset. This is because the internet is giving away many different kinds of facilities that are accessible and convenient for many people. Furthermore, the internet is giving all information to its users, and people feel very comfortable in expressing their thoughts. Boulianne, 2009, p. 195). 

Online consumption fundamentally diminished the expenses of contribution and made it easier for everyone to do communication on minimal expenses “(Shirky, 2011).

Political internal efficacy, also known as political self-efficacy, is a psychological state that justifies political participation when a person receives regular knowledge about political issues, which in turn has an effect on voting behaviour. More political involvement improves a person's sense of self-efficacy, which raises their likelihood of voting in the future (Tuinhof, 2016). 

Additionally, a person who has a high degree of internal efficacy is considered to have a low amount of external efficacy, which means that they are more likely to engage in traditional ways.

According to Craig et al. (1991), the political efficacy of youth is less explored by them. However, there are two types of political efficacy which one of them is known as external political efficacy, and the other is known as internal political efficacy. External efficacy is all about Governments acts upon the demands of the public. However, internal efficacy is known as the belief of one individual in itself and to play a role in politics strongly. According to Gil De Zuniga et al. (2012), it was specified that political efficacy is a factor that motivates the individual to participate in politics or to show no interest in politics. 

Enikolopov et al. (2018) found a link between a Russian blog on corporate governance and management turnover (in addition to having a significant effect on the stock market. 

Youth who don't involve themselves in political matters or don't show their interest to cast their votes are assumed to have low external efficacy. These groups of youth do not consider politics as much important that it can drastically change everything, or most probably, they found politics complex and an irrelevant subject (Sheerin, 2007).

External efficacy is also linked with the study of the connection between the maturity of a country's democratic age and the turnout in a democratic election. Furthermore, the internal efficacy and involvement of people in a democratic nation also extend the external political efficacy (Novy & Katrnak, 2015).

For one's own personal belief of efficacy, this unique experience of publishing political material on Twitter may be significant, but it may or may not influence communal perceptions of efficacy. It has also been revealed that the influence of social pressure is more effective in inducing involvement than informational benefit (Mutz, 2006). Thus, it stands to reason that just as information about socializing is more likely to appear on Facebook, the political discussion will show up on Twitter.

A study also examined that Facebook is more focused on establishing and building connections and connectivity than Twitter is (Kwon et al., 2014).

In political communication, one of the basic ideas is political efficacy which demonstrates that the beliefs and abilities of people put an impact upon political procedures and processes (Campbell et al, 1954). Traditionally, studies on public opinion regarded political effectiveness as a two-dimensional term that includes both internal and exterior efficacy. When it comes to the former, it relates to the idea that one can comprehend and engage in politics, while the latter refers to the faith that the government is responsive.

The new telecommunications tools were initially not utilized for political objectives, and thus, voters with Internet access lost interest in elections and political affairs. However, the circumstances have been altered over time, and new political populists who manage to organize people directly through the internet have come into being. This shift corresponded with social media emergence and political efficacy. (Zhuravskaya et al., 2019)

Many of the ideological groups and parties use social networks in their daily life. In this concern, they have made their personal networking websites and official pages also. Before the online and social network platforms, communication was delivered via print media or via televisions. However, the invention of social networks has drastically changed communication standards, and conventional media has been replaced with social media. Similarly, PTI has achieved significant benefits by opting for the social media platform for its political campaigns and has created an impact on the youth of Pakistan, which enhanced the political efficacy (Khan and Shahbaz, 2015.

Some researchers have discovered that the decrease of political involvement in the United States may be linked to the people' declining levels of external efficacy, which is connected to media usage (Teixeira, 1992; Wattenberg, 2002). Studies have also shown that such a connection exists with China. For example, in many breaking news events, like as the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan and the July 2011 high-speed train disaster in Wenzhou, the initial information was obtained entirely via Weibo. Social media was the initial source of information on many public disasters. This information was then used to inform articles in the mainstream media and to raise public wakefulness of these events. A research conducted by Xie and (2011), Weibo users discussed the majority of significant events that happened in China in 2010, resulting in enormous pressure on the government, which resulted in quicker and more effective answers from the government.

On the basis of the above literature, we can hypothesize that;

H1: Political usage of social media positively affects internal efficacy of youth 

H2: Political usage of social media positively affects internal efficacy of youth 

Methodology

Descriptive analysis was made by using a

 quantitative tool with the help of Survey technique by distributing the questionnaire among the 375 students from the 21 universities of Punjab province of Pakistan. The multistage sampling technique was used to extract the sample size of students from the total population. The population was taken from the Punjab province and the existence of a number of universities. Public and private universities of the said province were selected to collect the data from young students. Total 63 numbers of universities were targeted, and from which 21 numbers universities were segregated by seeking the availability of departments from which data can be collected. Additionally, data was collected from the departments of political science, mass communication and international relations, and there were 21 universities in which these departments were functional. 375 numbers of students were selected by using the proportionate probability sampling, which was further filtered by using the simple random technique. Data was collected through the survey method. A questionnaire was distributed among the students to collect their opinion. The questionnaire scale was also adapted from previous studies.

Results and Findings

H1: Political usage of Social media affects internal political efficacy of youth

 




Table 1. Descriptive statistic results for Hypothesis 1 

Descriptive Statistics

Mean Std. Deviation N

IPE 2.1182 .59243 375

PUSM 2.8872 .91777 375




 

As per descriptive statistics, values of mean and standard deviation has been shown in Table .these values are calculated by using SPSS by compiling the mean score of all items and indicated that the mean value of PUSM (2.8872) is greater than IPE (2.1182).

 




Table 2.  Regression analysis for the main effects of PUSM on IPE

Predictor IPE

PUSM B ?R2

.517* .267

Note: N = 375, *p < .01




 

Linear regression analysis was performed for the main effects of PUSM on IPE. The analysis indicates that PUSM has a significant and positive association with IPE (?=.517, p<.001) and explaining a 26.7% variance in internal political efficacy (?R2 =.267, F=135.842, p<.001). The results approved hypothesis 1.

H2: Political usage of Social media affects the external political efficacy of youth.

 




Table 3. Descriptive statistics for hypothesis 2

Descriptive Statistics

Mean Std. Deviation N

IPE 2.1182 .59243 375

PUSM 2.8872 .91777 375




 

As per descriptive statistics, values of mean and standard deviation have been shown in Table. These values are calculated by using SPSS by compiling the mean score of all items and indicated that the mean value of PUSM (2.8872) is greater than EPE (2.1182)

 




Table 4.  Regression analysis for the main effects of PUSM on IPE

Predictor EPE

PUSM B ?R2

.424* .179

Note: N = 259, *p < 0.01




 

Table 4 provides the linear regression analysis for the main effects of PUSM on EPE. The analysis indicates that PUSM has a significant and positive association with EPE (?=.424, p<.001) and explaining a 17.9% variance in internal political efficacy (?R2 =.179, F=81.551, p<.001). The results approved hypothesis 2.

Discussion and Conclusion

In view of the first hypotheses (H1), it was proposed that political use of social media is positively associated with the internal political efficacy of youth. The regression analysis indicates that PUMS has a significant and positive association with IPE (?=.517, p<.001). It indicates that youth who use more social media for political purposes might have higher internal political efficacy than those who use it less. Most probably, youth which is highly involved in social media activities related to politics have the ability to learn about political issues and to participate in them (Caprara et al., 2009; Sullivan & Riedel, 2001). 

Similarly, some other studies (Bingyang Liu, 2017; Zhang & Lin, 2014) have examined the significant positive association between PUMS and IPE, which is somehow relevant to the findings of the existing study. On the basis of the scale of the political use of social media, some factors put an impact upon the internal political efficacy of youth. These underlying factors involve some other factors such as posting of political videos and photos,  frequency of reading news, writing blogs about current events, participating in online voting,  joining discussions about political issues, explicit views about governments or politics, following official social media accounts of government and interaction with the representatives of government on social media (Zhang et al., 2014).

In view of the second hypothesis (H2), it was proposed that political use of social media is positively associated with EPE (?=.424, p<.001). It indicates that if youngsters use more social media for political purposes, there will be more increase in external political efficacy. Results are also consistent with the previous studies (Liu, 2017). Furthermore, earlier studies sought the significant link between political use of social media and political efficacy (Ahmad, Alvi & Ittefaq, 2019; Attia, 2011, Conroy, Feezall, T.J & Guerrero, 2012; Ikeda & Richey, 2005; Lee, 2006; Sumaira et al., 2015). But few studies indicated that social media political communications put a strong positive significant impact upon the internal political efficacy as compared to external political efficacy (Lee et al., 2006).

The prevailing study confirmed the association between political usage of social media and internal and external efficacy of youth and sought that political participation on social media affects both internal and external political efficacy of youth.

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