Conclusion

We find SNS use is positively linked to college students’ political participation. Students spend more time on SNS, they tend to be more possible to read, share, and discuss political news. The political information is positively linked with civil participation behaviors, which contribute to more radical behaviors such as protest and boycotting.

This result can answer the question whether the increased availability of information provided by the internet has served to a more informed public. Our empirical data confirmed the mechanism linked between the availability of information and political engagement as a response to previous literature (DiMaggio et al, 2001, Zúñiga & Rojas, 2009, Bimber, 2001, Polat, 2005).

This study supports that political interest and political knowledge have an influence on college students’ political participation.

Putnam’s discussion about social capital might be helpful to explain the results of this study. The concept of social capital is linked with social networking, life satisfaction, trust, and participation. The key of the concept is the social resources that can be used in social engagement. In college students’ online social capital, there are three main forms, bounding social capital, bridging social capital and maintained social capital (Ellison, Steinfield & Lampe, 2007). Bridging social capital refers to a weak link between different people, while bounding social capital explains a tight bond between friends and relatives. Maintained social capital focuses on relationship between one person and the social network he left. Putnam’s “time replacement theory” (Putnam, 2000) takes the impact of electronic media on decreased social interaction as a symbol of declining social capital, which I think only affects bounding social capital. Theoretically the adoption of social networking sites can increase bridging social capital and maintained social capital. So we need empirical study to measure whether the increase exceeds the decrease. This study responds to this question, and concludes that total social capital has increased due to usage of SNS, which enhances college students’ political participation.

To sum up, although we cannot make strong causal relationship between SNS use and political participation, we at least omit some pessimistic view. We conclude that there is positive link between SNS use and college students’ political participation. Political attitude and information availability are proved as mediation when considering the positive effect of SNS use on political participation.