New Media, Campaigning and the 2008 Facebook Election by Thomas J. Johnson David D. Perlmutter

Author:Thomas J. Johnson, David D. Perlmutter [Thomas J. Johnson, David D. Perlmutter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415754682
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2014-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Measures

Participants completed Likert-style scale items. The measures of political self-efficacy and situational political involvement were derived from past research (Austin et al., 2008; Pinkleton & Austin, 1998, 2001, 2004; Pinkleton, Um, & Austin, 2002). Using the conceptual framework previously discussed as a guide, this study examines three forms of online political activity: attention to social media for campaign information, online expression about the campaign, and attention to traditional Internet sources for campaign information. The measures of social media attention and online expression were based on popular and emerging social media platforms that served as political information traffic leading up to the 2008 campaign (Gueorguieva, 2008; Kohut, 2008; Smith & Rainie, 2008). The measures of traditional Internet sources were designed to capture established online sources of political information (Rainie et al., 2005; Rainie & Horrigan, 2007). Attention measures were used to assess the information-seeking dimension because they capture cognitive engagement with an information source, a level of cognitive expenditure not accounted for by the passive measure of exposure to, or encounter with, information (Chaffee & Schleuder, 1986).

A principal component analysis of 15 political Internet use items was conducted using direct oblimin rotation, as it was expected that political Internet use is multidimensional and its dimensions are not orthogonal.3 Based on the conceptual framework, a prior criterion of a three-factor solution was specified for extraction. A primary factor loading of .50 was used as a guide for determining the minimum primary loading of an item (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1998), and an item that loaded at .32 or higher on two or more components was considered problematic (Costello & Osborne, 2005). A three-factor solution explained 52.4% of the variance, with the three components explaining 31.47%, 12.09%, and 8.84% of the variance, respectively.

The items that were expected to load respectively on attention to social media, attention to traditional Internet sources, and online expression were indeed observed to load on each underlying component. Five of the items loaded together on the first component: personal blogs; video-sharing Web sites; microblogs; social networking Web sites; and online forums and discussion boards. These items were combined to form an attention to social media index (α = .78).

Five indicators loaded together on the second component: government Web sites; candidate’s Web sites; network TV news Web sites; print media news Web sites; and news pages of Internet service providers. These items were combined into an attention to traditional Internet sources index (α = .66).

The final items loaded together on the third component, with the exception of participation in online discussion. The participation in online discussion item loaded moderately high on both the first and third components. Therefore, it was excluded from subsequent analysis. The remaining items were writing blog posts on political issues; creating and posting online audio, video, animation, photos, or computer artwork to express political views; sharing political news, video clips, or others’ blog posts online; and exchanging opinions about politics via e-mail, social networking Web sites, microblogging, or instant messenger. The online expression index, hence, consists of the four items (α = .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.