Exploring the Influence of Social Interaction, Pressure and Trust in a Social Media Environment on Political Participation: The Case of Occupy Central in 2014

Abstract

This study explores the factors that contribute to the political participation in the context of the Facebook platform. The author investigates the influence of social interaction, pressure and trust on users' political participation in the event that happened in Hong Kong, the Occupy Central in 2014. The study allows us to identify which factor would contribute to the best in mobilizing the mass online in the social media environment. The results show that there are positive correlation of the factors, social interaction, the social pressure and trust to the political participation respectively. An important novel finding is the influence of social pressure in Facebook on political participation. This relationship reaches the statistical significance, implying that pressure should not be neglected online but rather it is more important than other factors when giving rise to the social movement. This study offers insight that the salience of social pressure in the online context, and suggesting a possible triggering outlet for the social movement.