The Current Situation And Related Factors Of College Students' Online Civic Participation In Social Media Era

The advent of the Web 2.0 era has spawned a series of social media that is user-focused and interactive.Many of the social behaviors originally more often occurred offline,was brought online with unique characteristics in online community.Civic participation is one example.WeChat,the rising star of social media in Web 2.0 era,has rapidly become the most active social platform since it launched in 2011.WeChat is a more widely used,more convenient in use,more intimate in interaction,more rapid in communication.With the rapid growth of WeChat users and the extensive influence to society,study regarding the civic participation on the WeChat platform has shown its significance.Based on the mixed research method of quantitative and qualitative research,this study explores the relationship between the use of WeChat,the political efficacy,the social network scale and civic participation on the social media platform with university students as research objects.At the same time,through in-depth interviews,the study analyzes the status quo of university students' civic participation on WeChat,including its characteristics and causes.Through the empirical study,some of the basic logics of online civic participation were classified: The strength of WeChat use has indirect influence on online civic participation through the impact on social network size and internal political efficacy.The strength of WeChat use is positively related to the internal political efficacy and social network size.Both internal political efficacy and social network size are positively related to online civic participation.In addition,the study found that the enthusiasm of university students' civic participation on WeChat is generally low.The subjective reason is that the internal political efficacy of college students is relatively low.And the objective reason is the pan-acquaintance social attributes of WeChat as people are not willing to expresses personal views to familiar but not intimate person.It is also proved that on the WeChat platform,university students tend to express one-sided point of view triggered by the so-called “the spiral of silence”.And their expressions also show entertainment tendencies.At the same time,“Moments”,one of the main functions of the WeChat,has become a self-presenting tool for many university students,thus affecting the free expression of college students,while relatively,the “Group” constituted by friends is more used to discuss the social public topics.