Social Media Usage In Digital Political Participation In Cambodia

The main purpose of this research is to investigate to increase awareness of people’s behavior,participation,communication,motivation,and freedom of expression associated with social media in the democratic activities of the Cambodian context.Digital political participation in Cambodia has had a significant impact on political participation in Cambodia’s digital media and has improved the political participation of a wide range of people,mainly Facebook,which encourages more participation in the Commune/ Sangkat council’s elections and national assembly elections.Likewise,social media is a unique and dynamic medium that has become a part of our daily lives.In recent times,social media is the most popular form of political communication that most political and political organizations use to pursue the political behavior of the citizen.The number of active social media users is increasing over time,especially among youth and the creation of social media is largely effective now.This composition uses existing literature to explain how digital media or social media usage has changed political participation.Therefore,this research seeks to examine social media usage in political participation in Cambodia,the specific objectives of this research are(1)To examine how citizens participate in politics through Facebook,(2)To identify the motivation associated with digital political participation,(3)To identify the challenges in digital political participation.A mixed approach is chosen for this research to find empirical data through survey questionnaires and to identify the understanding,and challenges of the citizens and the politician concerned through qualitative interviews on social media and digital political participation.A quantitative approach was collected by creating the Google Form using the online survey.This survey focuses on 241 samples from three different khans(districts)in Phnom Penh Capital City,including Khan Chamkar Morn,Khan Russey Keo,and Khan Dangkao.For qualitative methods,an in-depth interview with 8 people who are working as staff from the Ministry of Planning,the Private Sector,NGOs,and Politicians will be conducted to get the results of the research questions.This research also found that politically interested people get demanded information on Facebook and they get streamlined about political conditioning and new policies.The utility of Facebook has a positive impact on youths in political activities.This study also found that is easy to use and needs less effort to perform communication activities.This encourages youth to use Facebook for political participation.Another finding is that using Facebook in politics increases youth participation in political conditioning.Hence,digital media and social media allow people to participate in decisionmaking and criticism.This facilitates youth participation in political activities by using Facebook.