Media use during conflicts: Information seeking and political efficacy during the 2012 Mexican elections

Abstract

Public access to accurate and reliable information is fundamental to democracy and democratic decision-making. In emerging democracies, during political crises or controversial elections, reliable information is often difficult to obtain. In authoritarian regimes, citizens' perceptions of information reliability are tightly linked to trust in government, and both are typically low. Open government policies help build trust that is essential during protests or contentious elections. Uses and gratifications (U&G) theory states that people use diverse media to try to satisfy their need for reliable information. Gratifying this need is tied to the larger concept of political information efficacy (PIE), i.e., the belief a person holds about him/herself as being politically informed and competent to participate in political thought and action. We investigated these interrelated concepts by administering a survey to an opportunity sample of young adults at a public state university in Mexico. We find that respondents perceived that information from face-to-face and telephone communication with members of their social network, as well as online sources were the most reliable. Information from offline sources, such as TV and newspapers, especially pro-government sources, were the least reliable. Further, the information factors of availability, reliability, influence and sharing had positive relationships with PIE. These results suggest that in conditions of uncertain political information, social networks and online information sources are essential to political information efficacy democratic political participation.

Media Usage Patterns among Chinese Voters: In Preparation for the 14th Malaysian General Election (GE14)

“…As such, most of the news have been covered and are controlled by the editors. This finding is in line with many researches done previously (Kavanaugh, 2016;Siebert, Peterson, & Schramm, 1963;Al-Kandari & Hasanen, 2012;Salman et al, 2011). Some informants even said that it is wasted their time and money to buy newspapers which are bias.…”

“…Public access to accurate and reliable information is fundamental to democracy and democratic decision-making (Kavanaugh, 2016). Traditional media have historically served as a critical conduit of information to the public.…”

“…However, Malaysian local media have been facing difficulties in reporting "balanced" coverage especially relating to politics since the introduction of tight laws and regulations that regulate the media (Weiss, 2012). On that count, it is difficult for the public to acquire reliable information from the media due to the constraints on freedom of the press (Kavanaugh, 2016;Siebert, Peterson, & Schramm, 1963;Al-Kandari & Hasanen, 2012;Salman, Ibrahim, Hj-Abdullah, Mustaffa, & Mahbob, 2011). Freedom House gave Malaysia an aggregate score 45 (A larger aggregate score indicates a greater level of freedom) for press and internet freedom in 2016, indicating a "partly free" status (Freedom House, 2016).…”

“…They can even now make comments or express their thoughts and feeling using new reactions feature introduced by Facebook: the five emojis (i.e., love, haha, wow, sad, or angry) on Facebook. Literature showed that participatory process from voters engaging in public debate is paramount, wherein they are able to seek for adequate information about parties, policies, candidates and the election process itself in order to make informed choices (Kavanaugh, Sheetz, Sandoval-Almazan, Tedesco, & Fox, 2016;Fourie & Otto, 2011;Kaid, McKinney & Tedesco, 2007), and this participatory process is in the assumption that the voters are active consumers of media.…”

The Use and Impact of Social Media during the 2011 Tunisian Revolution

“…shown that perceived information reliability predicts a greater sense of political information efficacy (PIE), that is, a person's belief that s/he is well informed and capable of forming opinions and acting on political information. Our finding that sharing information with family and friends leads to a greater sense of PIE is not only a contribution to research on PIE, but also consistent with our earlier analyses of citizen participation, information reliability and sharing and PIE during the 2012 elections in Mexico [27].…”