Effectiveness-risk calculation matters : understanding university students' online rights activism in China

Abstract

A growing number of online rights defense movements has accompanied the development of the Internet in China since the closing decade of the twentieth century. Although this phenomenon has been long-standing interest to studies on China’s political and social transformation in the Internet era, very few empirical research has investigated the impact of the Internet use on Chinese online rights defense participation, and little has been done to explore the psychological process involved in. In order to fill this gap, this thesis systematically examines whether and how informational use of Weibo and WeChat—two most widely used social networking sites in China—brings Chinese university students’ psychological changes (efficacy, identity, emotion, and trust), and whether and how the psychological changes influence their online engagement in rights defense activities. The starting point of this study is the assumption that in a repressive political system where mass collective action is strictly controlled, well-educated and highly-informed netizens are supposed to calculate benefits and costs of collective participation in public issues before taking actions. The forms of engagement that are finally taken should be of higher effectiveness and of lower risks. Given this consideration, the study hypothesizes that the instrumental calculation—online political efficacy (OPE) should better explain the effect of informational use of Weibo and WeChat and students’ online collective rights defense participation, if the relationship exists. Using original online survey data from 250 Chinese university students, the study reveals that informational use of Weibo and WeChat indeed predicts students’ online collective engagement in rights defense, and this relationship was partly explained by online political efficacy. The study further finds that for students who have lower distrust in government authorities and higher group identification, this OPE-transmitted relationship tends to be stronger. Based on Social Cognitive Theory, the thesis argues that Weibo and WeChat provide a learning environment that allows users to obtain alternative information, educative knowledge, and public discussion about certain rights defense events, learn lessons from other people’s successful rights defense experience, and evaluate potential participation risks by observing punishment and authority’s reactions. The three kinds of knowledge gained in the process of Weibo and WeChat use, designedly or unintendedly, shape users’ perceived online political efficacy, and hence empower and motivate them to take online collective action in response to government-involved injustice issues. To my knowledge, this thesis is the first to uncover the effect of SNS use on Chinese online activism regarding rights defense issues, and also the first to explore the psychological mechanism behind the scene in the context of China. It contributes to the literature on the psychological and behavioral outcomes of SNS use in China and other developing democracies or authoritarian societies, and sheds light on the study of Chinese student activism in the digital age.