Online Community Participation on Political Information Dissemination during 2014 Thai Coup d’etat: Analyses of Facebook and Twitter Use

Abstract

This study addresses the issue of online political participation regarding dissemination of political information on Facebook and Twitter The objectives of this study are: 1) to investigate how people are motivated to disseminate political information on social network by trying to understand attitude intention and behavior of social network users 2) To examine information characteristic and other factors that influence people to disseminate politic-related information online by analyzing from the actual behavior of posting and tweeting Empirical studies were conducted to test the research model by using questionnaire survey and content analysis This study extends Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and Rumor Theory literatures by applying them to the context of political crisis The result shows that factors influencing users to disseminate political information vary between Twitter and Facebook Based on ELM for Twitter source credibility or peripheral cue didn’t influence users’ attitite toward information dissemination But for Facebook both central and peripheral routes affected the users’ attitude From rumor theory perspective anxiety and personal involvement didn’t significantly influence information dissemination on Twitter but ambiguity attractiveness and partisanship did For Facebook only source ambiguity and personal involvement significant had a significant effect on the information dissemination

Date of Award	2015 Feb 10
Original language	English
Supervisor	Jeng-Chung Chen (Supervisor)