Internet Use And Political Efficacy In The Redmond Mountains Area

Communities are the fundamental building blocks of urban development. They provide the basic services which are essential for everyone’s daily life. They also witnessed the improvement of city life over the decades. The communication and propagation among the residents helps to build a cohesive community, as well as to enhance the sense of ownership of every community members. Among most of the Chinese urban communities, resident communications have be established in multiple natural forms, such as notice boards, community bulletin boards, etc. The emergence and development of the Internet has brought the community communication more innovative and comprehensive channels. How to leverage these channels to resolve community public events? With the latest technologies, how to raise the level of participation of community residents in these events, and to search for the optimized solutions for these events? These are the most common questions for the social science researchers. In this research, I investigated a public event in a common American community, where the Internet communication is more developed, focused on the application of the Internet and the political efficacy experience of community residents, in order to get a better process to resolve the community public events from a unique perspective of view.This research uses a combination of the document analysis and the quantitative methods. Related concepts about community propagation and political efficacy are listed. It also analyzes and summarizes the characteristics of American communities, and its communication channels. Considering the local situation, a survey entitled with "Questionnaire about the Internet Application in the petition against Marijuana producing in the Redmond Ridge area" was designed and delivered to a randomly selected set of families in the Redmond Ridge community. This questionnaire focused on2major topics, the application of Internet, and the political efficacy experiences. With the data collected from this survey, the conclusions can be got on how the local residents get access to the internet, how the internet affect the progress of the public event, and the overall acceptance of the political efficacy of the residents. Emails, the petition websites as well as the social networks turns to have a big push on the propagation of the events. They also helped the resident to aggregate information, to organize their thoughts, and to express their opinions. The traditional communication channels were also involved in this event. Together with the new media, the updates of the events had a perfect coverage. The survey also shows, both the internal and external political efficacy experience of the local residents tend to be positive. It made the ordinary people respond proactively when the event emerged, be encouraged to express their requirements, respect the role of voting, trust democracy, and believe the government in decision making.At last, based on the significance of the Internet involvement in community public events and the importance of the political efficacy experience in the community level democracy, this paper suggests some proposals to improve the political efficacy experience of the residents and to seek for better solutions of community public events with the help of Internet. Leveraging a combination of the tradition media and the new media can help on the resolution of community public events. Positive experience of political efficacy of the local residents can improve their involvement in the events. Consider all these above, in order to solve the community public events with respect and harmony, the governor needs understand the interest and the essential request of the residents, and build a clear channel to communicate with the residents. At the same time, raising the internal and external experience of political efficacy of the residents, building their sense of belongingness and ownership to make them express their own opinions proactively in the public events, can promote the development and management of communities, the fundamental building blocks of the society.