The Influence Of Social Media Usage On College Students' Online Political Expression

The rapid development of social media has changed the way of information transmission and the way of communication.Social media has become an important platform for people to get and discuss news information by virtue of instantaneity,content interaction and user grass-roots.With the popularity of Internet technology and the development of democratic politics,more and more citizens choose to express their political expression through the Internet.Online political expression has gradually become an important channel for the government to collect public opinion and understand the voice of the masses at the bottom.College students are the main users of social media,they have high attention to public events.But,their ideological and political situation is not stable.The degree of their political expression directly influences the future of the country.At present,however,there is little research on the relationship between the use of social media and college students' online political expression.What's worse,the research on the mechanism is lacked.In this study,the factor of media information processing capacity in communication is introduced into the study of online political expression,and the influence of social media usage on college students' online political expression is discussed.Taking the media information processing capacity as a mediator,we construct a relational model of social media's influence on college students' online political expression.By using SPSS22.0,Six hundred and thirty valid questionnaires collected from two ways of online and offline were analyzed.I come to the conclusion that social media uses two ways to improve college students' online political expression.Direct influence: social media's informative usage and social interaction are all promoting college students' online political expression.Intermediary role: the use of social media improves the ability of college students to deal with media information,and the enhancement of the ability of media information processing promotes college students' online political expression.This study also found that college students' overall political expression level is not high,and political efficacy is an important factor that influences college students' online political expression.Based on this,this study attempts to put forward three measures from the government,universities and individuals to improve the level of college students' online political expression.