Understanding the Factors of Correlation Between Social Media and Political Participation: The Case of Uzbekistan Youth

Abstract

Social media use is positively associated with political participation, but does this relationship persevere when the government restrains traditional and social media? The current thesis addressed this issue whether the positive relationship between social media and political participation did play a significant role in advancing youth’s political participation of both online and offline forms. In particular, Uzbekistan was an intriguing case for analyzing the impact of the relationship between social media and political participation as the Uzbek government maintained to defy the digital rights of its netizens. However, under the conditions of suppression, social media and other online news sources play a pivotal role in providing information free from government filters, which makes political participation more likely to happen. To test this theory, this study investigated the data collected through an original, nationally-representative, online survey among students conducted in Uzbekistan in October 2020 (n=150). It was found out that different factors such as age, gender and education level played a decisive role in evaluating the possible positive correlation between social media and political participation. The results indicated that social media and particularly, networking sites played less significant role in encouraging political participation of the youth. The findings were important as they provided another piece of information in the puzzle of social media’s influence on participation. The data presented in the work provided some contribution to this question. At least when it comes to illiberal democracies like Uzbekistan where social media outlets are the only non-government-aligned platforms that reach millions of Uzbeks every day.