The use of online deliberation to increase political engagement among Singapore youths.

Abstract

This was an experimental study that investigated the effects of exposure to news articles and participation in an online discussion on the dependent measures of young adults’ future political participation (FPP), online political participation as well as their knowledge and argument repertoire (AR) about the social issues discussed. Young adults were defined as those aged 21 to 34 years old. Participants were randomly assigned to either a discussion or nondiscussion condition initially. After reading news articles, participants in the discussion group condition took part in a moderated online discussion on Windows Live Messenger. In the nondiscussion condition, participants did not participate in any discussions after reading of the news articles. Within the discussion group condition, the racial composition of the online discussion groups was manipulated to investigate the impact of race on the quality of online discussion. The homogeneous online discussion groups were composed of participants of the same race whilst the heterogeneous online discussion groups were composed of participants from the three main racial groups of Singapore – Chinese, Indian and Malay. Content analysis was carried out on the transcripts of the online discussions to measure quality of discussion. A total of 218 adults participated in the study. In general, findings indicated that online discussions did not have a significant effect on participants’ knowledge, AR, online political participation and their FPP. Instead, reading news articles had a significant effect on participants’ knowledge and online political participation. The content analysis revealed that occurrences of incivility were significantly higher in racially heterogeneous groups than the racially homogenous groups. Implications of the study’s findings on Singapore’s political landscape are discussed further in the paper.