Muhammad Masood’s research while affiliated with Nanyang Technological University and other places

While numerous studies have explored the participatory benefits of social media use for political participation, the empirical literature on the mobilizing role of political memes is nearly absent. In addition, most of the attention has been on Western democratic contexts. By employing survey data from an Asian context—Singapore—this study scrutinizes the impact of exposure to political memes in the interplay between political use of social media and online political participation. In addition, it investigates the contingent role of political cynicism. First, the results show that political social media use is associated with online political participation and that association is mediated by exposure to political memes. Further, moderation analyses indicate that social media use provides participatory gains only for individuals exhibiting low political cynicism. However, when such social media use facilitates exposure to political memes, it primarily mobilizes those with high political cynicism into active online political participation. The results suggest that memes can mobilize disengaged groups into active participation.

Research extensively explores how social media influences online political participation, yet there is limited focus on the cognitive factors that shape user interactions on these platforms. Moreover, most of this research centers around Western democracies, leaving a gap in understanding its applicability in more conservative, non-Western settings. This study builds upon the communication mediation model to enhance theoretical insights into social media’s role, particularly focusing on concerns about online privacy. By analyzing survey data from the United States (US), China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, we find that the use of social media for news is positively associated with engaging in political discussions on social media (both heterogeneous/diverse and homogeneous/similar) and online political participation across all contexts. Nonetheless, except for Singapore, our observations indicate a negative relationship between privacy concerns and participation in all contexts. Further, moderated mediation analysis reveals that in Asian countries, the tendency of social media news to facilitate online political participation through political discussion is significantly reduced for those more concerned about online privacy. This pattern is consistent in the US for heterogeneous but not for homogenous discussions. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed, including the differential findings from the US.

This study theorized that active political expression on social networking sites (SNS) facilitates political disagreement since it diversifies one’s communication network, which likely leads to political incivility. Additionally, individuals’ social identity might condition this indirect relationship. Relying on a two-wave panel survey in Hong Kong, this study found that political expression on SNS is significantly associated with political disagreement. However, political disagreement does not lead to political incivility, indicating that it does not mediate the relationship between political expression and incivility. Further analysis showed that the mediating relationship between political expression, disagreement, and incivility is only significant for dual identifiers.

This study compares two adjacent remote valleys in the Himalayas of Pakistan, which only differ in terms of the availability of internet access. Using a unique methodological approach, combining a natural experiment design and an interview method, we explore the role of serendipitous exposure and interfaith contact on social media in relation to the religious majority’s knowledge about religious minorities and willingness to engage with them. We find that those who have internet access and use social media show more knowledge about and engagement with religious minorities than those who do not. Serendipitous exposure largely explains the differences—social media users do not intentionally seek information about religious minorities but still serendipitously come across it while using social media for other activities. Moreover, social media users tend to have extensive networks of social ties (i.e., Facebook friends), which frequently cut across religious lines and likely act as the main facilitators of serendipity. We argue that mediated serendipity and increased interfaith contact promoted by social media platforms are essential contributors to democratic citizenship in present-day Pakistan, where religious minorities represent a small segment of the population and often face discrimination and persecution.