Expression in the Social Age: Towards an Integrated Model of Technology Acceptance, Personality, Civic Engagement and Social Capital

We investigate the factors that affect the use of social media for civic engagement and social capital, and examine if online civic engagement also results in offline civic engagement. Using data from 282 university students, we find significant relationships between social media use, social capital, online and offline civic engagement. This study also tests the relationship between personality traits of individuals and how these traits relate to the use of social media for civic engagement and social capital. While agreeableness and conscientiousness are strongly associated with perceived usefulness of social media use, agreeableness was found to have a negative association with perceived usefulness of social media in the context of civic engagement.