Motivations for youth's political participation on social media: implications for political marketers

Social media has emerged to be a significant tool for expression, dissemination and consumption of political information among the youth. In this context, this study has two objectives. First, it intends to examine the key motivations that explain the social media political participation among the Indian youth. Second, it intends to examine if the youth's social media use has an effect on their offline voting decisions. The research employs partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique and offers a theoretical model to explain the motives for online political participation and social media activities affecting the voting decisions of the electorate. Results demonstrate that social media participation is influenced by utilitarian and hedonic motives. It is also seen that information seeking and expressive behaviour significantly affect the actual voting decisions of the Indian youth.