Scroll, Share, Comment, Repeat: a study on technology fetishism in social media and political participation.

Abstract

One of social media’s positive characteristics is its ability to serve as a platform for discourse. In this era where almost everyone has access to it, researchers have tried to establish a causal link between social media and political participation, although there is a lack of consensus in the literature. Furthermore, the majority of the literature does not delve into the causal mechanisms behind this relationship. This study aims to contribute to the discourse by trying to determine how overreliance on social media for political participation online—which can be a form of technological fetishism—inhibits its translation into the time-and-effort-consuming sides of politics offline (in the form of voting in the University Student Council Elections) through doing in-depth interviews. Data from the interviews were analyzed through focused coding, categorizing responses into dominant themes while also taking note of instances pertaining to the concepts of technology fetishism. It was found that those who exhibited elements of technology fetishism manifested its operations as an effect or rationalization for nonvoting, except for one extreme case where there was an actual limitation to online engagement that became a cause of inaction.