Innovation Resistance of Political Websites and Blogs among Internet Users in Singapore

Abstract

The Internet has become an influential platform to disseminate diverse political perspectives and promote democracy. With the prevalent use of the Internet, Singapore is a unique context to examine if its people resist online political information in a socio-political situation where politics is considered a sensitive domain and content regulation is imposed on mainstream media. The study integrates the concept of innovation resistance and the ideas derived from the Technology Acceptance Model to explore the reasons why Singaporeans resist political websites and blogs. After a focus group discussion, a web survey by Nielsen of 607 respondents using a sampling frame to ensure representativeness of Singapore's Internet users found that more than 40 per cent had never visited even one political website or blog. The data analysis reveals five main factors that cause the innovation resistance: perceived usefulness/image barrier, realization, perceived ease of use, peer influence and habitual conflict. Apart from perceived ease of use, the rest are found to affect users’ intentions regarding future adoption.

Keywords:

• Political websites
• blogs
• innovation resistance
• Technology Acceptance Model
• Internet

About the Authors

Alice Yah-Huei Hong is a Professor at the Graduate Institute of Mass Communication, Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan. She got her PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US in 1996, and was a research fellow at the Asian Communication Research Centre (ACRC), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2009. She has many years of practical experience in election campaigning and is also a reviewer of many renowned academic journals in Taiwan and in the US. She has broad research interests and her areas of specialization include Internet marketing, election campaigning, advertising effects, and quantitative research methods.

Trisha T. C. Lin obtained her PhD degree from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, US, and is now an assistant professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests focus on mobile media and communication, adoption and the social impact of emerging media technologies, convergent telecommunication policy and digital journalism. She has published many journal papers regarding socio-technical analysis of mobile TV in Asia, mobile phone usage, adoption and management of social media, and implementation of integrated TV newsrooms.

Peng Hwa Ang is a professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. A lawyer by training, his research is in the areas of media law and policy, with an emphasis on Internet governance. He is the author of Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet (CEngage-Thomson, 2005). He was a member of the UN Secretary-General appointed Working Group on Internet Governance and co-founded the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet), where he is the inaugural chair. He also is a co-founder and the inaugural chair of the Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum. In 2014, he was elected the President-Elect-Select of the International Communication Association.

Notes

1 In the focus group discussion, the authors found that people were unable to differentiate the political websites from the political weblogs; thus, we asked the respondents if they have ever used the politics-related websites or blogs in the formal survey. In this study, the political (or socio-political) websites and blogs include: (1) blogs: TheYawningBread, TalkingCock.Com, and Mrbrown.com, (2) party websites: the PAP website and SDP website; and (3) politics-related citizen journalism sites: The Online Citizen. The definitions and examples were presented at the beginning of the questionnaire.

2 According to Iyengar (1991), if p < 0.10, this hypothesis can also be supported. And the authors believe that if the sample size was slightly bigger than the one used here, the hypothesis could be strongly supported.