The increasing demand for online political information has made the Web a promising venue for campaigning, organizing, and advertising. Since mid 1990s, political candidates and lobbyists have been using e-mails, forums, chat rooms, social media, and other online outlets to communicate on issues, raise funds, and promote political agendas (Dulio, Goff, & Thurber, 1999; Jennings & Zeitner, 2003). Few, however, have looked at the Web as a venue for fostering political participation not only among the mainstream citizenry, but also among the society’s ethnically diverse groups who often find themselves marginalized and isolated from political life (Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, 2006). Political participation is, in great part, …show more content…
Ethnic citizens grow up in a particular culture and, over time, become accustomed to that culture’s norms and values (Naylor, 1996; Aaker & Williams, 1998). Cultural values influence how citizens interact and socialize. They are a powerful force behind individual lifestyles and motivations (Tse, Belk, & Zhou 1989; Zhang, 1996). Therefore, one can argue that culturally oriented PSAs, while reflecting ethnic minorities’ cultural backgrounds, may be effective in stimulating those minorities’ interest in voter …show more content…
We next analyze the attitudinal and behavioral effects of culturally oriented PSAs. In doing so, we pay particular attention to the role of ethnic identity as a possible moderator of the relationship between culture and the persuasiveness of online political messages. Most importantly, unlike some of the past cross-cultural research (e.g. Han & Shavitt, 1994), we do not automatically assume that all Chinese constituents are necessarily collectivistic. In fact, before testing our hypotheses, we took individual measures of cultural dimensions to ensure that our sample of Chinese American constituents had a well-sustained ethno-cultural