Does social media type matter to politics? Investigating the difference in political participation depending on preferred social media sites

Abstract Objective This study investigates the relationship between social media use for information and political participation with the type of social media as a moderator to shed light on platform‐specific biases related to political participation. To this end, social media sites were classified into two types: symmetrical and asymmetrical,based on their functional characteristics that affect the way users form a relationship on the site Methods Using data from a U.S. national survey, we test a theoretical model where the path from social media use for information through online political participation to offline political participation is moderated differently by users’ preference for the type of social media. Results Online political participation mediated the relationship between social media use for information and offline political participation. Users’ preference for symmetrical social media moderated the path from social media use for information through online political participation to offline political participation, whereas users’ preference for asymmetrical social media did not. Conclusion All else being equal, the more often people use symmetrical social media for information, the more likely they are to participate in politics.