Effects of Slacktivism on Offline Engagement: Appraising the Role of Political Facebook Memes As a Communication Tool for Young Consumers in Pakistan

Abstract

The concurrent digital media environment stipulated as participatory media culture refers the active participation of citizens by using Facebook memes as a communication tool. The digital age has led to a new interface for political mobilization and has been credited with the success of several recent political movements. This research appraises the role of political Facebook memes as a communication tool to further investigate the effects of slacktivism on offline engagement of young Facebook users of age (18 to 36) studying at university level from 5 metropolitan cities of Pakistan. The uses and gratification theory was applied to assess the usage of mems by users to gratify their needs for utilizing Political Facebook memes. By applying quantitative approach, a self-structured close ended questionnaire was employed to get responses from 1671 respondents using simple random sampling to understand the perceptions of meme consumers and to infer the results. The correlation and regression tests were applied to analyze the data. The findings of the research suggests that Political Facebook memes play an effective role to provide information of political issues and to deliver a message about the loop holes in system, also tend to relax mind through satire and makes politics interesting for youth. The results also confirm that online engagement of users lead them to offline engagement as it makes them more informed and interested in politics.