Technology Features, Empowering Perceptions, and Voicing Behavior on Microblog

Recently, we have observed rapid growth of individual daily technologies such as microblogs, and the technology’s influence on people’s social life. To investigate such self-determined technology usage, we choose an empowerment perspective as our theoretical lens, because the empowerment concept highlights human beings’ proactive nature. We investigate a specific microblog usage, i.e. publicly voicing personal views on social affairs, which is an initial yet fundamental step in citizen participation. The study reveals that microblog features have transformed the way social news disseminate, and hence influence information quality and users’ social network building. These changes further influence users’ empowerment perceptions through raising users’ perceptions of internal political self-efficacy, autonomy, meaning, and impact. The more empowered users are, the more likely users will voice on microblog. We integrate context into our theorizing, and the empowerment framework allow us to uncover the psychological mechanism through which microblog technology features enable voicing, a specific technology usage.