Internets effekt på attityder i den digitala demokratin Taiwan : En kvantitativ studie om sambandet mellan internetanvändning och tillfredsställelse med demokrati och staten

Sammanfattning: This cross-sectional study investigates the relationship between internet usage and attitudes. More specifically, if there is a positive correlation between usage of the internet and satisfaction with democracy and the government for Taiwanees citizens. Taiwan is said to be ahead of all other countries in implementing various platforms on the internet to strengthen democratic institutions. Previous research in this field is conflicted about if the internet has a positive or negative impact on citizens' attitudes regarding these matters. The previous studies are also based on outdated data gathered a decade ago or more. Since then, the internet has gone through changes and more people are using it frequently. Using the fifth wave of the Asian Barometer survey consisting of data gathered in 2019, two multiple regressions were constructed. One to measure the correlation between usage of the internet and satisfaction with democracy and another one to measure the correlation between usage of the internet and satisfaction with the government. The results showed that usage of the internet had a negative statistically significant correlation on both satisfaction with democracy and satisfaction with the government. However, the correlation was weak in both multivariate regression models. The relationship between the dependent and independent variables did not remain statistically significant when only certain control variables were tested for, which could imply that the relationships might be spurious. The conclusion of the study is that there is no positive correlation between usage of the internet and any of the two studied attitudes. Using the internet probably affects these attitudes in a somewhat negative way and there is reason to believe that this trend will continue in the future.