ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Elections and Representation
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2025.1620631
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Role of Political Influencers in Electoral CampaignsView all articles
From Sparks to Action: The Role of Political Influencers for Young Adults' Political Efficacy and Political Participation in Austria, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Serbia
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- 2Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
- 3University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
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Two types of social media influencers play an important role in political communication: those who hardly post political content in addition to their regular content (i.e., social media influencers; SMIs) and those who specifically focus on political content (i.e., political social media influencers; PSMIs). To shed light on the difference between the two types, we conducted a comparative cross-sectional survey examining the relationship between following SMIs and PSMIs on young adults' political efficacy and political participation in Austria, Hong Kong (China), Indonesia, and Serbia. Moreover, we investigated how young adults' eudaimonic motivation regarding SMIs' content moderates these relations. Findings showed that following PSMIs, but not following SMIs, is positively associated with young adults' political efficacy in all countries but Serbia. Additionally, in all countries, young adults' political efficacy was positively related to their intention to participate in politics. Also, following PSMIs was positively related to participation in Austria and Hong Kong. Eudaimonic motivation played a limited role as moderator. Implications of these findings are discussed in the specific context of each country, providing valuable insights for future research on the role of PSMIs in shaping young adults' political efficacy and political participation.
Keywords: Political Social Media Influencers, young adults, Eudaimonic Motivation, Political efficacy, political participation
Received: 29 Apr 2025; Accepted: 09 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Munzir, Neureiter, Matthes, Chan and Bojic. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Atika Aisyarahmi Munzir, atikaaisym77@univie.ac.at
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