To bond or bridge: how do populist attitudes intensify the effect of online social capital on political engagement?

The latest 2024 Taiwan General Election proved to be yet another arena for populist politics, with candidates aligning their stances and aspirations with populism, uniting “the people” through different means. With an intensifying populist atmosphere not only in Taiwan but in various democracies across the globe, this timely study seeks to explore the impact of populism on individual behaviors. Specifically, given the wide body of existing literature on conventional politics, we aim to shift attention to the online context. By regarding populism as a moderator, we examine its effect on the association between both online bonding and bridging social capital, political efficacy, and online political engagement. Data from 450 young adults are analyzed with a moderated mediation model as well as a co-moderation model, the former with populism as the sole moderator, and the latter with populism and socioeconomic status as co-moderators. Upon confirming the association between online social capital and engagement along with the mediating effect of political efficacy, the highlight of our study lies in our finding that populism significantly moderates both online bonding and bridging social capital to political efficacy, but in opposing manners. Populism, furthermore, proves to be insignificant in directly moderating any paths to online engagement, while socioeconomic status moderates the association between online bonding social capital and online political engagement. In addition, the distinct party-led system and underlying political atmosphere in Taiwan will be addressed and discussed, in terms of their impact on our findings.