Chinese Journal of Sociology

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 Chinese Netizens’ Political Ideology and Their Sources：An Empirical Analysis

Author 1: MA Deyong, Zhou Enlai School of Government，Nankai University；Author 2: WANG Lina, School of Government，Peking University   

  • Online:2015-09-20 Published:2015-09-20
  • Contact: MA Deyong, Zhou Enlai School of Government，Nankai University E-mail:madeyong@nankai.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    This study was funded by the National Social Science Fund (14BSH053), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET130302), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (NKZXA1211).

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Abstract:

 The article offers an empirical analysis of the characteristics and sources of the ideological positions of Chinese netizens based on an online questionnaire survey of over 4000 Internet users. Firstly, we set up a criterion for classifying netizens’ political ideology into “left” and “right”. Then, we analyze leftist and rightist netizens’ psychological traits such as authoritarian personality and their attitudes towards patriotism, nationalism, foreign policy, extant socialpolitical order, and traditional and postmodern values. Our analysis finds that, leftwing and rightwing netizens in China are opposite to their namesakes in Western countries in basic political psychological traits. Specifically, Chinese “leftists” are similar to conservatives in Western countries. They possess more authoritarian personality traits and are more inclined to defend the extant social order and traditional values than the rightists. Furthermore, they are more hawkish and xenophobic on foreign affairs issues. The Chinese “rightists”, by contrast, are similar to liberals in Western countries. They are more concerned about social justice and setting limits to political power, and support postmodern values. We also analyze the sources of Chinese netizens’ political ideology through two theoretical approaches: information sources and individual’s personality. We find that netizens’ political ideology is significantly affected by both media exposure as an external factor and authoritarian personality as an internal factor, but the influence of the latter is more powerful. Based on our findings, we argue that while both media exposure and authoritarian personality have impacts on an individual’s political ideology, authoritarian personality is the more fundamental factor than information in influencing the individual’s ideological position in the new media age when information sources are increasingly diversified. Therefore, policies and strategies that try to influence the public’s ideological placement by controlling the ideological orientations of the media can only have limited effect.
 

Key words: political ideology ,  right wing,  information , authoritarian personality ,  ,  left wing , internet users