Social media: A means of developing generation z's political participation in the digital era

Abstract

This article elaborates on generation Z's information seeking patterns through social media and the development of their political participation. This research used a qualitative - descriptive design, conducted in the city of Pekanbaru with 296 generation Z who were interviewed directly and by filling in a Google form. The research was conducted in the time span of September-October 2024. Data analysis techniques used the Miles and Huberman model. The triangulation technique uses data source triangulation. The research results found that (1) 69.9% of informants preferred to use social media in searching for political information compared to news websites (24.7%), television (1%) and YouTube channels (1%) for the reasons that they were easy to access and understand, practical , more complete and up to date, as well as a more attractive appearance and does not contain much writing; (2) 57.1% of informants follow certain politicians' accounts and 42.9% say they do not follow them. Regarding political news posts on social media, 33% of informants stated that they often left comments on these posts and others did not. For those who answered no, the reasons were various, such as responding only inwardly, making it a topic of daily discussion, giving "likes and dislikes" marks on posts, spreading the post on other social media or reporting the account. It is recommended that related parties be able to provide digital literacy-based voter education to generation Z as the next generation of national leadership in the future.