커뮤니케이션대학원 졸업논문
국민청원게시판, 정치효능감, 지각된 유사성, 이슈관여도
본 연구는 시민의 정치참여와 소통을 목적으로 만들어진 ‘청와대 온라인 국민청원 게시판’이 시민의 정치태도에 어떠한 영향을 주는가에 대한 물음에서 출발하였다. 이에 국민청원게시판의 성격을 이슈 공론화 등 ‘기존 집단청원의 성격’과 정부의 답변을 통한 ‘정부의 소통’으로 분류하였다. 이렇게 분류된 각각의 특성이 시민의 정치효능감에 미치는 영향에 대해 실험연구방법으로 연구를 진행하였다. 이때에 청원게시자에 대한 지각된 유사성과 청원 이슈에 대한 관여도를 조절변수로 투입하여 국민청원게시판을 구성하는 여러 요인들의 효과를 보고자 하였다. 본 연구는 청원게시자에 대한 지각된 유사성, 청원 이슈에 대한 관여도 각각이 시민의 정치효능감을 증진시키는 조절변수라는 것을 밝혀냈다는 점에서 학문적 의의를 갖는다.
Recently South Korean government released an official e-petition bulletin on the website of the Blue House, i.e., Korean Presidential Office. The bulletin aims to facilitate direct communication between the government and citizens. Government promised to provide formal answer for any e-petition, if the e-petition succeeds to crop support from more than 200,000 fellow citizens within 30 days. This study is to examine how the e-petition, as a tool for e-democracy, influences citizens’ political efficacy, utilizing experimental study.
To answer the main research question, this study constructed three conditions: (1) ‘control group’ in which experiment participants only received straight news about ‘calls for laws about false sexual crime accusation,’ (2) ‘treatmentgroup1 ’ in which participants received the e-petition about ‘calls for laws about false sexual crime accusation’ with over 200,000 citizens’ endorsement, (3) ‘treatment group 2’ in which participants received the e-petition about ‘calls for laws about false sexual crime accusation’ with over 200,000 citizens’ endorsement and government official’s reply about the petition. Study participants were randomly assigned into one of the three conditions and examined how their political efficacy?both internal and external?differed across the experimental conditions. Additionally, this study examines how the stimulus-response relationship varies according to participants’ perceived similarity with the petitioner and degree of issue engagement.
Although this study fails to detect main effect of experimental conditions on multi-dimensional political efficacy, it succeeds to find statistically significant moderation effect of participants’ perceived similarity with the petitioner and degree of issue engagement on the stimulus-response relationship. Specifically, under ‘treatment group 1’ condition, participants feeling stronger similarity with the e-petitioner shows stronger internal political efficacy; under ‘treatment group 2’ condition, those with higher involvement with the issue reveals higher external political efficacy. Based on findings, this study discusses the theoretical and practical implications of recent Korean Government’s e-petition bulletin in modern democracy.