Developing Political Associational Ties on Mobile Social Media: A Cross-National
3.3 Method
Data Collection Secondary data of Asia-Pacifi c countries was obtained from vari- ous sources for analysis in this study. Data sources included databases of research organizations and market research fi rms. Because different databases included sta- tistics of different countries, some values were missing in certain variables. Only countries with missing values in less than two variables were included for analysis.
Thirty countries or territories in Asia-Pacifi c were selected in fi nal analysis (All are called “countries” or “nations” in the following text). Table 3.1 shows a list of the 30 countries; they accounted for 62.5 % of the total of 48 countries in the region.
Measurements of Variables
GDP per Capita Data in 2014 was retrieved from the World Bank ( 2015a , b ).
GDP per capita stands for gross domestic product divided by midyear population, as the sum of gross value produced by all residents. Generally speaking, GDP can refl ect income level of people in a country (M = USD 13853.94, SD = 19022.83, ranging from USD696.9 in Nepal to USD61887.0 in Australia ).
Urbanization Data in 2014 was retrieved from the World Bank ( 2015a , b ) to cre- ate measures of urban urbanization. It refers to ratio of people living in urban areas, as defi ned by statistical offi ces in the countries, per 100 in the whole population.
The index was calculated from World Bank population estimates and the United
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Nations World Urbanization Prospects (World Bank 2015a , b ) (M = 54.45, SD = 27.21, ranging from 13.0 in Papua New Guinea to 100 in Hong Kong , Macau , and Singapore ).
Mobile Phone Subscription The World Bank ( 2015a , b ) provides data on mobile subscription per 100 in the population, defi ned as subscriptions to a mobile tele- phone service offering voice communications, including postpaid subscriptions,
Table 3.1 Mobile cellular subscription and mobile social media use in Asia-Pacifi c region
Mobile cellular subscription (per 100)
Mobile social media use (per 100)
Singapore 158 80
Taiwan – 62
Brunei 110 61
Hong Kong 239 58
Maldives 189 53
Australia 131 52
Malaysia 149 50
Macau 323 48
New Zealand 112 48
Thailand 144 46
China 92 37
Philippines 111 36
Fiji 99 35
Mongolia 105 31
Vietnam 147 29
South Korea 116 27
Indonesia 126 25
Bhutan 82 20
Japan 120 17
Nepal 82 16
Cambodia 155 14
Timor-Leste 59 14
Sri Lanka 103 11
India 74 9
Pakistan 73 9
Laos 67 9
Bangladesh 76 7
Myanmar 49 7
Papua New Guinea
45 4
North Korea 11 0
Source: We Are Social and IAB Singapore ( 2015 )
Note: Rows are ranked according to mobile social media use (per 100), from the highest to the lowest
W.C. Leung
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and active prepaid accounts used during the last 3 months (M = 115.41, SD = 61.16, ranging from 11.0 in North Korea to 323.0 in Macau ).
Active Mobile Social Penetration Data were obtained from We Are Social and IAB Singapore’s ( 2015 ) report. The number of active mobile social users refers to active user accounts on the most active social platform in each country. The number was then divided by the total population to obtain the penetration of mobile social media in the country per 100 in the population (M = 30.5, SD = 21.19, ranging from 0 in North Korea to 80 in Singapore ).
National Culture According to Hoftstede et al. ( 2010 ), there are six dimensions of a nation’s culture and scores for each dimension from his research (Hofstede et al.
2010 ) were used: power distance (M = 69.35, SD = 17.42, ranging from 22.0 in New Zealand to 100 in Malaysia ), individualism (M = 32.00, SD = 21.31, ranging from 14.0 in Fiji to 90.0 in Australia ), uncertainty avoidance (M = 48.30, SD = 20.44, ranging from 8.0 in Singapore to 92.0 in Japan), masculinity (M = 49.60, SD = 16.75, ranging from 10.0 in Sri Lanka to 95.0 in Japan ), long-term orientation (M = 56.88, SD = 24.04, ranging from 21.0 in Australia to 100.0 in South Korea ), and indulgence (M = 38.50, SD = 19.53, ranging from 0 in Pakistan to 75.0 in New Zealand ).
Number of Fans on Facebook Pages per 100 Data was obtained from Social Bakers ( 2015 ), which is a company tracking and analyzing social profi les across major social platforms including Facebook, Twitter , Instagram , etc. Statistics of fans on Facebook pages in 2015 September were collected. The number of fans in four categories of Facebook pages in the population was then divided by the correspond- ing population of the country, as provided by the World Bank ( 2015a , b ). Categories of analysis includes the government (e.g., Taiwan Excellence, New Zealand Army) (M = 7.98, SD = 2.09, ranging from 0 in China to 7.98 in Singapore ), NGOs (e.g., UNICEF, the Animal Rescue Site) (M = 1.78, SD = 1.71, ranging from .03 in China to 6.53 in New Zealand), political communities (e.g., Equal Marriage Rights Australia , Occupy Singapore) (M = .842, SD = .740, ranging from .01 in South Korea to 2.67 in Malaysia ), and news (e.g., BBC News, Yahoo! News) (M = 2.98, SD = 4.81, ranging from 0.01 in Taiwan to 22.49 in Maldives ). The number of fans was recorded from the most popular Facebook page in the corresponding category.
Number of Followers on Twitter Accounts per 100 Similarly, data was also pro- vided by Social Bakers ( 2015 ) and the World Bank ( 2015a , b ). The number of fol- lowers in three categories of Twitter accounts per 100 in the population were analyzed, including the government (M = 1.09, SD = 2.31, ranging from 0 in Papua New Guinea and Vietnam to 11.59 in Maldives ), NGOs (M = .281, SD = .337, rang- ing from 0 in China , Myanmar , and Nepal to 1.23 in Australia ), and news (M = 1.13, SD = 1.63, ranging from .01 in China to 6.71 in Maldives ), in the corresponding countries. The number of followers was recorded from the most popular social media account in the corresponding category. Because the data on the number of Twitter followers in political communities was not complete, it was excluded in this study.
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