Justification and knowledge

Abstract

Abstract Everyday political talk, a significant type of political participation, is an important democratic activity. In this regard, the primary objective of this paper is to investigate the level of justification and knowledge in Indonesians’ informal political talk on Facebook. While previous studies addressed different aspects of informal political discussions such as their impact on political knowledge, influence on public opinion expression and relationship with news media use, they do not provide guidelines for analysing the modality of them. This study proposes an analytical framework for examining the users’ level of justification and knowledge. A qualitative content analysis reveals that only a small number of comments had a high level of justification and knowledge. In addition, some indications of the influence of Indonesian mainstream news media content were found on people’s arguments in discussions.