Leveling or tilting the playing field: Social networking sites and offline political communication inequality

Abstract

Building on a resource theory, this study investigates (a) how individuals’ socio-economic status is related to political communication in offline situations and on social networking sites and (b) whether political expression on SNS improves socio-economic stratification in offline political discussion. Analyses of a national survey demonstrate that the impact of individuals’ socio-economic status (SES) is much weaker on political expression via SNS than on offline political discussion. It is also found that the political use of SNS reduces the strength of the link between individuals’ SES and offline discussion. Implications of these findings for the Internet and political inequality are discussed.

Keywords:

• Social networking sites
• Communication gap
• Political discussion gap
• Political posting
• Political discussion
• Political inequality

Notes

1 Tel.: [phone].

1 As a way to handle the missing data, we imputed simulated values to replace missing values in variables. Following Myers’ hot deck procedure, we used a multiple imputation technique based on the EMis (Expectation Maximization with Importance Sampling) algorithm (see King, Honaker, Joseph, & Scheve, 2001; Myers, 2011). The multiple imputation was implemented in two steps. First, multiple (typically five) imputed values were generated for each missing item, yielding multiple imputed replicate datasets. Then, the missing values were replaced with each of the five imputed values, while the observed values remained the same. Second, the specified regression models were run for each of the imputed datasets with no missing data. For the purpose of comparison, the same models were run again using listwise deletion, with observations from any missing item being excluded from the analysis. Little difference was found between the two approaches (multiple imputation and listwise deletion). Given that the two approaches produced nearly identical results, we decided to report the original results based on the listwise deletion method.

2 Some of the control variables – sex and partisanship strength – are significant factors in accounting for political expression both on SNS and in the offline discussion model. Interestingly, the data show a gender gap in political expression on SNS. As in face-to-face political discussion, female citizens are less likely to make use of SNS for political expression than male citizens. Party identifiers are more active in political expression via SNS than leaners or independents. Some differences between the offline and SNS models in terms of the influences of control variables are also observed. Age and marital status are significant factors for offline political discussion whereas neither of them is associated with political expression on SNS. Lastly, the degree of life contentment, although not related to offline political discussion, is negatively associated with SNS political expression. This finding is consistent with previous work on psycho-demographic profiles of SNS users (Correa et al., 2010).