The Internet and new modes of political participation: online versus offline participation

Abstract

Political participation refers to all forms of involvement in which citizens express their political opinion and/or convey that opinion to political decision-makers. Some of the most innovative forms of political participation developed during the past decade are based on the use of online communication tools. There is still no consensus in the scientific literature, however, about the impact of online communication on citizens’ civic and political engagement. The main goal of this article is therefore to understand whether specific online and/or offline political participation patterns exist especially among young people who are known to be the most fervent Internet users. The analysis utilizes survey data on various forms of offline and online political engagement among undergraduate students from 2011.

Keywords:

• online political participation
• offline political participation
• political mobilization
• Facebook
• social networking sites (SNS)

Notes on contributors

Sara Vissers is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, McGill University (Montreal, Canada). Her work focuses on the role of Internet for political participation and mobilization. [email: [email protected]]

Dietlind Stolle is an associate professor of political science at McGill University and an affiliated researcher at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University. Her research interests include the concepts of social capital, diversity, political participation, and political consumerism. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1. See https://twitter.com/camping16

2. See http://www.beatbullying.org/bigmarch/

3. A recent study of Pew Internet and American Life Project suggests that in 2011 two-thirds of adult Internet users use social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Compared to 2008, the number of SNS users has more than doubled, demonstrating the quickly growing popularity of online social networking tools. Moreover, the use of social networking sites is close to reaching its saturation point among the youngest online age cohorts. Eighty-three percent of 18-29-year-old Internet users report having a profile on a social networking site (Madden & Zickuhr 2011).

4. See http://www.hrc.org/the-hrc-story/about-our-logo

5. See http://www.ihollaback.org/

6. Keeter, Zukin, Andolina, and Jenkins (2002) use the term ‘dual activists’ for individuals who are active in both the electoral and civic arenas.

7. Multinomial logistic regression is an ‘analysis technique that [simultaneously] estimates separate binary logit for each pair of outcome categories’ (Long & Freese 2006, p. 223).

8. An odds ratio above 1.00 indicates that there is a positive relationship between the independent and the dependent variable, and an odds ratio below 1.00 indicates that there is a negative relationship. An odds ratio that equals 1.00 indicates that there is no relationship between the dependent and the independent variables.