Internet use and political participation: Engaging citizenship norms through online activities

ABSTRACT

Research on the relationship between Internet use and political participation has identified numerous effects that result from various online activities, though the mechanisms of influence often remain unclear. In response, we develop a theory of Internet effects and citizenship norms, wherein specific uses of the Internet influence political participation by fostering dutiful or actualizing norms of citizenship. Using a longitudinal research design comprised of five nationally representative, postelection surveys (2002–2010), we find that people who engage in dutiful uses are more likely to participate in the dutiful act of voting than those who engage in actualizing uses; these findings are most prevalent among those aged 18–30. These results suggest that online activities, which reflect specific norms of citizenship, often predict corresponding forms of political participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship norms
• Internet effects
• political behavior
• voter turnout

Notes

1. The study by Bimber (2001) finds that people who obtained information from the Internet were no more or less likely to vote than those who did not; his null findings may be a function of using data from the late 1990s when using the Internet to get political information was less common than it is today. Both studies from Baumgartner and Morris (2010) and Hargittai and Shaw (2013) use samples of college students, which may be responsible for their respectively negative and insignificant findings toward voting.

2. Pew advises researchers to use a weight when analyzing data to correct for bias introduced from survey nonresponse. The demographic weight is derived from a special analysis of the most recent U.S. Census reports. The models and findings presented here use the weight that Pew provides in our analysis. We also ran the models with the weight off and found that our findings were confirmed and even more supportive of our hypotheses. We present the weighted models as a conservative test of our theory.

3. We also examined political interest as a control variable for these analyses. Political interest variables were only available for years 2002, 2004, and 2006. As a result, we omitted this variable from our final models and tables to enable better comparison across years. When we included political interest as a control variable for the years when it is available, the statistical significance and direction of our key predictor variables remains unchanged, though the size of the coefficients is mitigated.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica T. Feezell

Jessica T. Feezell is an assistant professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. Her research explores the intersection of digital media and political behavior often with a focus on youth.

Meredith Conroy

Meredith Conroy is an assistant professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino. Her book, Masculinity, Media, and the American Presidency, was published in 2015.

Mario Guerrero

Mario Guerrero is an assistant professor of political science at California State University, Pomona, and a Ford Foundation Fellow. His research interests are focused on emerging communication technologies, politics, and elections.