Participation in Contentious Politics: Rethinking the Roles of News, Social Media, and Conversation Amid Divisiveness

ABSTRACT

When political disputes devolve into heated partisan conflicts, do the factors known to trigger electoral political engagement continue to operate, or do they change? We consider this question during a divisive electoral context—a gubernatorial recall—focusing on how media consumption, conversations, and interactions with social media feed into the decision to participate in politics. To do so, we employ high-quality survey data collected in the weeks before the 2012 Wisconsin recall election. Results indicate that during times of contentious politics, political communication does not operate as observed in less polarized settings, calling into question widely held assumptions about what spurs and suppresses electoral participation. Most notably, we find that broadcast news consumption negatively predicts participation, whereas political conversation with coworkers and use of political social media positively predict participation. The implications for electoral behavior research in contentious political environments are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• U.S. elections
• voting
• recall elections
• Wisconsin
• polarization

Acknowledgments

[redacted for peer review]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Response rates (I/((I+P)+(R+NC+O)+(UH+UO))) were 6.2% (April 26–29, N = 705), 8.5% (May 9–12, N =704), 9.0% (May 23–26, N =720), and 7.3% (June 13–16, N =707), respectively. More details are available at https://law.marquette.edu/poll/results-data/.

² We also estimated the same model for each individual dichotomous behavior, and results were largely similar, particularly with regard to our variables of interest. Therefore, despite the relatively low α, we think it most parsimonious to present results using this dependent variable.

³ Admittedly, some people will encounter news without seeking it out in these media. However, if anything that means, we are conservatively estimating who is exposed to state news in this way. Additionally, we cannot disentangle the effect of social media and that of email, due to the wording of this measure.

⁴ Urban or rural is a measure ranging from 1 (most urban) to 12 (most rural), taken from the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. For more information, see http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/urban-influence-codes/documentation.aspx.

⁵ It is noteworthy that the variable, “wave,” reflecting the time at which the data were obtained, is not significant for any model. This suggests that Wisconsin citizens did not become more or less likely to vote as time went on.