Perils of political engagement? Examining the relationship between online political participation and perceived electoral integrity during 2020 US election

ABSTRACT

The 2020 US election witnessed a surge of false claims on social media platforms asserting electoral fraud. Consequently, we ask the question, would greater online political engagement reduce perceived electoral integrity? We also explore whether the effects of online political participation on electoral integrity are contingent upon partisanship and news literacy. We use responses from a two-wave online panel survey conducted in the US before the November 2020 Presidential elections. Autoregressive regression models are employed to test the hypotheses. First, the findings suggest that those who engaged in greater online political engagement were more likely to doubt electoral integrity. Next, Republicans and those with lower levels of news literacy were also more skeptical of the electoral process. Further, moderation analyses suggest that the adverse effects of online political participation on perceived electoral integrity were more significant for Democrats and Independents than Republicans (perhaps because of ceiling effects). Finally, the relationship between online political participation and evaluations of electoral integrity is not contingent upon news literacy. Overall, the findings offer insight into how online political participation may erode electoral integrity for online users.

KEYWORDS:

• Electoral integrity
• political engagement
• participation
• partisanship
• news literacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Nanyang Technological University.

Notes on contributors

Saifuddin Ahmed

Saifuddin Ahmed (Ph.D., University of California, Davis) is an Assistant Professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.

Yifei Wang

Yifei Wang (M.A., National University of Singapore; B.S., Cornell University) is a PhD student at the Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Melissa Tully

Melissa Tully (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison) is an Associate Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa.