Does Social Media Engagement Translate to Civic Engagement Offline?

2021 ◽  
pp. 089976402199944
Author(s):  
Jaclyn Piatak ◽  
Ian Mikkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Online Engagement ◽  
Informal Volunteering ◽  
Using Data

People increasingly engage in politics on social media, but does online engagement translate to offline engagement? Research is mixed with some suggesting how one uses the internet maters. We examine how political engagement on social media corresponds to offline engagement. Using data following the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, we find the more politically engaged people are on social media, the more likely they are to engage offline across measures of engagement—formal and informal volunteering, attending local meetings, donating to and working for political campaigns, and voting. Findings offer important nuances across types of civic engagement and generations. Although online engagement corresponds to greater engagement offline in the community and may help narrow generational gaps, this should not be the only means to promote civic participation to ensure all have a voice and an opportunity to help, mobilize, and engage.

scholarly journals Internet users’ utopian/dystopian imaginaries of society in the digital age: Theorizing critical digital literacy and civic engagement

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110186
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Polizzi
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Online Engagement ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Utopian Studies ◽  
Utopian Thinking ◽  
Literacy Research

This article proposes a theoretical framework for how critical digital literacy, conceptualized as incorporating Internet users’ utopian/dystopian imaginaries of society in the digital age, facilitates civic engagement. To do so, after reviewing media literacy research, it draws on utopian studies and political theory to frame utopian thinking as relying dialectically on utopianism and dystopianism. Conceptualizing critical digital literacy as incorporating utopianism/dystopianism prescribes that constructing and deploying an understanding of the Internet’s civic potentials and limitations is crucial to pursuing civic opportunities. The framework proposed, which has implications for media literacy research and practice, allows us to (1) disentangle users’ imaginaries of civic life from their imaginaries of the Internet, (2) resist the collapse of critical digital literacy into civic engagement that is understood as inherently progressive, and (3) problematize polarizing conclusions about users’ interpretations of the Internet as either crucial or detrimental to their online engagement.

scholarly journals Does Mode Matter? Measuring the Effects of Different Types of Online Political Engagement on Offline Participation

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (43) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Cantijoch Cunill
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
General Election ◽  
Online Participation ◽  
Online Engagement ◽  
Different Types

Recent studies have shown that online participation is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that replicates and extends existing forms of political engagement. What is less clear is the mobilizing potential of these different types of activity and particularly whether they trigger offline participation. This paper addresses these questions in an analysis of citizens online and offline behaviour in the context of a UK General Election. Specifically we identify three different modes of online engagement in the campaign, profile the individuals most likely to engage in them, and examine whether they affected individuals’ likelihood of voting. Our findings show that while newer social media based ‘e-expressive’ activities are most likely to appeal to those individuals who are not already engaged in politics they do not necessarily increase the likelihood of voting. By contrast higher consumption of news and information online during an election does appear to significantly boost individuals’ chances of turning out to vote.

Elections and Social Media

2015 ◽  
pp. 314-328
Author(s):  
Ahmet Sarıtaş ◽  
Elif Esra Aydın
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
The Past ◽  
Target Mass ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Today, using of the internet extended social media by individuals habitually enables both the business firms and politicians to reach their target mass at any time. In this context, internet has become a popular place recently where political communication and campaigns are realized by ensuring a new dimension to political campaigns. When we examine the posts and discussions in the social media, we can say that they are converted into open political sessions. As there are no censorship in such channels, individuals have a freedom to reach to any partial/impartial information and obtain transparent and fast feedback, and with this regard, political parties, leaders and candidates have a chance to be closer to electors. In this study, it is aimed to give information about the social media, present what medium has been used for election campaigns from the past until today and besides, by considering the effects of effective and efficient use of social media and new trends related to the internet by politicians, together with their applications in the world, to make suggestions about its situation and application in Turkey.

The Internet and Access to Information about Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 228-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Dutton ◽  
Bianca C. Reisdorf ◽  
Grant Blank ◽  
Elizabeth Dubois ◽  
Laleah Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Us ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Filter Bubble ◽  
Filter Bubbles

Concern over filter bubbles, echo chambers, and misinformation on the Internet are not new. However, as noted by Howard and Bradshaw (Chapter 12), events around the 2016 US presidential election and the UK’s Brexit referendum brought these concerns up again to near-panic levels, raising questions about the political implications of the algorithms that drive search engines and social media. To address these issues, the authors conducted an extensive survey of Internet users in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the US, asking respondents how they use search, social media, and other media for getting information about politics, and what difference these media have made for them. Their findings demonstrate that search is one among many media gateways and outlets deployed by those interested in politics, and that Internet users with an interest in politics and search skills are unlikely to be trapped in a filter bubble, or cocooned in a political echo chamber.

scholarly journals Does incidental exposure on social media equalize or reinforce participatory gaps? Evidence from a panel study

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 2463-2482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffael Heiss ◽  
Jörg Matthes
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Incidental Exposure ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Using Data ◽  
High Effort

Existing research indicates that incidental exposure to political information on social media may function as an equalizer, stimulating political engagement among the politically detached. In this article, we challenge this notion and propose that there are good reasons to assume that incidental exposure may reinforce existing gaps. We test the equalizing against the reinforcing hypothesis using data from a two-wave panel study ( N = 559). We find a positive main effect of incidental exposure on low-effort digital participation. However, this effect was not conditional on political interest, as the equalizing assumption would have suggested. More interestingly, we found that the effect of incidental exposure on high-effort digital participation was conditional on political interest. However, against the assumption of equalization, individuals with low levels of political interest were negatively affected by incidental exposure, thus lending support for the reinforcement hypothesis. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

scholarly journals Accurate, Fast, But Not Always Cheap: Evaluating “Crowdcoding” as an Alternative Approach to Analyze Social Media Data

2019 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 811-834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Guo ◽  
Kate Mays ◽  
Sha Lai ◽  
Mona Jalal ◽  
Prakash Ishwar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Media Data ◽  
Numerous People

Crowdcoding, a method that outsources “coding” tasks to numerous people on the internet, has emerged as a popular approach for annotating texts and visuals. However, the performance of this approach for analyzing social media data in the context of journalism and mass communication research has not been systematically assessed. This study evaluated the validity and efficiency of crowdcoding based on the analysis of 4,000 tweets about the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The results show that compared with the traditional quantitative content analysis, crowdcoding yielded comparably valid results and was superior in efficiency, but was more expensive under most circumstances.

scholarly journals RACE, JUSTICE, POLICING, AND THE 2016 AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Drakulich ◽  
John Hagan ◽  
Devon Johnson ◽  
Kevin H. Wozniak
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
War On Crime ◽  
Perceptions Of Police ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
Attitudes Toward The Police ◽  
Modern Era

AbstractScholars have long been interested in the intersection of race, crime, justice, and presidential politics, focusing particularly on the “southern strategy” and the “war on crime.” A recent string of highly-publicized citizen deaths at the hands of police and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement have brought renewed visibility to this racially-driven intersection, and in particular to issues involving contact with and attitudes toward the police. Using data from the 2016 Pilot Study of the American National Election Studies, this study explores how contact with the criminal justice system and perceptions of police injustice shape political behavior in the modern era, with a specific emphasis on prospective participation and candidate choice in the 2016 presidential election. The results indicate that being stopped by the police—an experience that can feel invasive and unjust—may motivate political participation, while spending time in jail or prison—an experience associated with a marginalization from mainstream civic life—appears to discourage political participation. Perceiving the police as discriminatory also seems to motivate political engagement and participation, though in opposite directions for conservative versus liberal voters. In addition, perceptions of police injustice were related to candidate choice, driving voters away from Donald Trump. Affective feelings about the police were not associated with candidate choice. Perceptions of the police appear to act in part as a proxy for racial resentments, at least among potential voters in the Republican primary. In sum, the intersection of race, justice, and policing remains highly relevant in U.S. politics.

What about WhatsApp? A systematic review of WhatsApp and its role in civic and political engagement

First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Pang ◽  
Yue Ting Woo
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Social Media Platforms

The use of instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp for civic and political purposes has been observed and reported to be growing faster than other social media platforms especially in recent years. Using empirical research on WhatsApp studies published from 2009 to 2019 as its corpus of data, this article systematically reviews them to provide more robust conclusions about WhatsApp and its relationship with political and/or civic engagement. This paper seeks to answer three central questions related to WhatsApp and engagement: 1) What are the motivations in using WhatsApp and how do they manifest in the use of WhatsApp as a communication tool? 2) What is the role of WhatsApp in civic and political engagement? 3) How do researchers study the use of WhatsApp in civic and political engagement? The review finds that across empirical studies, while WhatsApp is used by activists and organisational networks for mobilisation and coordinating actions, it is also used by users who draw on the affordances of the medium for informal and ‘de-politicised’ conversations. The findings contribute to the theorising of social media-mediated movements and activism and highlight methodological gaps of ongoing research on WhatsApp.

Viewing presidential televised debates and civic engagement in Korea

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 334-348
Author(s):  
Hansoo Lee ◽  
Jae-Mook Lee
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Panel Survey Data ◽  
Search For Information ◽  
Televised Debates

This study examines the effects of viewing televised debates on political engagement. Voters consume information while viewing television debates, which can affect political engagement in a positive manner. Examining the effects of debates on political engagement, we analyze panel survey data from the 2012 Korean presidential election. According to the results, voters who view more televised debates are more likely to search for information and discuss political issues with others. The results provide evidence that viewing televised debates tends to enhance civic engagement.

scholarly journals E-Electioneering 2007–13: Trends in Online Political Campaigns over Three Elections

2014 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Macnamara ◽  
Gail Kenning
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Democratic Engagement ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Following the 2004 US presidential election campaign, which was described as ‘a critical turning point’ in use of social media, and particularly the 2008 Obama campaign, there has been increasing focus on use of social media for political campaigning and what is termed e-electioneering and e-democracy. However, studies of election campaigns between 2010 and 2012 in a number of countries have identified what Steve Woolgar (2002) calls cyberbole in relation to social media for political engagement. With substantive patterns of change in political communication yet to be identified, a quantitative and qualitative study of social media use in the 2013 Australian federal election campaign was conducted using the same methodology as studies of the 2007 and 2010 campaigns to gain comparative longitudinal data. This identified trends in the volume of e-electioneering and the ways in which social media are being used for political communication and democratic engagement.

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