scholarly journals How the Internet has changed participation: Exploring distinctive preconditions of online activism

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-85
Author(s):  
Elizaveta Kopacheva
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Mixed Effect ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Social Networking Services ◽  
Online Activism

The continuously growing number of people participating in Internet-based, online, political activism suggests that the latter has the potential to replace offline forms of unconventional political participation in the future. If that is the case, it is essential to understand the nature and objectives of such type of participation. This article addresses the question of distinctive preconditions of online activism. As a result of the mixed-effect logistic regression analysis of the European Social Survey data, it was found that online activism contrasts with other unconventional types of political participation in respect to the effect of social trust. It is suggested that the key differences between the preconditions of online and offline forms of participation may speak in favour of several phenomena. First of all, it is proposed that social networking services (SNSs) managed to create an illusion of directness of political participation. Secondly, new groups of people with the lower risk preferences may be recruited into online political action. Lastly, groups that do not believe in the effectiveness of political participation or that have other motives, such as a search for attention, may be more likely to participate online. The results call for further research on how SNSs reshape how people understand political engagement and how they want to be involved.

Immigrants, Citizenship and Political Action in Europe

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aida Just ◽  
Christopher J. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Definition Of

Little is known about how immigrants participate in politics and whether they transform political engagement in contemporary democracies. This study investigates whether citizenship (as opposed to being foreign-born) affects political and civic engagement beyond the voting booth. It is argued that citizenship should be understood as a resource that enhances participation and helps immigrants overcome socialization experiences that are inauspicious for political engagement. The analysis of the European Social Survey data collected in nineteen European democracies in 2002–03 reveals that citizenship has a positive impact on political participation. Moreover, citizenship is a particularly powerful determinant of un-institutionalized political action among individuals who were socialized in less democratic countries. These findings have important implications for debates over the definition of and access to citizenship in contemporary democracies.

scholarly journals Resolving the puzzle of conspiracy worldview and political activism: Belief in secret plots decreases normative but increases non-normative political engagement.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Imhoff ◽  
Lea Dieterle ◽  
Pia Lamberty
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Intentions To Participate ◽  
Willingness To Engage

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present paper, we tested the notion, whether a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and b) there may be opposing relations to normative vs. non-normative forms of political engagement. Two pre-registered experiments (N = 194; N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ non-normative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.

scholarly journals Resolving the Puzzle of Conspiracy Worldview and Political Activism: Belief in Secret Plots Decreases Normative but Increases Nonnormative Political Engagement

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Imhoff ◽  
Lea Dieterle ◽  
Pia Lamberty
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Intentions To Participate

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present article, we tested the notion, whether (a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and (b) there may be opposing relations to normative versus nonnormative forms of political engagement. Two preregistered experiments ( N = 194, N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ nonnormative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.

scholarly journals Immigrant Political Participation in Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-554
Author(s):  
David Pettinicchio ◽  
Robert de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
Using Data

This paper compares participation in different forms of political action between natives, immigrants and non-citizen immigrants using data from thirteen European countries across six waves of the European Social Survey. The authors highlight problems associated with previous categorizations of political action, and find that when political action is disaggregated and relative participation between groups is examined, that immigrants’ patterns of participation are not substantially different from those of natives. When comparing citizen immigrants to non-citizen immigrants, previous research has suggested that citizenship acts as a “ticket” to non-institutional, unconventional, confrontational forms of political action. The authors’ findings instead suggest a more complicated relationship between immigrant/citizenship status and preferences for political action since citizenship may facilitate participation in both so-called institutional and extra-institutional activities depending on the context of action.

scholarly journals Social and Psychological Factors of Political Participation according to Recent European Social Survey Data

Intersections ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslava Bozogáňová ◽  
Jozef Výrost
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Psychological Factors ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Psychological Profile ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Survey Round ◽  
Psychological Features ◽  
Political Decisions

While people have an influence on current political decisions, and as ordinary citizens represent the basis for political participation, depicting such political engagement in an empirical/practical way creates a concerning amount of methodological questions. Data obtained via the European Social Survey Round 1–7 offers the opportunity to outline and broaden the picture in terms of the personal (demographic and psychological) features of individuals who participate in politics to a greater or lesser degree. Participants from the seven rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) were divided into three groups: higher, medium, and lower political participation (α = 0.642). A Scale of Political Participation was created based on ‘yes’ answers. It was found that those individuals who were female or had a lower level of education participated less, while older people were more politically participative than younger people. The psychological profile of these groups differs in terms of preferred values: attitudes, satisfaction, trust in people, and institutions.

scholarly journals Can Sustainable Consumption Trigger Political Activism? An Empirical Investigation of the Crowding-in Hypothesis

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 9082
Author(s):  
Frédéric Vandermoere ◽  
Robbe Geerts ◽  
Raf Vanderstraeten
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
Online Forms ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Political Actions

In this article, we address the question whether political activism can be triggered by sustainable consumption. Specific attention is given to the crowding-out and crowding-in hypotheses. The first hypothesis is driven by a conflict view as it assumes that sustainable consumerism displaces the willingness to act collectively. In contrast, the latter hypothesis—crowding-in—frames conscious consumption as a potential political act whereby individual sustainable consumption may trigger political acts such as signing a petition, demonstrating, and voting. To address this issue, German survey data were analyzed (n = 936). Our analysis appears to confirm the crowding-in hypothesis. However, the results of multiple logistic regression analyses also show that the relation between sustainable consumption and political activism depends on the type of political action. Particularly, sustainable consumption does not relate to traditional political actions such as voting, but it does relate positively to less conventional (e.g., attending a demonstration) and online forms of political engagement (e.g., social media activism). Our findings also indicate that the positive association between sustainable consumption and less conventional politics may be moderated by educational attainment, suggesting that it is weakest among less educated groups. The paper ends with the empirical and theoretical conclusions that can be drawn from this study, and indicates some directions for future research.

scholarly journals Patterns of Trust and Subjective Well-Being Across Europe: New Insights from Repeated Cross-Sectional Analyses Based on the European Social Survey 2002–2016

2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Glatz ◽  
Anja Eder
Keyword(s):  
Social Trust ◽  
Well Being ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Institutional Trust ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Positive Effect

Abstract This paper offers elaborate analyses regarding the effects of social- as well as institutional trust as parts of social capital on subjective well-being (SWB) by using data from the European Social Survey, including 36 countries and eight time-points between 2002 and 2016. We analyze (1) The development of trust and SWB on the aggregate level; (2) The effect of trust on SWB on the individual cross-sectional level; and (3) The longitudinal and cross-sectional effect of trust on SWB on the aggregate level while considering control variables based on previous research. We observe a weak positive trend regarding social trust as well as SWB over time, but no significant change in institutional trust. However, trends are far from homogeneous across countries. In accordance to previous studies, we find a positive effect of social trust on SWB. This effect holds on the individual cross-sectional level for every participating country, but also on the longitudinal level. In view of institutional trust, we see a positive effect on SWB on the individual and aggregate cross-sectional level, but not over time. Thus, this study particularly sheds new light on this relation, indicating that it´s cross-sectional relation is due to confounding variables. Moreover, we observe no relation between economic growth and SWB after controlling for unemployment, but a positive effect of decreasing unemployment and inflation on SWB. Our data suggests that establishing an environment with high social trust across Europe would be rewarded with a happy society.

Voter Turnout, Information Acquisition and Education: Evidence from 15 European Countries

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Borgonovi ◽  
Beatrice d'Hombres ◽  
Bryony Hoskins
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Compulsory Schooling ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This article examines the impact of education on political participation in 15 European countries. We use data from the European Social Survey and find that education is positively associated with voter turnout and information acquisition about politics and currents affairs. However, when we use exogeneous changes in compulsory schooling to instrument education, we observe a statistically significant causal relationship in the case of information acquisition but not voter turnout.

Beyond the limits: involvement in illegal political activities

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktor Dahl ◽  
Håkan Stattin
Keyword(s):  
Goal Orientation ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Predictive Power ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Late Adolescents ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Simultaneous Model

The purpose of this study is to examine the adolescents who cross the boundaries of legality, also including illegal political means in their political action repertoire. The data comprised of questionnaire responses from middle and late adolescents in a Swedish city of around 130,000 citizens. Analyses of covariance, EXACON, and logistic regression were used to examine the extent to which adolescents including illegal political activities in their political activity repertoire compare with their legally oriented counterparts. Adolescents using illegal political activity reported higher levels of political interest and goal-orientation than adolescents involved solely in legal political activity. The major contrasts with legal political activism were that illegal political activism seemed to co-occur with (a) reluctance to accept authority, irrespective of the context (societal, school, or parental) and (b) approval of violent political means. In a simultaneous model, further analysis revealed that reluctance to accept authority reduced the predictive power of illegal political activities with regard to approval of political violence. This suggests that the tendencies to approve of political violence, among adolescents involved in illegal political activities, might be partially explained by challenges toward authority. To conclude, adolescents in illegal political activism seem to have similar resources for political engagement as their legally oriented counterparts. However, adolescents involved in illegal political activity seem more likely to let ends justify the means. Most likely, this position is related to authority challenges.

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