It's Complicated: Facebook Users' Political Participation in the 2008 Election

Abstract

In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, social network sites such as Facebook allowed users to share their political beliefs, support specific candidates, and interact with others on political issues. But do political activities on Facebook affect political participation among young voters, a group traditionally perceived as apathetic in regard to civic engagement? Or do these activities represent another example of feel-good participation that has little real-world impact, a concept often referred to as "slacktivism"? Results from a survey of undergraduate students (N = 683) at a large public university in the Midwestern United States conducted in the month prior to the election found that students tend to engage in lightweight political participation both on Facebook and in other venues. Furthermore, two OLS regressions found that political activity on Facebook (e.g., posting a politically oriented status update, becoming a "fan" of a candidate) is a significant predictor of other forms of political participation (e.g., volunteering for an organizing, signing a paper or online petition), and that a number of factors--including intensity of Facebook use and the political activity users see their friends performing on the site--predict political activity on Facebook. Students' perceptions regarding the appropriateness of political activity on Facebook, as well as the specific kinds of political activities they engaged in and witnessed within the site, were also explored.

Mediating the contributions of Facebook to political participation in Italy and the UK: the role of media and political landscapes

“…In contrast, the pessimists paint a picture of limited (Baumgartner and Morris, 2010;Valenzuela et al, 2009) or even negative effects (Ancu and Cozma, 2009;Fenton and Barassi, 2011). Finally, the normalizers argue that SNSs reinforce existing participatory trends by providing politically interested and active citizens with further ways to engage and participate (Carlisle and Patton, 2013;Gustafsson, 2012;Vesnic-Alujevic, 2012;Vitak et al, 2011;Yoo and Gil de Zúñiga, 2014).…”

Cognitive Engagement and Online Political Participation on Social Media among Youths in Malaysia: The Moderating role of Political Knowledge

“…Online political participation on Facebook and Twitter was measured as a multidimensional construct with two set of questions for Facebook and two set of questions for Twitter as used by [14] for Facebook. Hence, the first two set of questions was on political activities performed and observed on Facebook, while the second two set of questions was on political activities performed and observed on Twitter.…”

“…The scale for online political participation on Facebook was adopted from [14]. Thus, 10 items were used to measure political activities performed on Facebook and 9 items were used to measure political activities observed by respondents on Facebook.…”

“…However, limited studies have examined whether youths may participate more in politics through learning about politics on social media. To address this gap, the present study aims to investigate youth online political participation from a cognitive engagement perspective as recommended by [14]. Thus, the Cognitive Engagement Theory (CET) [15] will be extended to social media with an aim to assess the role of political knowledge in moderating the relationship between access to political information on Facebook and Twitter, political interest, policy satisfaction and online political participation on Facebook and Twitter.…”

Serwis społecznościowy jako narzędzie dialogu z wyborcami - profile polskich partii politycznych na Facebooku

“…Warto jednak zwrócić uwagę, że zrealizowane już badania tego typu koncentrują się przede wszystkim wokół kwestii kampanii wyborczych (Robertson, Vatrapu i Medina 2010;Johannessen 2010;Vitak et al 2011, Grzywińska 2011 . W centrum zainteresowania pozostaje więc raczej mechanizm sieciowej czy precyzyjniej -"społecznościowej", mobilizacji wyborczej niż wykorzystanie serwisów społecznościowych w codziennej aktywności polityków i politycznych instytucji oraz kwestia stymulowania obywatelskiej aktywności.…”