Spill-Over Effects Between Facebook and On/Offline Political Participation? Evidence from a Two-Wave Panel Study

A sentiment analysis of U.S. local government tweets: The connection between tone and citizen involvement

“…For example, Vissers and Stolle (2014) find that online participation via Facebook does not easily translate into offline participation in political and civic activities. One exception they find is consistent with recent current events in the United States and France with people using Twitter hashtags as a means of protest or solidarity (#BlackLivesMatter, #JeSuisCharlie), then taking those forms of digital protest offline (Ferguson, Missouri, New York City, and countless other cities throughout the United State, for examples).…”

Substitute or stepping stone? Assessing the impact of low‐threshold online collective actions on offline participation

“…Contesting the aforementioned proposition of a substitute effect, it has been pointed out that so‐called slacktivist actions constitute a stepping stone on a ladder of engagement and facilitate offline engagement (Carlisle & Patton, ; Vissers & Stolle, ; Tufekci, ). Indeed, using social media to promote a political cause fostered volunteering, donations (Georgetown University & Waggener Edstrom, ; Rainie, Purcell, & Smith, ) as well as participation in protests (Macafee & De Simone, ).…”

“…To our knowledge, only two studies assessed thus far these alternative postulations and arrived at contradicting conclusions. Vissers and Stolle () showed that after “joining” the Facebook group of a political party, citizens were more likely to attend protests. Lee and Hsieh (), however, reported that signing an Internet‐based petition did not affect the willingness to join a demonstration for the same cause.…”

Introduction: The Networked Communication of Contentious Politics

“…Rather than to assess general levels of political activism on a particular social media platform (Valenzula et al 2012 ;Vissers and Stolle 2012 ), I explore protest participants' usage of social media to prime their protest participation. I undertook this analytical task with cognisance that there is currently an empirical gap in the literature on protest participation in liberal democracies which has overwhelmingly focused on Western Europe and North America, inter alia at the expense of Eastern Europe.…”