Is it Time to Update the Definition of Political Participation?

Fox, Stuart

doi:10.1093/pa/gss094

Cited by 61 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Moreover, with the exception of political consumerism, no studies have empirically established whether citizens perceive acts that do not fit traditional definitions of participation, not simply as alternative participatory avenues, but also as legitimate political acts. Building on recent efforts to improve conceptualizations of political participation (Fox, 2013; Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013; van Deth, 2014; Theocharis, 2015), the study expands these debates by making three contributions to the literature: (a) it offers an integrated method for measuring old and new forms of participation; (b) it provides systematic empirical evidence as to how new forms of participation such as creative, self-expressive, individualized, and digitally networked acts fit within a general taxonomy of participation, and (c) it empirically assesses the main antecedents of various traditional and new modes of political participation in order to illustrate how they co-exist alongside each other as important components of a politically active citizenship.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The continuous expansion of citizen participation: a new taxonomy

Theocharis

Deth

2016

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

197

123

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The repertoire of political participation in democratic societies is expanding rapidly and covers such different activities as voting, demonstrating, volunteering, boycotting, blogging, and flash mobs. Relying on a new method for conceptualizing forms and modes of participation we show that a large variety of creative, expressive, individualized, and digitally enabled forms of participation can be classified as parts of the repertoire of political participation. Results from an innovative survey with a representative sample of the German population demonstrate that old and new forms are systematically integrated into a multi-dimensional taxonomy covering (1) voting, (2) digitally networked participation, (3) institutionalized participation, (4) protest, (5) civic participation, and (6) consumerist participation. Furthermore, the antecedents of consumerist, civic, and digitally networked participation, are very similar to those of older modes of participation such as protest and institutionalized participation. Whereas creative, expressive, and individualized modes appear to be expansions of protest activities, digitally networked forms clearly establish a new and distinct mode of political participation that fits in the general repertoire of political participation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The continuous expansion of citizen participation: a new taxonomy

Theocharis

Deth

2016

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

197

123

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“…However, some research takes a much narrower definition of political speech, requiring it to be active rather than passive, and instrumental rather than informational (see, for instance, Fox, 2013;Gladwell, 2010;Morozov, 2012;Scaff, 1975). The most surprising result we find here is the prevalence of the sub-category of active political speech: i.e.…”

Section: Individual Speech? Twitter Is More Of a Social Network Weibmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…Within the category of political speech, the initial coding frame incorporated ideas about the three modes of politics that the Internet is seen as affecting-namely, information, mobilization and interaction (Lilleker and Thierry, 2013)-and key debates about how to define political participation in the modern w world (Fox, 2013). During a series of pre-tests on different random samples of the dataset, several categories (such as political humor) were added and others merged to more accurately reflect the actual nature of online speech on both platforms.…”

Section: Individual Speech? Twitter Is More Of a Social Network Weibmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slacktivist USA and Authoritarian China? Comparing Two Political Public Spheres With a Random Sample of Social Media Users

Bolsover¹

2018

Policy & Internet

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The rise of social media has put back on the agenda questions about the Internet's potential as an online public sphere, particularly in authoritarian states. However, random samples have never been employed to investigate political speech on social media, necessarily limiting knowledge. This article presents an analysis of political speech based on a random sample of more than 1,000 active US Twitter users and Chinese Weibo users collected in late 2014. Political speech by ordinary users was found to be more frequent on both platforms than expected-9.4% on Weibo and 6.8% on Twitter-lending support to hopes of an online public sphere. However, existing powerholders make up around a fifth of US Twitter accounts, and political speech acts by ordinary US Twitter users are largely "slacktivist" in nature. In contrast, 98% of active accounts on Weibo belong to ordinary users, with active political speech making up more than one in fifty posts by these users. Although they largely fall within the bounds of what is permitted by the Chinese state, these findings point to the potential of the Internet as a (limited) public sphere in China, while raising questions about its contribution to political processes in the US.

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“…Scholars adapt this notion by increasingly taking a broadened understanding of participation into account (e.g., by focusing on civic engagement; see Norris 2002). However, the multidimensionality of political participation sparked an ongoing search for underlying patterns or systematic clusters of participatory actions (Fox 2014). Subsequently, various conceptualizations (e.g., Hamlin and Jennings 2011;Teorell et al 2007) and numerous empirically driven studies developed a large number of political participation typologies (e.g., Bakker and de Vreese 2011;Linssen et al 2014;Xenos et al 2014).…”

Section: Conceptualizing Political Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

From theory to practice: how to apply van Deth’s conceptual map in empirical political participation research

2017

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In a time when digitally networked and unconventional activities challenge our understanding of political participation, van Deth (Acta Polit 49(3):349-367, 2014) has developed a map to consolidate previous attempts at conceptualizing political participation. He suggests a framework operating with four distinct types of political participation that apply across time and context and therefore potentially may lead to higher comparability of results in participation research. However, his map faced criticism for not accounting for digital and other recent participatory activities, and so far, it remains a theoretical endeavor that needs to prove its utility when applied to the diverse set of participatory activities. Our study empirically tests how recently emerging participatory activities, such as crowdfunding or urban gardening, can conceptually be combined with more traditional forms of participation. We use 27 participatory activities from a national survey conducted in Denmark (N = 9125) to test van Deth's framework. A confirmatory factor analysis demonstrates the existence of four distinct types of political participation, based on the sphere, the target, and the intention of activities. Our model furthermore indicates that the distinction between online and offline activities has decreased in relevance and that new and unconventional participation activities can be subsumed under van Deth's four types of political participation.

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Is it Time to Update the Definition of Political Participation?

Cited by 61 publications

References 23 publications

The continuous expansion of citizen participation: a new taxonomy

The continuous expansion of citizen participation: a new taxonomy

Slacktivist USA and Authoritarian China? Comparing Two Political Public Spheres With a Random Sample of Social Media Users

From theory to practice: how to apply van Deth’s conceptual map in empirical political participation research

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