Whose e-democracy? The democratic divide in American electoral campaigns

Abstract

This study examines whether a democratic divide (a gap in political participation via the Internet) exists among demographic segments during the campaign season of the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Five different types of online political activity are compared in terms of the divide pattern: conversation, mobilization, information consumption, information production, and activity on social networking sites. Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics such as age, gender, race, education and income are determinants for the degree of online political activism. Although political users of social networking sites mostly fall into the Y generation (DotNets), a high proportion of senior citizens who already use the Internet frequently communicate about politics by email and get political information through the Internet. The occurrence of more active online political participation by the better educated and more affluent is magnified for White males in comparison to non-Whites or females.Focusing on the pattern of the demographics-driven divide, this paper examines the digital divide in political activities during the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign season. In that campaign period, the campaign camps made unprecedented, heavy use of Web 2.0 technologies 1 and broadcast email for discussion, information dissemination and sharing, and campaign contributions [3,15,29,32,[58][59][60]81,84]. The study tackles the following research question: How is online political participation distributed across demographic segments? Analyzing the Pew Research Center's 2008 pre-election survey, this study reveals whether demographic and socioeconomic characteristics like age, gender, race, education and income created a democratic divide in individuals' political activities during the presidential primary season. It investigates whether those from disparate demographic backgrounds participate in online politics in distinct ways and whether the set of demographic markers predict the degree of online political activism. To find out general or disparate patterns in the democratic divide, the analysis explores several types of online political activity: communication, mobilization, information consumption, information production, and activity on social networking sites (SNS).

The Relationship Between Openness to Experience and Willingness to Engage in Online Political Participation Is Influenced by News Consumption

“…Participants ( n = 419) were students attending McGill University, located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, during the 2011 winter term. This sample was chosen in order to avoid floor effects in the dependent variable, as young people may be more likely to engage in online political participation than older people (Nam, 2011). Political interest of participants was assessed to determine whether the sampling technique recruited a greater proportion of people who were interested in politics.…”

Policy Role of Social Media in Developing Public Trust: Twitter communication with government leaders

“…A government media scheme that depends heavily on Twitter can discriminate against those who do not use social media. This can become a critical problem about the information and democratic divide when non-Twitter using citizens do not receive enough information from a government which uses Twitter as its primary mode of communication (Nam 2011). Twitter use can also yield communication problems resulting from the over-representation of minority opinions, as it can mainly reflect heavy users' and advocates' ideas (Kim, Park, and Rho 2015).…”

Supply of and demand for e-democracy: A study of the Swedish case

“…One significant difference, though, is that it casts doubts on how individuals' experience of computers really is linked to the dependent variable. Since this model does not report significant results regarding this variable, the fourth hypothesis can be questioned as well as how findings from previous noteworthy research [4,39] are reflected in a Swedish context. Statistical tests concerning these models verify that the estimations are of importance.…”

“…The fourth hypothesis is operationalized through a question concerning self-estimation of knowledge of computers. As noted earlier, several scholars [4,12,21,39] underline how internet skills or experience are related to e-democracy. Regarding the fifth hypothesis, resource theory [59] states that access to certain resources stimulates political participation, and scholars [4,41] have shown that this statement can be expanded to include the online environment.…”

“…Subsequent research from the U.S. has been carried on in this vein, even though the findings are somewhat different. Nam [39] underscores that internet use does indeed increase chances of e-democratic activity, but experience of traditional political participation is even more important. Notwithstanding, it seems reasonable to assume that:…”