Social media in electoral communication: equal opportunities or digital divide?

The Internet and interactive social media are not only playing an increasingly important role in people’s daily life, but are also becoming a widely used channel of political communication which sees a constant growth in the volume of communication content generated by politicians. Due to their features such as easy and free access, social media are available to all politicians, but no studies have so far been done in Lithuania which would analyse the extent to which the participants in the political process use the channels of social media for the purpose of political communication. In this article, the use of social media for political communication purposes is analysed from the perspective of the digital divide. The definition and concept of the digital divide are clearly described in the text. Different categories of the manifestation of this process are identified. Moreover, this article also presents the results of the research of social media as it was used by our country’s politicians during the municipal elections campaign in 2011. They reveal different manifestations of the digital divide based on different demographic and social-political characteristics of politicians, such as municipality size, gender, age, education, income, political affiliation and institutional position