Political participation on social media : a multi-perspective inquiry into its occurrence, underlying mechanisms and associated political behaviours

Political participation, broadly referring to citizens’ engagement in activities aimed at influencing government institutions, policies, or patterns of social behaviour, is a key aspect of a healthy democracy. Such behaviours can also occur online, where citizens can benefit from reduced participation costs due to the characteristics of the internet. Sending an email to a politician or signing an online petition are examples of such online participation, as they offer a low-cost alternative to already established forms of offline political participation. The central focus of this dissertation lies with forms of political participation that are uniquely enabled by the internet, and more particularly, by social media. Political participation occurring on social media is shaped by the unique characteristics of these digital networks, arguably creating an entirely new way of participating altogether. The forms in which these behaviours emerge are manifold, think of changing your profile picture to draw attention to a societal problem, sharing a petition with your Facebook friends, taking a stance on a political issue on Instagram, or using a political hashtag in your tweets. Over the past decade, increasing literature has come to recognize the relevance and distinct character of social media political participation. What makes these acts different from other types of political participation is their reliance on self-motivated expression and personalization, and the possibilities for mobilization and collective identity formation. Despite the proliferation of user- and audience-based research on social media in communication sciences and the prominence of studies on citizen participation in political sciences, current understandings of citizens’ political participation on social media remain fairly limited. Because these behaviours have rarely been studied as an independent mode of political participation, we know very little about which different participatory practices exist on social media, how they can be explained and how they relate to other, offline forms of political participation. Based on these identified limitations, the main aim of this dissertation is to gain a more profound understanding of political participation that is occurring on social media. Specifically, we aim to investigate how and why citizens engage in social media political participation, and how these behaviours are embedded in citizens’ broader political participation habits (i.e., political repertoires). In order to do so, three specific research objectives are formulated: (1) to develop and validate a theoretically grounded measuring instrument for social media political participation; (2) to investigate the specific communicative and cognitive processes that underly citizens’ individual social media political participation; and (3) to examine how social media political participation is associated with other modes of political participation, both within citizens’ political repertoires (a) as in terms of their antecedents (b). The core of the dissertation consists of five chapters that each represent separate empirical research articles. Each of the studies on which the articles are based, relies on quantitative research methods. A quantitative research approach aligns with the identified research aims, as they are explicitly related to the quantitative operationalization of social media political participation on the one hand (RO1), and the testing of specific relationships between different modes of political participation and their hypothesized antecedents on the other (RO2 and RO3). Our research design consisted of a multi-phase scale development study to tackle our first research objective, followed by multiple quantitative survey studies to tackle our second and third research objective. Each of the survey studies differed from each other in terms of the employed data collection, sampling and/or data analysis method. Moreover, our research objectives were addressed by applying multiple theoretical perspectives, combining established political participation literature with scholarship on emerging citizenship norms and participation habits, new media affordances, local (online) community development, and communication mediation theory. The findings of this dissertation indicate that social media political participation concerns a complex mode of political participation, consisting of different subtypes of behaviour. First, this more nuanced understanding of political participation on social media highlights the importance of paying attention to various ‘small acts of engagement’ within audience studies and acknowledging the particular affordances that shape them. Second, we found evidence for the fact that social media political participation is indeed a conceptually and empirically distinct mode of participation, when studied across different populations, contexts and platforms. Third, our findings show that various cognitive processes that are usually associated with offline political participation (e.g., political interest, internal political efficacy, political grievances) also explain citizens’ engagement in social media political participation. Simultaneously, political participation on social media was also associated with particular cognitions that are specifically tailored to the social media context (e.g., psychological embeddedness in local online communities, belief in the political value of social media). Fourth, we found that established communication mechanisms (i.e., news consumption and interpersonal political conversation) stimulate citizens’ engagement in social media political participation. We were also able to show that these mobilizing features remain, even when studied both in a multi-platform news environment (i.e., the importance of the presence and use of multiple media and technologies for news) and a localized media context (i.e., the role of online neighbourhood networks). Finally, this research addressed the association between social media political participation and other, offline forms of participation. Not only did we find that social media participation often co-exists with other participatory modes, we also found evidence for the occurrence of online-only political participation. Similarly, across our studies, the mechanisms explaining social media participation were often similar to those of offline participation, while some unique pathways towards social media action were also uncovered (e.g., in terms of socio-demographics and platform-related cognitions). The latter suggests how social media might provide an additional political outlet for some citizens, who would otherwise refrain from taking action or might take longer to become mobilized. Overall, this dissertation has shed light on the mechanisms underlying social media political participation, with our results pointing to both the political nature of these behaviours (due to its association with established antecedents of offline political participation) and their unique, networked character (given its association with several cognitions and communication mechanisms tailored to the specific social media context). In conclusion, based on the findings of this dissertation, we can state that social media have given rise to a diverse and distinct set of participatory behaviours and have taken up an increasingly important role within current political participation habits, both complementing, diversifying and expanding citizens’ engagement in politics. Based on these findings, we suggest that policy makers acknowledge citizen participation emerging in these digital spaces and integrate them in a broader process of reconnecting citizens with their representatives. In addition, educational efforts could be made to integrate civic literacy with media literacy initiatives. Here, specific attention could be paid to stimulate critical evaluations of news and online content (i.e., news literacy), but also to encourage empowered and creative uses of digital media for political purposes. Finally, we argue that policy makers should not be dismissive of what happens online, as these behaviours are rarely isolated from offline participation. Ignoring political participation and community formation in an online context might also pose a threat to current democracies, given the potential risks of online polarization