Abstract
In this paper, we study the effects of political attitudes on digital activism. We operationalise political attitudes through three constructs used in classical political science studies: citizenship norms, institutional trust and psychological political engagement. In addition, following the social-psychological models of explanation of political conduct, we suggest the existence of a qualitative difference between the affective component of attitudes, which would coincide with psychological political engagement, and the cognitive component of attitudes, which are made up of political beliefs and values. The latter influences the former, which, in turn, has an influence on political conduct. To achieve our goals, we have analysed digital political participation in Spain. Our results support the qualitative differentiation between cognitive and affective components of attitudes; as a result, there is a clear need to study those political beliefs that specifically characterise digital activism.
Highlights
This paper focuses on one of the emerging research areas in regard to the relationship between politics and the Internet: digital activism (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Castells, 2015).1 We define digital activism, or digital political participation, as the repertoire of participatory forms carried out by citizens through the Internet (Robles, Antino, De Marco, & Torres, 2015)
This paper aims to gain a better understanding of how the political attitudes of Internet users influence digital political participation practices
As to the study of the influence of institutional trust and citizenship norms on digital political participation, we found that the direct effects of institutional trust and citizenship norms on digital political participation were not significant in the first model
Summary
This paper focuses on one of the emerging research areas in regard to the relationship between politics and the Internet: digital activism (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Castells, 2015). We define digital activism, or digital political participation, as the repertoire of participatory forms carried out by citizens through the Internet (Robles, Antino, De Marco, & Torres, 2015). Digital political participation, as the repertoire of participatory forms carried out by citizens through the Internet (Robles, Antino, De Marco, & Torres, 2015). There are three different kinds of political attitudes: citizenship norms, institutional trust and psychological political engagement (Abramson & Aldrich, 1982; Niemi, Craig, & Mattei, 1991; Sniderman & Grob, 1996; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). Each one of these would have the same kind of impact on political participation
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