Social Media and Offline Political Participation: Uncovering the Paths From Digital to Physical

Abstract

Numerous studies have examined the uses of social media for citizen engagement, concluding that they act as effective platforms for developing civic skills, promoting bridging social ties, engaging in political discussions, mobilizing the electorate, and organizing offline political activities (Macafee & De Simone, 2012; Skoric & Poor, 2013; Valenzuela, Park, & Kee, 2009; Vitak et al., 2011). Still, scholars have cautioned against concluding that all social media uses promote political participation, as research has shown that the relationships vary across different types of social media platforms and patterns of use (Gil de Zúñiga, Bachmann, Hsu, & Brundidge, 2013; Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, & Valenzuela, 2012; Pasek, More, & Romer, 2009). Today, social media use consists of heterogeneous practices, ranging from passive consumption to active opinion expression and even occasional deliberation. People use social media to look for information, seek solace and vent dissatisfactions, express opinions, engage in social conversations, and discuss issues of the day. Different structural designs and technological features of these platforms attract diverse types of people, encourage different communicative practices, and promote the creation of distinct types of networks ( Zhang & Wang, 2010 ). In this study, we separate social media into two categories, depending on user motivations, technological affordances and network structure, and dominant communicative practices: (a) egocentric social media, characterized by individual user profiles and (semi-)public displays of social connections (e.g., social network sites [SNS] such as Facebook, microblogs such as Twitter), and also including platforms for personal expression like blogs; and (b) interest-oriented social media designed to promote interest- or topic-based discussions among users (e.g., online forums).