The Role of Social Media in Political Participation

Abstract

The present study is concerned with the relationship between the use of social media and forms of political participation, in an electoral context. This paper provides evidence that the effect of social interaction on participation is contingent on the amount of political discussion that occurs in social networks. Additional analysis shows the substantive and theoretical importance of such interaction by explaining how it is distinct from the effect of social group memberships and how it enhances the effect of individual education on the probability of participation. This key contribution of this paper is to show that models of political participation that do not account for informal social interaction will be theoretically underspecified. It also shows that such interactions play a crucial role in explicating the role of other factors that predict participation, such as group membership and individual resources. The social media must be used by Parliaments, Parliamentarians, governments and political parties as they are highly effective tools to involve and inform citizens in public policymaking and in the formation of governments. But all these groups must develop strategies to deal with a wide array of both positive and negative effects of these rapidly growing media, argued participants in the final plenary session. However, the workshop noted the social media are such powerful, effective and low-cost information sources that the problems surrounding them cannot and should not stop Parliaments and Members from developing effective ways to use them to inform responsibly and, in so doing, help teach young people how to separate good information from bad.