Political participation and new technologies. An exploratory study with Argentinian participants

DELFINO, G. I.; ANGELI, L. A.; ZUBIETA, E. M.

Varsovia

Congreso; 39th Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology; 2016

International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP)

Politics and relations among individuals in societies across the world are being transformed by new technologies for targeting individuals and sophisticated methods for shaping personalized messages (Dahlgren, 2009). Despite initial concerns with the possibility that certain communication technologies would actually increase social isolation, many studies have found a relationship between informational uses of the internet and social capital, political participation, and civic engagement (Gil de Zuñiga, Puig­I­Abril & Rojas, 2009). Online interaction supplements interpersonal relations, resulting in increased voluntary association membership and political participation. In fact, Kraut et al. (2002) found positive effects of using the internet on communication, social involvement, and wellbeing. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between political participation and the use of new technologies, especially the connection to internet, in an intentional sample of 579 Argentinian participants. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted in order to classify 19 different ways of participation (e.g. started a political or cause­related group on social media, voted, contacted an elected public official). Five different types of participation emerged: internet participation, volunteering, conventional participation, monetary participation and vote. Participants who declared being always online during waking hours in an ordinary day reported higher scores in internet participation and lower scores in vote. In the same direction, the number of hours online correlates positively with internet participation. Interestingly, internet participation correlates with others types of participation but vote. In fact, internet participation explains a 23.8% of conventional participation variance, a 17% of monetary participation, a 9.5% of volunteering.