Online Mobilization in Comparative Perspective:Digital Appeals and Political Engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom

This study analyzes the relationship between online voter mobilization and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom during the 2014 European election campaign. Internet surveys of samples representatives of these countries\u2019 populations with Internet access show that respondents who received an invitation to vote for a party or candidate via e-mail or social media engaged in a significantly higher number of political activities than those who did not. Moreover, the relationship between mobilization and engagement was stronger among those who followed the campaign less attentively, as well as in countries where overall levels of engagement with the campaign were lower (Germany and the United Kingdom) than where they were higher (Italy). These findings indicate that online mobilization may contribute to closing gaps in political engagement at both individual and aggregate levels, and thus suggest that digital media may contribute to reviving democratic citizenship

Crisi di fiducia, legittimità delle istituzioni e nuove modalità di comunicazione

Le istituzioni pubbliche attraversano ormai da molti anni una crisi di legittimità, diffusa in tutte le democrazie occidentali ma particolarmente acuta in Italia. Per superare questa crisi, la comunicazione assume una valenza fondamentale non solo come trasmissione di messaggi dalle istituzioni ai cittadini, ma anche come condivisione di contenuti attraverso uno scambio bidirezionale che dovrebbe avvenire in modalità quanto più possibile dialogiche e paritarie. D’altra parte, il processo di “apertura istituzionale” in direzione di una propensione maggiore al dialogo e al riconoscimento dei cittadini come interlocutori e non come destinatari può anche produrre tensioni e generare dinamiche contraddittorie. La diffusione di modalità di comunicazione aperte, inclusive e continue si inserisce inoltre in un processo più ampio di trasformazione strutturale del funzionamento e della concezione normativa delle amministrazioni pubbliche, nel senso di un allontanamento dal modello classico weberiano in favore di una concezione certamente più adatta a rispondere alle sfide della complessità, ma anche meno chiaramente incardinata nella teoria democratica

Party Campaigners or Citizen Campaigners? How Social Media Deepen and Broaden Party-Related Engagement

Digital media are often blamed for accelerating the decline of political parties as channels for citizen participation. By contrast, we show that political engagement on social media may revitalize party activities because these platforms are means for both party members and ordinary citizens to discuss politics and engage with and around political parties. Using online surveys conducted in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we find that party members engage in a wider variety of party-related activities than average respondents, but the same can also be said of nonparty members who informally discuss politics on social media. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between party membership and engagement decreases as the intensity of political discussion on social media increases. This suggests that political discussions on social media can narrow the divide in party-related engagement between members and nonmembers, and to some extent flatten rather than reinforce existing political hierarchies. Finally, we find that the correlation between party membership and engagement is stronger in Germany, where party organizations are more robust, than in Italy and the United Kingdom, highlighting the role of party organizational legacies in the digital age

Social Networks, Political Discussion and Voting in Italy: A Study of the 2006 Election

This article analyzes the role of interpersonal discussion networks and television as the key mediators of political information that can potentially drive citizens’ electoral choices. The research relies on survey data of Italian voters in the aftermath of the 2006 general election. Findings show that the partisan intensity of discussion networks significantly affects the vote, so that citizens embedded in homogeneous partisan networks are more influenced than those who discuss politics within heterogeneous networks that do not uniformly support a unified political position. The effects of television news programs and talk shows turn out to be comparatively smaller than those of interpersonal networks, but are still significant for those programs and formats that attract politically diverse audiences. We interpret this result as a consequence of the increasing relevance of selective exposure in the Italian electorate, which has largely been documented by previous research. Thus, while the effects of interpersonal discussion networks seem to depend on the degree of their partisan intensity, the impact of television seems to be enhanced, in the Italian context, by a program’s ability to present itself as less openly biased than most of the competitors, thus failing to elicit selective exposure by the viewers. The main implication of this study is that interpersonal communication has a remarkable influence on citizens’ choices, and it should be studied together with mass communication, as they both constitute crucial components of voters’ information environments, although their effects depend on partially different factors

Deepfakes and disinformation: Exploring the impact of synthetic political video on deception, uncertainty, and trust in news

Artificial Intelligence (AI) now enables the mass creation of what have become known as “deepfakes”: synthetic videos that closely resemble real videos. Integrating theories about the power of visual communication and the role played by uncertainty in undermining trust in public discourse, we explain the likely contribution of deepfakes to online disinformation. Administering novel experimental treatments to a large representative sample of the UK population allowed us to compare people’s evaluations of deepfakes. We find that people are more likely to feel uncertain than to be misled by deepfakes, but this resulting uncertainty, in turn, reduces trust in news on social media. We conclude that deepfakes may contribute toward generalized indeterminacy and cynicism, further intensifying recent challenges to online civic culture in democratic societie

Dual screening, public service broadcasting, and political participation in eight Western democracies

We investigate the relationship between political dual screening—that is, watching political contents on television while reading and commenting on them on social media—and political participation across eight Western democracies: Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States. Based on custom built online surveys conducted between 2015 and 2016 on samples representative of the adult population with internet access in each country, we test hypotheses on both intra-country and cross-country direct and differential effects of political dual screening on various forms of offline and online political participation. We find a positive correlation between the frequency with which citizens dual screen political content and their overall levels of participation. Such correlation is stronger among respondents with lower levels of interest in politics, suggesting that dual screening has the potential to bridge participatory gaps between citizens who are more and less politically involved. The relationship between dual screening and participation is also significantly stronger in countries whose media systems feature the strongest Public Service Broadcasters. Our findings suggest that dual screening makes a positive contribution to democratic citizenship and political equality, and that it can also help public service media fulfill some of their key functions

What a Difference a Critical Election Makes:Social Networks and Political Discussion in Italy Between 2008 and 2013

This article offers an analysis of the factors associated with frequency of political discussion among representative samples of Italian voters during the general election campaigns of 2008 and 2013. This diachronic comparison allows us to assess how political discussion was shaped in two campaigns characterized by widely different opinion climates, with the 2013 one marked by widespread political disaffection. Our findings show that political discussion notably increased in 2013 and the factors driving political conversations changed substantially. Whereas in 2008 those who voted out of protest and were part of politically homogeneous groups were less likely to talk about politics than the rest of the sample, in 2013 the interaction between protest voting and network homogeneity strongly boosted political discussion

News sharing on UK social media: misinformation, disinformation, and correction

In today’s media systems, large numbers of ordinary citizens circulate political information with great regularity. As a consequence, false and misleading information, whether it originates with elites or non-elites, can become widely distributed—and quickly. Now, people may be more likely to encounter false and misleading information on a daily basis. So if we really want to get to the root of the problem of so-called “fake news” we need to better understand why so many people will readily share false and misleading information online. Exploring why, and with what effects, people share news about politics on social media is therefore an essential part of the broader debate about the relationship between the internet and democracy. The healthy functioning of liberal democracies relies upon citizens whose role is to learn about the social and political world, exchange information and opinions with fellow citizens, arrive at considered judgments about public affairs, and put these judgments into action as political behaviour. The problem is that we currently know very little about the motivations that drive people to share political news on social media and how these might be contributing to changes in our online civic culture. If we can learn more about the things people try to achieve when they share news online—and the extent to which these motivations might reinforce or undermine the distribution of false or misleading information—liberal democracies can start to think about how they can reduce important online harms. This report is the first to address these issues in Britain on the basis of a survey of the news sharing habits on social media of a representative sample of the British public