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Online mobilization in comparative perspective: Digital appeals and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-01-25, 11:14 authored by Cristian Vaccari
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’ 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.

Funding

This research was supported by the Italian Ministry of Education “Future in Research 2012” initiative (project code RBFR12BKZH) for the project titled “Building Inclusive Societies and a Global Europe Online: Political Information and Participation on Social Media in Comparative Perspective” (http://www.webpoleu.net).

History

Published in

Political Communication

Volume

34

Issue

1

Pages

69 - 88

Citation

VACCARI, C., 2017. Online mobilization in comparative perspective: Digital appeals and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Political Communication, 34 (1), pp. 69-88.

Publisher

© Taylor & Francis

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-05-25

Publication date

2016-10-25

Notes

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Political Communication on 25 Oct 2016, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2016.1201558

ISSN

1058-4609

eISSN

1091-7675

Language

  • en