How do healthy political discussions invigorate online participation? Evidence from 17 European countries

Social media provide unprecedented opportunities for public deliberation. However, a growing number of users perceive negativity in political debate taking place in those venues and are increasingly frustrated when discussing politics with those they disagree with. In this paper, we test the proposition that perceiving online discussions as healthier (that is, more polite and civil) than offline discussions invigorates online political participation. We rely on an online survey fielded in 17 European countries on more than 28,000 individuals. We find that those embedded in healthier online discussions are more likely to participate. Furthermore, healthy discussions are more of an important predictor of online participation for those respondents reporting higher political discussion fatigue and perceiving online discussions as less fun. Overall, our study offers cross-national evidence of why and for whom exposure to healthy political discussions online might be mobilizing.