Yannis Theocharis
Biographic Data
| ID | 220071 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yannis Theocharis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yannis |
| FAMILY NAME | Theocharis |
| SIGNATURE | THEOCHARIS Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Technical University of Munich |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7209-9669 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 711 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
The Relationship Between Incidental News Exposure and Political Participation: A Cross-Country, Multilevel Analysis
In the modern, networked information environment, incidental exposure (IE) to political news is often theorized to benefit democracy, particularly by fueling political participation. Using cross-national survey data with more than 28,000 respondents from seventeen countries, we distinguished between first-level IE (i.e., the mere scanning of incidentally encountered information) and second-level IE (i.e., effortful processing of incidentally enco…
Does the Community Understand the Community Guidelines
Amid continued public controversy and political debate about online speech governments and civil society have pushed social media platforms to increase transparency around how they regulate speech, through community guidelines and content moderation systems, to support users to hold companies accountable for content removals. But how well do users understand apply platform content rules? We report results of two complementary studies. In Study 1,…
Changing the norms of citizenship? Attitude, platforms and crisis-driven shifts in 17 countries during the Covid-19 pandemic
This study investigates shifts in citizenship norms during crisis. Citizenship, a core concept of democratic theory, reflects an allegiance to the state founded on public sovereignty, and individuals having the right and capacity to participate in political decision-making. Drawing on Schnaudt et al.’s framework, we explore changes in dutiful, autonomy, and solidarity norms through a two-wave panel study conducted across 17 European democracies i…
Bystanders and Reporters: Who Acts Against Illegal Online Content
Harmful and illegal content on social media is widespread, but what should be taken down is widely disputed, creating ongoing challenges for resolving the tension between free speech and user safety. User reporting is a key mechanism for addressing such content, yet little is known about who reports, what motivates them, and how they compare to the general population. We study these questions using two datasets: (1) a unique survey with individua…
Research challenges and training needs in text analysis for political science research
An ever-increasing availability of digital texts has opened new research opportunities for political scientists. Yet, researchers who want to utilise these data face several challenges. This paper presents the results of a community-wide survey tapping into various research challenges, training needs, and preferences of scholars using text analysis methodologies. The survey involved respondents from various academic fields and career levels. Our …
Online election campaigning in changing political environments: A comparison of the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament elections
It has long been assumed that social media would equalize election campaigning by providing cheap means of communication for smaller parties who lack a strong mass media presence. Yet given the increased political importance of social media, parties with more professional staff and resources could also gain the upper hand in online campaigns. So far, knowledge of the development of online campaigning in a rapidly changing political and technologi…
Conspiracism and government distrust predict Covid-19 vaccine refusal
Vaccine hesitancy has been attributed to policy mistakes (e.g., poor communication), individual-level perceptions of risk (i.e., safety concerns about side-effects) and to structural factors, such as the politicization of public health in many countries. Institutional distrust has also been blamed for vaccine refusal, but few studies simultaneously control for possible psychological explanations such as the need for cognition, or general curiosit…
Understanding Perceptions and Effects of Online Intolerance: A Four-Country Experimental Study
Research on online political discourse has long been concerned with the pervasiveness of incivility across various digital arenas. However, most of this work has focused on discourse that is rude in tone, but not necessarily harmful in substance. Consequently, there remains a significant gap in understanding the true impact of harmful online speech on both its targets and bystanders. Addressing this gap, this four-country experimental study exami…
Intergroup ethnocentrism and social media: Evidence from three Western democracies
Mass media have long been known to be deeply linked to ethnocentrism and its consequences. Attitudes towards ethnic outgroups are shaped by news agendas, framing, and tone at least as much or more than by the realities of immigration. By contrast, comparatively little is known about social media and interethnic contact. Unlike mass news, the interactive features of social media use can combine information with a direct interethnic contact. This c…
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 article, we test the proposition that perceiving online discussions as healthier (i.e. more polite and civil) than offline discussions invigorates online political participatio…
Can AI-Attributed News Challenge Partisan News Selection? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment
With artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly shaping newsroom practices, scholars debate how citizens perceive news attributed to algorithms versus human journalists. Yet, little is known about these preferences in today’s polarized media environment, where partisan news consumption has surged. The current study explores this issue by providing a comprehensive and systematic examination of how citizens evaluate AI-attributed news compared to hu…
When Does Fame Not Matter? Examining Gender Differences in Politicians’ Social Media Experiences
Past research alerts to the increasingly unpleasant climate surrounding public debate on social media. Female politicians, in particular, are reporting serious attacks targeted at them. Yet, research offers inconclusive insights regarding the gender gap in online incivility. This paper aims to address this gap by comparing politicians with varying levels of prominence and public status in different institutional contexts. Using a machine learning…
Left–right political orientations are not systematically related to conspiracism
Researchers have long sought to make generalizable conclusions about the relationship between conspiracism and political identities. However, this literature remains deeply conflicted. The “extremity hypothesis” argues that, due to the psychology of extremism, individuals who identify as extremely left or right wing should display higher levels of conspiracism than centrists. But the “asymmetry hypothesis” argues that, due to the psychology of co…
Why do Citizens Choose to Read Fact-Checks in the Context of the Russian War in Ukraine? The Role of Directional and Accuracy Motivations in Nineteen Democracies
The recent surge of false information accompanying the Russian invasion of Ukraine has re-emphasized the need for interventions to counteract disinformation. While fact-checking is a widely used intervention, we know little about citizen motivations to read fact-checks. We tested theoretical predictions related to accuracy-motivated goals (i.e., seeking to know the truth) versus directionally-motivated goals (i.e., seeking to confirm existing bel…
Accounting for the association between socioeconomic status and youth political participation: A twin family study
Political participation (PP) has been found to be associated with socioeconomic status (SES) indicators, most strongly with educational attainment. At the same time, previous research has been inconclusive regarding potentially biasing effects of personality and cognitive characteristics on this association. In the present study, we investigated the association between different forms of youth PP and attained SES, taking youth's and parents' indi…
Revisiting norms of citizenship in times of democratic change
Over the last two decades, scholars have investigated norms of citizenship by focussing primarily on ‘dutiful’ and ‘engaged’ norms. In the meantime, contemporary democracies have witnessed growing demands for more sustainable styles of living and increasing public support for authoritarian and populist ideas. These developments point to both a change and an expansion of conventional understandings and conceptions of what a ‘good citizen’ in a dem…
Justifying an Invasion: When Is Disinformation Successful
Conventional wisdom suggests that social media, especially when used by authoritarian powers with nefarious aims, leaves citizens of democratic countries vulnerable to psychological influence campaigns. But such concerns overlook predispositions among recipients of false claims to reject (or to endorse) conspiratorial narratives. Analyzing responses from a survey fielded in 19 countries, we find that it is a preexisting conspiracy outlook at the …
Toxic Speech and Limited Demand for Content Moderation on Social Media
When is speech on social media toxic enough to warrant content moderation? Platforms impose limits on what can be posted online, but also rely on users' reports of potentially harmful content. Yet we know little about what users consider inadmissible to public discourse and what measures they wish to see implemented. Building on past work, we conceptualize three variants of toxic speech: incivility, intolerance, and violent threats. We present re…
Perceived prevalence of misinformation fuels worries about Covid-19: A cross-country, multi-method investigation
Data suggests that the majority of citizens in various countries came across ‘fake news’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. We test the relationship between perceived prevalence of misinformation and people’s worries about COVID-19. In Study 1, analyses of a survey across 17 countries indicate a positive association: perceptions of high prevalence of misinformation are correlated with high worries about COVID-19. However, the relationship is weaker in…
Platform affordances and political participation: How Social Media Reshape Political Engagement
Political participation opportunities have been expanding for years, most recently through digital tools. Social media platforms have become well integrated into civic and political participation. Using a cross-national sample from the United States, United Kingdom and France, this article examines whether acts of participation associated with social media should be classified using a traditional, five-factor solution to the structure of particip…
Mistakenly misinformed or intentionally deceived? Mis‐ and Disinformation perceptions on the Russian War in Ukraine among citizens in 19 countries
In information environments characterized by institutional distrust, fragmentation and the widespread dissemination of conspiracies and disinformation, citizens perceive misinformation as a salient and threatening issue. Especially amidst disruptive events and crises, news users are likely to believe that information is inaccurate or deceptive. Using an original 19‐country comparative survey study across diverse regions in the world (N = 19,037),…
The Effects of the Covid-19 Outbreak on Selective Exposure: Evidence from 17 Countries
A widely believed claim is that citizens tend to selectively expose themselves to like-minded information. However, when individuals find the information useful, they are more likely to consume cross-cutting sources. While crises such as terror attacks and pandemics can enhance the utility of cross-cutting information, empirical evidence on the role of real-world external threats in selective exposure is scarce. This paper examines the COVID-19 p…
Does a Crisis Change News Habits? A Comparative Study of the Effects of Covid-19 on News Media Use in 17 European Countries
Exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic unleashes multiple fundamental questions about society beyond public health. Based on the classical concept of ‘need for orientation’ and the literature on the role of the media in times of crisis, we investigate to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic affected news consumption in comparative perspective. Based on a two-wave panel survey in 17 mostly European countries, our study targets the role of both l…
Navigating High-Choice European Political Information Environments: A Comparative Analysis of News User Profiles and Political Knowledge
The transition from low- to high-choice media environments has had far-reaching implications for citizens’ media use and its relationship with political knowledge. However, there is still a lack of comparative research on how citizens combine the usage of different media and how that is related to political knowledge. To fill this void, we use a unique cross-national survey about the online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individ…
Does the platform matter? Social media and Covid-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in 17 countries
While the role of social media in the spread of conspiracy theories has received much attention, a key deficit in previous research is the lack of distinction between different types of platforms. This study places the role of social media affordances in facilitating the spread of conspiracy beliefs at the center of its enquiry. We examine the relationship between platform use and conspiracy theory beliefs related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relyin…
The continuous expansion of citizen participation: A New Taxonomy
The repertoire of political participation in democratic societies is expanding rapidly and covers such different activities as voting, demonstrating, volunteering, boycotting, blogging, and flash mobs. Relying on a new method for conceptualizing forms and modes of participation we show that a large variety of creative, expressive, individualized, and digitally enabled forms of participation can be classified as parts of the repertoire of politica…
From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media And Democracy
How can one technology—social media—simultaneously give rise to hopes for liberation in authoritarian regimes, be used for repression by these same regimes, and be harnessed by antisystem actors in democracy? We present a simple framework for reconciling these contradictory developments based on two propositions: 1) that social media give voice to those previously excluded from political discussion by traditional media, and 2) that although socia…
Young People, Digital Media, and Engagement: A Meta-Analysis of Research
New technologies raise fears in public discourse. In terms of digital media use and youth, the advice has been to monitor and limit access to minimize the negative impacts. However, this advice would also limit the positive impacts of digital media. One such positive impact is increased engagement in civic and political life. This article uses meta-analysis techniques to summarize the findings from 106 survey-based studies (965 coefficients) abou…
Social media and political communication in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament
Does the platform matter? Social media and Covid-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in 17 countries
While the role of social media in the spread of conspiracy theories has received much attention, a key deficit in previous research is the lack of distinction between different types of platforms. This study places the role of social media affordances in facilitating the spread of conspiracy beliefs at the center of its enquiry. We examine the relationship between platform use and conspiracy theory beliefs related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relyin…
Elite‐public interaction on twitter: EU issue expansion in the campaign
Why do some issues receive more interest from the public, while others do not? This paper develops a theoretical and empirical approach that explains the degree to which issues expand from the elite to the public. We examine how candidates in the 2014 European Parliament elections talked about EU issues, in comparison to other political issues. We rely on data collected from Twitter and use a combination of human coding and machine learning to an…
Cuts, Tweets, Solidarity and Mobilisation: How the Internet Shaped the Student Occupations
Journal Article Cuts, Tweets, Solidarity and Mobilisation: How the Internet Shaped the Student Occupations Get access Yannis Theocharis Yannis Theocharis * University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany *Correspondence: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 65, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 162–194, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsr049 Published: 16 Nov…
The Dynamics of Political Incivility on Twitter
Online incivility and harassment in political communication have become an important topic of concern among politicians, journalists, and academics. This study provides a descriptive account of uncivil interactions between citizens and politicians on Twitter. We develop a conceptual framework for understanding the dynamics of incivility at three distinct levels: macro (temporal), meso (contextual), and micro (individual). Using longitudinal data …
The Conceptualization of Digitally Networked Participation
The conceptualization and measurement of political participation has been an issue vibrantly debated for more than 50 years. The arrival of digital media came to add important parameters to the debate complicating matters further. Digital media have added inexhaustive creative and nonpolitical ways to engage in social and political life that not only often appear to form the basis of political participation but also, in a plethora of everyday con…
Computational Social Science and the Study of Political Communication
The challenge of disentangling political communication processes and their effects has grown with the complexity of the new political information environment. But so have scientists' toolsets and capacities to better study and understand them. We map the challenges and opportunities of developing, synthesizing, and applying data collection and analysis techniques relying primarily on computational methods and tools to answer substantive theory-dr…
Platform affordances and political participation: How Social Media Reshape Political Engagement
Political participation opportunities have been expanding for years, most recently through digital tools. Social media platforms have become well integrated into civic and political participation. Using a cross-national sample from the United States, United Kingdom and France, this article examines whether acts of participation associated with social media should be classified using a traditional, five-factor solution to the structure of particip…
Can Social Media Incivility Induce Enthusiasm
Most studies of online incivility report negative effects on attitudes and behaviors of both the victims and the audiences who are exposed to it. But while we have extensive insights about the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of incivility, less emphasis has been paid on its emotional effects. We conduct a series of survey experiments using statements posted on Twitter by elite actors along with the comments they receive and measure the em…
The Wealth of (Occupation) Networks? Communication Patterns and Information Distribution in a Twitter Protest Network
Can social media facilitate better protest action organization and coordination? This question has been at the forefront of discussion between media pundits and academic scholars. But what networking mechanisms and communication patterns help activists achieve better organization and coordination? This study uses social network analysis to explore students' Twitter use during the 2010 university occupations. It maps the interconnections between T…
Online Political Engagement, Facebook, and Personality Traits
Despite the growing literature on the effects of personality traits on political participation, there is little discussion about the potential effects of such traits on the increasingly popular forms of online political engagement. In a changing media environment where social production and exposure becomes central, people with different personality traits may be inclined to engage into forms of participation that are different from those in the …
Young people, political participation and online postmaterialism in Greece
According to Inglehart’s postmaterialist theory, young people brought up in periods of high economic and physical security, surrounded by better opportunities for education, are more likely to prioritise postmaterialist values. Postmaterialists are strongly inclined to support new forms of collective action and extra-institutional activity. Internet researchers have reported that internet users are mainly young, well educated and affluent, thus d…
Toxic Speech and Limited Demand for Content Moderation on Social Media
When is speech on social media toxic enough to warrant content moderation? Platforms impose limits on what can be posted online, but also rely on users' reports of potentially harmful content. Yet we know little about what users consider inadmissible to public discourse and what measures they wish to see implemented. Building on past work, we conceptualize three variants of toxic speech: incivility, intolerance, and violent threats. We present re…
Navigating High-Choice European Political Information Environments: A Comparative Analysis of News User Profiles and Political Knowledge
The transition from low- to high-choice media environments has had far-reaching implications for citizens’ media use and its relationship with political knowledge. However, there is still a lack of comparative research on how citizens combine the usage of different media and how that is related to political knowledge. To fill this void, we use a unique cross-national survey about the online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individ…
A Modern Tragedy? Institutional Causes and Democratic Consequences of the Greek Crisis
Economic and political developments in Greece have been at the forefront of the international mass media coverage of the European financial and economic crises. Contrary to fashionable interpretations of the malaise, our findings suggest that the main causes of the many ‘crises’ hitting the country are social and political, rather than economic or financial. Employing the ‘institutional theory of generalised trust', we examine the roots of the cu…
The Influence of Postmaterialist Orientations on Young British People's Offline and Online Political Participation
According to Inglehart's postmaterialist theory, a process of value change is taking place in Western societies, where people place increasingly more emphasis on self-expression and postmaterialist values rather than economic and physical security. Evidence shows that postmaterialists are young, affluent, well educated and strongly inclined to carry out extra-institutional political participation. Internet researchers have reported that internet …
Civil Society in Times of Crisis: Understanding Collective Action Dynamics in Digitally-Enabled Volunteer Networks
Social media play an important role in political mobilization. Voluntary engagement can especially benefit from new opportunities for organizing collective action. Although research has explored the use of Twitter by decentralized individuals for this, there has been little emphasis on its use for community engagement and the provision of public goods. Even less is known about its role in the emergence and offline expansion of spontaneous self-or…
Stimulating citizenship or expanding entertainment? The effect of Facebook on adolescent participation
Over the past decade, Internet and politics scholarship has been concerned with the effects of the Internet on forms of civic and political participation. Recent research has moved on to examine the effects of social networking sites like Facebook. Although past studies have generally found positive – albeit weak or moderate – relationships between social networking sites use and civic and political participation, reliance on cross-sectional surv…
Left–right political orientations are not systematically related to conspiracism
Researchers have long sought to make generalizable conclusions about the relationship between conspiracism and political identities. However, this literature remains deeply conflicted. The “extremity hypothesis” argues that, due to the psychology of extremism, individuals who identify as extremely left or right wing should display higher levels of conspiracism than centrists. But the “asymmetry hypothesis” argues that, due to the psychology of co…
Justifying an Invasion: When Is Disinformation Successful
Conventional wisdom suggests that social media, especially when used by authoritarian powers with nefarious aims, leaves citizens of democratic countries vulnerable to psychological influence campaigns. But such concerns overlook predispositions among recipients of false claims to reject (or to endorse) conspiratorial narratives. Analyzing responses from a survey fielded in 19 countries, we find that it is a preexisting conspiracy outlook at the …
Mistakenly misinformed or intentionally deceived? Mis‐ and Disinformation perceptions on the Russian War in Ukraine among citizens in 19 countries
In information environments characterized by institutional distrust, fragmentation and the widespread dissemination of conspiracies and disinformation, citizens perceive misinformation as a salient and threatening issue. Especially amidst disruptive events and crises, news users are likely to believe that information is inaccurate or deceptive. Using an original 19‐country comparative survey study across diverse regions in the world (N = 19,037),…
The empiricist’s challenge: Asking meaningful questions in political science in the age of big data
The continuously growing use of digital services has provided social scientists with an expanding reservoir of data, potentially holding valuable insights into human behavior and social systems. This has often been associated with the terms “big data” and “computational social science.” Using such data, social scientists have argued, will enable us to better understand social, political, and economic life. Yet this new data type comes not only wi…
Young people, political participation and online postmaterialism in Greece
According to Inglehart’s postmaterialist theory, young people brought up in periods of high economic and physical security, surrounded by better opportunities for education, are more likely to prioritise postmaterialist values. Postmaterialists are strongly inclined to support new forms of collective action and extra-institutional activity. Internet researchers have reported that internet users are mainly young, well educated and affluent, thus d…
The Influence of Postmaterialist Orientations on Young British People's Offline and Online Political Participation
According to Inglehart's postmaterialist theory, a process of value change is taking place in Western societies, where people place increasingly more emphasis on self-expression and postmaterialist values rather than economic and physical security. Evidence shows that postmaterialists are young, affluent, well educated and strongly inclined to carry out extra-institutional political participation. Internet researchers have reported that internet …
Online Political Engagement, Facebook, and Personality Traits
Despite the growing literature on the effects of personality traits on political participation, there is little discussion about the potential effects of such traits on the increasingly popular forms of online political engagement. In a changing media environment where social production and exposure becomes central, people with different personality traits may be inclined to engage into forms of participation that are different from those in the …
Cuts, Tweets, Solidarity and Mobilisation: How the Internet Shaped the Student Occupations
Journal Article Cuts, Tweets, Solidarity and Mobilisation: How the Internet Shaped the Student Occupations Get access Yannis Theocharis Yannis Theocharis * University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany *Correspondence: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 65, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 162–194, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsr049 Published: 16 Nov…
The Contribution of Websites and Blogs to the Students’ Protest Communication Tactics During the 2010 Uk University Occupations
This paper examines the use of websites and blogs during the 2010 UK anti-cuts protests, where students across the UK occupied more than 35 universities in a symbolic act of opposition to government plans to cut education funding and increase tuition fees. Although social media have largely monopolized the debate on online political activism in recent years, students did not limit their online e-tactics to the use of social media, but used websit…
The Wealth of (Occupation) Networks? Communication Patterns and Information Distribution in a Twitter Protest Network
Can social media facilitate better protest action organization and coordination? This question has been at the forefront of discussion between media pundits and academic scholars. But what networking mechanisms and communication patterns help activists achieve better organization and coordination? This study uses social network analysis to explore students' Twitter use during the 2010 university occupations. It maps the interconnections between T…
Stimulating citizenship or expanding entertainment? The effect of Facebook on adolescent participation
Over the past decade, Internet and politics scholarship has been concerned with the effects of the Internet on forms of civic and political participation. Recent research has moved on to examine the effects of social networking sites like Facebook. Although past studies have generally found positive – albeit weak or moderate – relationships between social networking sites use and civic and political participation, reliance on cross-sectional surv…
Using Twitter to mobilize protest action: Online mobilization patterns and action repertoires in the Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, and Aganaktismenoi movements
The extensive use of social media for protest purposes was a distinctive feature of the recent protest events in Spain, Greece, and the United States. Like the Occupy Wall Street protesters in the United States, the indignant activists of Spain and Greece protested against unjust, unequal, and corrupt political and economic institutions marked by the arrogance of those in power. Social media can potentially change or contribute to the political c…
A Modern Tragedy? Institutional Causes and Democratic Consequences of the Greek Crisis
Economic and political developments in Greece have been at the forefront of the international mass media coverage of the European financial and economic crises. Contrary to fashionable interpretations of the malaise, our findings suggest that the main causes of the many ‘crises’ hitting the country are social and political, rather than economic or financial. Employing the ‘institutional theory of generalised trust', we examine the roots of the cu…
Tweeting Alone? An Analysis of Bridging and Bonding Social Capital in Online Networks
In this article, we test Putnam’s claim that online interactions are unable to foster social capital by examining the formation of bridging and bonding social capital in online networks. Using Burt’s concepts of closure and brokerage as indicators, we observe networks formed through online interactions and test them against several theoretical models. We test Putnam’s claim using Twitter data from three events: the Occupy movement in 2011, the IF…
The Conceptualization of Digitally Networked Participation
The conceptualization and measurement of political participation has been an issue vibrantly debated for more than 50 years. The arrival of digital media came to add important parameters to the debate complicating matters further. Digital media have added inexhaustive creative and nonpolitical ways to engage in social and political life that not only often appear to form the basis of political participation but also, in a plethora of everyday con…
Does Facebook increase political participation? Evidence from a field experiment
During the last decade, much of political behaviour research has come to be concerned with the impact of the Internet, and more recently social networking sites such as Facebook, on political and civic participation. Although existing research generally finds a modestly positive relationship between social media use and offline and online participation, the majority of contributions rely on cross-sectional data, so the causal impact of social med…
A Bad Workman Blames His Tweets: The Consequences of Citizens' Uncivil Twitter Use When Interacting With Party Candidates
Existing studies focusing on politicians' adoption of Twitter have found that they use it primarily as a broadcasting tool. We argue that citizens' impolite and/or uncivil behavior is one possible explanation for such decisions. Social media conversations are rife with harassment and politicians are a prime target. This alters the incentive structure of engaging in dialogue on social media. We use Spanish, Greek, German, and U.K. candidates' twee…
From seeing the writing on the wall, to getting together for a bowl: Direct and compensating effects of Facebook use on offline associational membership
Research concerned with a decline of associational involvement has examined whether the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, may reinvigorate or crowd out involvement in civil society. Yet, previous studies have not systematically investigated possible effects of Facebook use on associational membership. We posit that the effects of Facebook use are twofold: Facebook stimulates associational membership directly through its inherent n…
Social media and political communication in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament
Political Participation in a Changing World: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges in the Study of Citizen Engagement
In the last decades, political participation expanded continuously. This expansion includes activities as diverse as voting, tweeting, signing petitions, changing your social media profile, demonstrating, boycotting products, joining flash mobs, attending meetings, throwing seedbombs, and donating money. But if political participation is so diverse, how do we recognize participation when we see it? Despite the growing interest in new forms of cit…
The empiricist’s challenge: Asking meaningful questions in political science in the age of big data
The continuously growing use of digital services has provided social scientists with an expanding reservoir of data, potentially holding valuable insights into human behavior and social systems. This has often been associated with the terms “big data” and “computational social science.” Using such data, social scientists have argued, will enable us to better understand social, political, and economic life. Yet this new data type comes not only wi…
Civil Society in Times of Crisis: Understanding Collective Action Dynamics in Digitally-Enabled Volunteer Networks
Social media play an important role in political mobilization. Voluntary engagement can especially benefit from new opportunities for organizing collective action. Although research has explored the use of Twitter by decentralized individuals for this, there has been little emphasis on its use for community engagement and the provision of public goods. Even less is known about its role in the emergence and offline expansion of spontaneous self-or…
From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media And Democracy
How can one technology—social media—simultaneously give rise to hopes for liberation in authoritarian regimes, be used for repression by these same regimes, and be harnessed by antisystem actors in democracy? We present a simple framework for reconciling these contradictory developments based on two propositions: 1) that social media give voice to those previously excluded from political discussion by traditional media, and 2) that although socia…
Young People, Digital Media, and Engagement: A Meta-Analysis of Research
New technologies raise fears in public discourse. In terms of digital media use and youth, the advice has been to monitor and limit access to minimize the negative impacts. However, this advice would also limit the positive impacts of digital media. One such positive impact is increased engagement in civic and political life. This article uses meta-analysis techniques to summarize the findings from 106 survey-based studies (965 coefficients) abou…
The continuous expansion of citizen participation: A new taxonomy – Erratum
The continuous expansion of citizen participation: A New Taxonomy
The repertoire of political participation in democratic societies is expanding rapidly and covers such different activities as voting, demonstrating, volunteering, boycotting, blogging, and flash mobs. Relying on a new method for conceptualizing forms and modes of participation we show that a large variety of creative, expressive, individualized, and digitally enabled forms of participation can be classified as parts of the repertoire of politica…
Threats, chances and opportunities: Social capital in Europe in times of social and economic hardship
The 2008 financial and economic crisis, characterized by an economic breakdown unparalleled since the Great Depression, provides a unique opportunity to study the relationships between economic developments and social capital by asking: How does social capital change in times of social and economic hardship? In order to explore the trends of social capital development, data from the European Social Survey 2002–2016 are used. The results suggest t…
Can Social Media Incivility Induce Enthusiasm
Most studies of online incivility report negative effects on attitudes and behaviors of both the victims and the audiences who are exposed to it. But while we have extensive insights about the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of incivility, less emphasis has been paid on its emotional effects. We conduct a series of survey experiments using statements posted on Twitter by elite actors along with the comments they receive and measure the em…
The Dynamics of Political Incivility on Twitter
Online incivility and harassment in political communication have become an important topic of concern among politicians, journalists, and academics. This study provides a descriptive account of uncivil interactions between citizens and politicians on Twitter. We develop a conceptual framework for understanding the dynamics of incivility at three distinct levels: macro (temporal), meso (contextual), and micro (individual). Using longitudinal data …
Political science (44 works) · Social Media and Politics (38 works) · Politics (37 works) · Law (33 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Law (23 works) · Psychology (23 works) · Social media (22 works) · Public relations (18 works) · Computer Science (17 works)