Digital Politics in Western Democracies: A Comparative Study

11. Political Attitudes and Online Information

P olitical interest and motivations are among the most important determinants of citizens’ engagement and participation in politics and civic life. As Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) suggest, “I don’t want to” is one of the most common reasons why citizens opt out of the public sphere. In a discussion of the causal determinants of voter turnout, for instance, Andr é Blais (2007: 633) concludes, “The decision to vote or not to vote hinges on many considerations but the two most important ones appear to be whether one is interested in politics or not and whether one feels that voting is a civic duty.” Users’ motivations are particularly important on the web because of the “selective” and “lean-forward” affordances of the internet, which arguably give users more leverage on the contents that are exchanged in the communication process than the mass media do. Another implication of online selectivity is that digital media may enable parties and candidates to “preach to the converted” and reinforce preexisting attitudes but not to reach broader audiences that are at least potentially open to attitude change. In order to investigate these issues, this chapter addresses the relationship between citizens ’ online information and their political motivations and preferences. I CHAPTER ELEVEN Political Attitudes and Online Information 154 Citizens and Digital Politics focus specifically on the role of five types of political attitudes: interest in politics, sense of political efficacy, political trust, ideological orientation, and party identification. Interest in Politics Assessing the relationship between interest in politics and internet use for political information is the best way to ascertain whether online political communication is a channel that can solely attract voters who are already politically engaged or one that can also reach a broader, less politically committed audience. As table 11.1 shows, in all the seven countries included in this research, the most politically interested respondents were much more likely to rely on the internet for campaign news than the least interested in public affairs. Only in France (where the wording of the question for online political information was different from those asked in other countries) and in the United States—which once again emerges as a deviant case among the countries studied here—did substantial percentages among the least politically interested engage with politics through the web. In all the countries citizens who went online for political information expressed a higher interest in politics than those who did not rely on the internet for campaign news. On average, respondents who used the internet for political information were about 30% more interested in politics than those who did not, with peaks in Italy and Spain, the two countries where overall levels of internet political use were the lowest.1 Finally, in five out of seven countries multivariate Table 11.1. Differences in Online Political Information, by Interest in Politics Percentage That Went Online Among Mean Interest (0–1) Multivariate Most Interested Least Interested Online Info No Online Info Australia 47.8% 0% .78 .65 + France 26.6% 13.9% .62 .56 (+) Germany 49.0% 2.2% .56 .40 (+) Italy 40.1% 3.1% .59 .36 + Spain 23.6% 2.9% .66 .47 + United Kingdom 46.1% 6.3% .63 .49 + United States 57.6% 24.8% .61 .50 + Note: For the symbols reported in the last column, see table 10.1. Political Attitudes and Online Information 155 models showed that interest in politics was positively and significantly correlated with use of the web for campaign news, the two exceptions being France and Germany. Both the bivariate and multivariate analyses thus confirm that online political information is predominantly the purview of those citizens who are already interested in politics. This finding is intuitive for at least two reasons. First, political interest also predicts most types of political engagement and participation, including attention to the news (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954), and online information should be no exception. Second, the great amount of sources and contents available on the internet makes it easy for citizens who are not interested in politics to avoid it altogether (Prior 2007), as shown by the low percentages of online political information among the least interested respondents in all countries but the United States. The selective affordances of digital media invite citizens to choose which types of contents to encounter and which ones to avoid, which for many individuals results in a blackout rather than...