Exposure to Political Information in New and Old Media: which Impact on Political Participation?
Marta Cantijoch, Laia Jorba and Josep San Martin,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Abstract
This paper tests the impact of exposure to political information in traditional and new media on different dimensions of political participation. The models are run using data from a survey conducted in Spain in 2007. First and foremost, in order to analyze the scope of the impact of media use on political participation, media exposure is categorized according to the degree of its political content. Second, a set of political attitudes that are usually associated to political participation are included in the analysis and they have been also used to control the indirect effects of exposure to new and old media. The results demonstrate that impacts on political participation of the use of new media on one hand and exposure to old media on the other are quite different. We also conclude that Internet use is not only an intermediate variable between attitudes and participation. Searching for information in the net and conducting other interactive activities also foster motivations with impact on political participation.
Prepared for delivery at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 28-31, 2008.
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Introduction
New technologies, and especially the Internet, are changing dramatically not only the way we interact with the world, but also our vision of the world itself, opening new cultural and social perspectives. These new paradigm changes are also producing an impact on individuals’ role of citizens and, consequently, on democracy and politics. In the last years, to analyze the scope of this phenomenon has become a challenge for political scientists, so the research to test the causal relations linking Internet use and democratic values and practices is growing.
One way of tackling the issue is focusing on the possibilities opened by the Internet for political purposes when compared to traditional or old mass media. The acquisition of information in the mass media is closely related to political participation. Being informed about politics is highly correlated with civic attitudes and involvement. Citizens interested in politics use the media to learn about the issues concerning them. They gain political knowledge, which in turn allows them to feel more motivated to engage in political activities. Consequently, well-informed citizens tend to be more active in elections and other forms of participation (Milner 2002).
However, while the well-educated and politically sophisticated use the media to obtain information about politics, a large proportion of the public mostly use it for non-political entertainment purposes. A priori, these exposures are not expected to have a positive impact on political attitudes, motivations or knowledge. Thus, different media exposures lead to different impacts on political attitudes and behaviors, producing unequal participation.
The emergence and extension of the Internet take place in this scenario, altering the existing communicational structure both quantitatively and qualitatively. In fact, we should consider whether the Internet is used just as a complement of old mass media, with similar utilities and functions (Flanazin and Metzger 2001). In that case, the impact of accessing political information or other contents on political involvement would not change significantly from what we know so far about traditional mass media. But if we consider the Internet a different media, with new functions and possibilities in citizen’s hands, the debate around its political consequences remains opened.
The linkage between the Internet and participation can be established through the cognitive and the attitudinal paths. Firstly, the Internet serves as a new provider of political information, the amount of which has grown enormously with the extension of this new media. This change has also altered the ability of certain agents to fix the agenda and frame the information. Internet use could be endowing individuals not traditionally involved with political knowledge.
Secondly, the Internet is a tool with many other functions besides providing political information. It is used to contact other people, interact with them, to look for non political information, to amuse oneself, etc. All these uses differ from exposure to traditional media in that they don’t imply a passive conduct as the user keeps control over her activities in the net. The acquisition of interactive patterns of behavior and relationship could be fostering new attitudes well beyond simple functional transformations, and far different from traditional media logics. Thus, we can also link Internet use to an attitudinal change with impact on political participation, in a different way to old media impacts.
These differences justify our distinction between “old” and “new” media: we include television, radio and newspapers in the first group and the Internet in the second one. We understand that calling “old” a media like television, which is still the most accessed by the public, is arguable. But we believe the feature of interactivity allows us to employ the term “new media” for Internet uses as opposed to the other mass media’s traits. It’s not just a concept accounting for a temporal attribute of novelty related to the most recent appearance and extension of the Internet. It also captures the features that could effectively be producing transformations previously inexistent in traditional mass media.
The aim of this paper is to discuss and test the impact of this new element on political knowledge and attitudes and, consequently, on political participation. We will analyze the Spanish case through survey analysis. In the following section we present the main theoretical arguments around the differences between Internet and old mass media. If the Internet has some characteristics and consequences that are specific and unique, we should discuss to what extent they are positive or negative for the individual to become more engaged. In the next section we expose our research questions and hypotheses, and the data used for the analyses. Then we present our main results.
I. The impact of the Internet on political attitudes, knowledge and participation
As Scheufele and Nisbet (2002) pointed out, every change in communication technologies, like the extension of the radio, the telephone, the television, etc., brings up detractors and defenders. At the end, the whole picture does not change significantly and the differences between the elites and non-elites remain, without providing relevant channels for public sphere revitalization.
However, the extension of the Internet could be shaping new and different patterns. One of the main features of this technology, contrary to the old mass media’s, is its ability to provide unlimited amounts of information about politics while reducing its acquisition costs (Gerber and Green 2000). This also means that traditionally marginalized groups like young people can be reached, and their involvement can be promoted (Delli Carpini 2000). Some authors have shown that exposure to more information via the Internet produces a greater interest in politics and favors participation (McDonald 2008, Lupia and Philpot 2005).
In fact, the less enthusiastic positions on the impact of new technologies on political involvement and participation have stated that those who can take advantage of Internet’s possibilities are the ones with more resources. That is, the more educated, with more time, money and cognitional skills, are the ones who are using the Internet in a way that reinforces their abilities. This is also the profile of the more motivated and interested in politics, also having greater feelings of political efficacy. So the use of Internet would only be reinforcing pre-existing resources and attitudes of the already actives (Weber, Loumakis and Bergman 2003; Norris 2001 and 2000a; Bucy 2000; Hill and Hughes 1998).
Regarding political information, this means that the availability and possibility of accessing it does not lead automatically to its understanding and profitable use. Instead, there will be differences among individuals depending on their profile and their abilities to process and interpret the information (Polat 2005, Bimber 2003, Clément 2002, Noveck 2000). The huge amount of information available can actually become an obstacle to part of the public because of the difficulties of selecting it and discriminating among different quality degrees. The variability in quality and format of information on the net is not necessarily advantageous for all of the Internet users (Eveland and Dunwoody 2000).
This line of argumentation leads to apply the knowledge gap theories to Internet use (Scheufele and Nisbet 2002): the possibility of selecting contents in the net allows those with higher motivation to increase their political knowledge. As already observed regarding old mass media, not all the Internet uses will bring about a rise of civic orientations and political involvement. Only access to political contents on the Internet should lead to higher political knowledge levels and increasing attitudes favoring participation. In fact, some studies found evidence proving that Internet access for political information acquisition fosters interest and involvement more intensely than traditional media exposures (Tedesco 2007, Lupia and Philpot 2005, Shah et al 2005 and 2001). But this would only be true for privileged citizens, while the less motivated avoid political issues, use the Internet for recreational purposes and stay more apathetic. Internet’s feature of high selectivity might be producing more inequality in political involvement (Prior 2007 and 2005; Weber, Loumakis and Bergman 2003; Bonfadelli 2002).
There is need for further research regarding the knowledge gap hypothesis in the Internet context, as some of the research conducted so far cautiously supports a more optimistic perspective (Gallego and Jorba 2008). But we also believe the discussion shouldn’t be only focused on who is taking advantage of online information, but on how this information is supplied. The main difference between new and old media is that the former offer a less restricted structure of information than the latter. The citizen can go deeper on some issues that move her, can fill information gaps, etc. On the Internet, the user escapes to the agenda setting established by editors of newspapers or television, who have traditionally chosen what they consider to be the most relevant information.
We should bear in mind that the Internet is not only a tool for information retrieval. It also allows the individual to become an information provider directly (by posting information in his or others websites or blogs) and indirectly, by taking part in mediated contacts and conversations with other users (Flanagin and Metzger 2001). By their own behavior on the Internet, users construct a structure in which they can avoid the mainstream information supplied by the traditional media (Bimber 2001, Althaus and Tewksbury 2000). In a second stage, this opportunity can serve the purposes of those more critical with formal politics and foster a renewed interest with impacts on specific forms of participation (Hwang et al. 2006).
In fact, it has been argued that the Internet is not really used as a tool for getting diverse and plural information, as it rather becomes a mechanism to select only the information strengthening the user’s position, polarizing his opinions and behaviors, and impeding a real exchange of points of view (Polat 2005, Sunstein 2001, Noveck 2000, Putnam 2000, Davis 1999). But surfing the Internet, as well as receiving emails from friends, or taking part in chats or forums, will inevitably bring up unexpected information. A more general exposure to the new media can become an involuntary and unplanned learning, leading, in turn, to more political interest and participation (Gibson, Lusoli and Ward 2005).
Then, it is the use of Internet itself and its interactive applications what will make the difference. Interactivity is mainly characterized by the fact that the user exercises control over the selection of contents and the form of the communication processes he is involved in (Bucy 2004). Internet mediated exchanges allow an equivalency between the emitter and the receiver, building non- hierarchical but rather horizontal and equal relations (Yildiz 2002). These new forms of communication are constructing what is called an electronic identity (Rieffel 2001) or technological identity (Wolton 2000). The vanishing of hierarchy, the emancipation and the freedom of contents and times election, the possibility of looking for more information if one needs to, and so on, might influence the citizen’s feeling of being more able to understand what’s going on in the public sphere. These would be leading to an increase of the internal efficacy of the citizen also regarding political issues. The main definitions of political participation emphasize that it aims at influencing government (or other agents). Thus, having stronger feelings of being able to promote this influence, that is, of being efficacious, leads to a higher probability of getting involved and becoming active.
Consequently, the specific features of the Internet as described above could be contributing to perform specific forms of political participation. In the last decades, an increasing dissatisfaction towards institutions of representative democracy has been detected (Dalton 2004, Pharr and Putnam 2000, Dalton and Wattenberg 2000, Norris 1999). This phenomenon has been linked to a growing apathy among citizens. In recent years, the literature has debated about the responsibility of old media on these processes. On the one hand, some authors have defended that mass media, particularly the television, are contributing to the disaffection and alienation of the citizenry (Newton 1999, Sartori 1998). According to the media malaise theories, the formats adopted to inform about politics would be transforming the public debate in a show, reducing the complexity of major issues and producing in the citizen-spectator a feeling of distance from the political sphere and its institutions. On the contrary, other studies present the mass media as a virtuous circle, enhancing cognitive competence and promoting engagement and participation (Norris 2000a and 2000b, Voltmer and Schmitt-Beck 2001).
In fact, not all the public would be transforming a negative perception of institutions in apathy: there is a critical mass of people looking for effective spaces to voice their demands (Dalton 2004, Norris 2002). As mentioned before, the possibility provided by the Internet to access information out of the mainstream agenda would contribute to improve knowledge in those issues not satisfactorily provided by old media. Besides, Internet uses implying interactive processes offer a free public space where the user controls the communications processes she is involved in. This scenario could be favoring the change in political repertoires that has already been detected: while the most conventional forms of participation, which are linked to representative institutions, are experiencing declining rates (Franklin 2004, Mair 2002, Wattenberg 2002, Blais 2000, Caul and Gray 2000, Lane and Ersson 1999), new and unconventional forms of action are increasing (Stolle et al. 2005, Micheletti et al. 2004, Cain et al. 2003, Norris 2002). Internet use could be promoting involvement of citizens in these forms of action, as otherwise they would not be willing to participate because of their feelings of external inefficacy regarding institutional mechanisms (Frau-Meigs 2002).