Political informing through social media across Europe - factors and effects

Abstract

Social media play a significant role in political informing across Europe and the rest of the world. That is why the political consequences of social media use have become one of the prominent issues in contemporary social research. In line with that, this paper investigates how the use of social media for political informing is associated with the state of democracy in European countries and how individual satisfaction with the level of democracy and the political activism of citizens are affected by social media use. We have used data from the latest European Value Survey, conducted in 2017-2018. Our data sample included 30 countries with the referent number of more than 56000 respondents involved in the survey. The main finding of our research is that a deficit of democracy leads people to use social media as a part of their political informing repertoires. This finding applies to both, those who live in undemocratic circumstances and those who live in developed democracies but have a negative personal perception of democratic procedures in their country. It seems that once citizens are "forced" to use social media for political informing, they, in turn, become influenced by media content displayed there and by other peoples' ideas. In other words, the very use of social media makes them even more critical of democracy and consequently more politically active, which brings them back to social media.