4 - Online Political Participation in the United States and Spain

Summary

Introduction

The diffusion and integration of digital media in social and political life aresaid to be creating new forms of political organization and new opportunitiesfor political participation (Castells 2009). This chapter is a comparative studyof how and why people get involved in different offline and online participatoryenvironments in the United States and Spain. Researchers have differentiatedforms of participation in digital milieus according to their architectures,which enable more or less participation (Jackson and Lilleker 2009; Chadwick2009a; Chapter 2). Digital environments contain varied structures forcommunicative interaction. Although web 1.0 involves a fixed content transmittedfrom a sender to a receiver, web 2.0 is distinguished by the role the receiverplays in the co-production of content. That is, web 1.0 is characterized byclosed architecture (Lessig 2006), whereas web 2.0 is widely regarded as havinga participatory architecture (O’Reilly 2007). In addition, researchershave developed theories connecting participation with resources such asexperience, time, money, and civic skills (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995).Modes of participation have been further distinguished by the attitudinalfactors that motivate certain forms of participation but not others (Dalton2008; Marsh, O’Toole, and Jones 2007). From a comparative perspective,research indicates the existence of differences in the categories of individualsand of attitudes motivating different forms of participation across systems(Dalton 2008). This chapter seeks to contribute to this line of research byexamining the role the political context plays in shaping the forms ofparticipation and the resources and attitudinal motivations behind them. Weexpect macro-level differences between the United States and Spain in politicalcommunication structures to have an impact on micro-level participatorypractices in the two countries.