Determinants of Online and Offline Political Participation in Turkiye: Social Capital and Digitalization
Project no. 29686 · Status: Kapanmış · 2023
Summary
<p>This study analyzes how the factors affecting the participation behavior of individuals in different forms of political participation in Turkey differ in the context of internet and social media use, social capital components and basic demographic variables with the help of logistic models using World Values Survey, Wave 7 data (N: 1841). The main finding of the study is that internet and social media use and social capital components differ significantly across reference groups in both new generation political participation, defined as online, and traditional forms of political participation, defined as offline. In traditional political activism, individuals with higher trust in people, higher trust in institutions and membership in voluntary organizations are more likely to be political activists compared to reference groups. In social and online activism, on the other hand, individuals with lower trust between people were found to be less likely to develop social activist attitudes. Models with general elections as the dependent variable differ from other forms of political participation in terms of the magnitude of marginal effects and the direction of the relationship. The most important difference is that, unlike other forms of political participation, increased frequency of internet and social media use does not create a significant difference in participation in general elections compared to those who do not use internet and social media at all. The second important difference is that both individuals with low interpersonal trust and individuals with group membership are less likely to participate in general elections.</p>