Political Participation Online - Mobilization or Reinforcement?

According to recent investigations, unconventional political participation misses social equality in political representation. However, an unbiased perception of people’s interests is crucial for democracies. Therefore higher rates of participation to not consequently imply a higher level of democratic quality. Whenever existing forms of political participation differ from the institutionalized rules and habits and new ways of participation emerge, the typical questions on political participation are discussed: who does and who does not participate in the discussions about the social and political development of a society and what are the reasons therefor? In this respect, emerging forms of political participation have to be evaluated with regard to the problem of social representation particularly in contrast to established forms of political participation. At the moment we undergo a keen development in political participation and political protest due to the enhancements of the internet as a Social Web that reduces the limits of time and space and changes political communication. Since the emerging of the Internet every development in the digital world goes along with the hope of leveling social inequalities (Norris, 2001). Especially in the context of the process of participation, social media platforms offer a wide range of chances to participate. From slacktivism to self-organization of online petitions or protests, there are different levels of participation intensity available on the Internet. Furthermore, the availability of internet almost everywhere and every time lowers the costs of participation. In fact we can observe an increasing use of online sources for political activity and mobilization. Thus the recent technical developments regarding the Social Web strengthen the expectations to mobilize social groups to participate in the political process that abstain from voting or other forms of offline participation (Norris, 2001). However social and political science lack of differentiated empirical investigations on these new forms of political participation. On the one hand, measurement in empirical studies seems not to catch systematically all the different intensities and ways of online participation. On the other hand few empirical proof has been initiated so far. Therefore this paper will focus on two aspects. First off all we will discuss first results of studies on eparticipation in comparison to offline participation with the focus on the influence of the socio-economic status (Verba/Nie, 1972). Can we indeed observe a mobilization of social groups that refuse to participate offline due to the new forms of unconventional online participation? In a second part we discuss the problems of existing survey instruments measuring online participation, followed by a proposal for a measuring instrument on political online participation.