Understanding the Link Between Citizens' Political Engagement and their Definitions of 'Political' Activities

There is a considerable body of research investigating citizens’ involvement in politics. Yet, measuring political participation is problematic if there is substantial variation in citizens’ definitions of what is political. Measures of political participation, political engagement and interest that are routinely used in models of political behaviour may produce biased results if they mask substantial heterogeneity in respondents’ understandings of the political. Furthermore, heterogeneity among citizens’ definitions of political participation may have increased in line with the growth in the number of ways in which citizens engage in politics, particularly since the addition of online modes of participation. The value of these activities for democracy and whether they should be considered ‘political’ is however a matter of debate in the scholarly literature (see e.g. Gibson and Cantijoch 2013; Gil de Zúñiga et al. 2010; Hooghe, Hosch-Dayican and van Deth 2014). Given these debates, it is crucial to understand the boundaries of what can be defined as ‘political.’ Our study attempts to present citizens’ own definitions of political activities, and answers two main research questions: (1 – Descriptive): What activities do citizens consider to be ‘political’? (2 – Explanatory): to what extent, and how, do the modes of activities citizens engage in relate to their definitions of ‘political’ activities? The latter question will help us understand how people are socialized into their political beliefs and how they interpret their political world. For example, if individuals interpret changing their profile picture on Facebook as explicitly political in nature, they may perceive this activity in a very different way from those who do not, and the act itself may (further) increase their feelings of political efficacy and the feeling that one can influence politics and policy making than an individual who did not consider changing their profile picture to be a political act. Thus a cognitive link between activism and definition might be critical for the development of a virtuous circle of engagement and activity. To answer our research questions, we use original data collected through an online survey organized by YouGov in February 2014 among a representative sample of British citizens (N=2,022). In brief, our findings indicate that political activities are defined in citizens’ minds along party and non-party lines rather than subdivided into traditional/new or online/offline. There is a broad consensus among citizens about the extent to which party activities are seen to be political, this is less the case when it comes to non-party modes of participation. Furthermore our analysis reveals that people’s definitions of political activities vary between the extent and mode in which they engage in politics. In particular, those who participate in non-party activities are significantly more likely to consider both party activities and non-party activities to be political than those who do not engage in such activities. Those engaging in party-related activities are also slightly more likely to consider non-party activities as being political than those not participating in political party activities.