E-Expression in a Comparative Perspective: Drivers and Constraints of Expressing Political Opinions Online

Modern democracies face stagnant or even decreasing levels of political participation, yet the advent of the Internet, and social media specifically, nurtured hopes about a revival of political activism because they decrease transaction and participation costs. Despite a large academic literature focusing on online political participation, the question on the extent to which technological advancements on the Internet have affected political participation across Europe has not been answered sufficiently. Existing research mainly consists of single case studies with limited comparative value. Moreover, they largely look at micro-level explanatory factors without considering the macro-level context. My paper fills in this gap by asking to what extent institutional aspects condition the relationship between micro-processes and online political participation in European democracies. It focuses on one specific form of e-participation: expressing one’s political opinion online. The paper consists of two main parts: first, it embeds e-expressive acts in the wider literature on political participation by developing a multi-dimensional conceptual framework combining both direct and indirect forms of e-participation. Secondly, using ISSP 2014 data, it identifies the profiles of politically vocal users of social networking sites and explores cross-national variation by simultaneously studying micro-level characteristics (resources, demographics and attitudes) and macro-level institutional factors (media regulation, democratic longevity and the e-government infrastructure). The findings reveal that all three macro-level variables have a considerable effect on e-expressive acts. Hence, the less regulated the media and younger the democracy, the higher participatory levels in e-expressive acts. In contrast to standard expectations, the e-government infrastructure has a negative effect. Respondents coming from countries with better developed digital services are on average less engaged. The findings do not only have implications for our understanding of political participation in the digital era in general, but also offer practical insights for policy makers.