Recent years have seen an increasing scholarly debate on the role of the Internet as a sphere for public political expression. Especially social digital media (SDM) are a phenomenon of interest to many scholars. The capability of SDM to foster democracy enhancing features such as social capital (Lee and Lee 2010), civic participation and political information (Shah et.al. 2005), has been discussed by a growing number of political science publications. However, so far most of the recent research on SDM has focused on user characteristics (Zhang et.al. 2010), while our knowledge concerning how exactly SDM work to fulfil the function of engaging citizens in the democratic process remains, at best, fragmentary. To begin bridging this knowledge gap, the proposed project focuses on participation as a core feature of democracy (Schumpeter 1975, Diamond 1996, Dahl 1998). By means of a quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis of SDM usage patterns in the context of political campaigning we aim to provide a better understanding of how and why these tools may (or may not) contribute to mobilizing citizens to actively take part in the political process. Such findings should deliver important theoretical insight for political science, as well as added practical value for political campaign organization and social media development. In order to shed light on this relation, the proposed paper focuses on the role of social networking sites in the promotion of a specific reform, the passage of the “Ficha Limpa” law in Brazil in 2010.
