Differentiating Online and Offline Socio-Political Participation in Eastern and Western Europe

Information Communication Technologies, including Web 2.0, social media, virtual reality, and other emergent tools, have been and continue to be often written about as potentially transformative for government-citizen relations. The underlying assumption of such an idea is that relationships online will be the same as relationships offline, and there will be a merger between the two. However, this is a questionable assumption. Moreover, the hype of the transformative potential is not often met with empirical substantiation. There is significant evidence to suggest that online active citizens are either: (a) not the same as offline active citizens (Gibson, Lusoli, & Ward, 2005; Laer, 2010); (b) the same people as those offline but with online personalities that are not ‘real’ (Hill & Hughes, 1998); or, (c) the same people as those offline but with online personalities that are more genuine and open than is potentially culturally permitted offline (Brinkerhoff, 2009). These findings give rise to the need to examine more fully the differences between citizens who are active online and those who are active offline. Governance strategies for engagement of citizens, interpretation of citizen comments and expectations, and implementation of programs and services that align with citizen preferences and interests are potentially likely to vary for these two groups of citizens, particularly if they are indeed unique and distinct. Beyond this “simple” online/offline dichotomy, socio-cultural and historical differences across countries and between regions will further suggest the need for governance strategies that are contextually situated and uniquely responsive. This study examines differences between online and offline active citizens, and then further between Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Western Europe (WE). This comparison is practically and theoretically interesting in order to model differences that exist given unique historical conditions and contemporary societal norms, which are known to influence political attitudes of those living in Central and Eastern Europe in particular (Pop-Eleches & Tucker, 2017). The question that is specifically addressed in the paper: are CEE countries unique in Europe in contrast to WE countries regarding socio-political participation online, participation offline, and in the relationship between the two places of participation. The main data source used in our analysis is the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) module Citizenship II (conducted in 2014/5). We restricted our data sample to Europe, provisionally clustering countries into two regions – Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe.