Browsing by Author "Oser, Jennifer"
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Item How political efficacy relates to online and offline political participation: a multi-level meta-analysis(2022) Oser, Jennifer; Grinson, Amit; Boulianne, Shelley; Halperin, EranThe rapid rise of digital media use for political participation has coincided with an increase in concerns about citizens’ sense of their capacity to impact political processes. These dual trends raise the important question of how people’s online political participation is connected to perceptions of their own capacity to participate in and influence politics. The current study overcomes the limitation of scarce high-quality cross-national and over-time data on these topics by conducting a meta-analysis of all extant studies that analyze how political efficacy relates to both online and offline political participation using data sources in which all variables were measured simultaneously. We identified and coded 48 relevant studies (with 184 effects) representing 51,860 respondents from 28 countries based on surveys conducted between 2000 and 2016. We conducted a multilevel random effects meta-analysis to test the main hypothesis of whether political efficacy has a weaker relationship with online political participation than offline political participation. The findings show positive relationships between efficacy and both forms of participation, with no distinction in the magnitude of the two associations. In addition, we tested hypotheses about the expected variation across time and democratic contexts, and the results suggest contextual variation for offline participation but cross-national stability for online participation. The findings provide the most comprehensive evidence to date that online participation is as highly associated with political efficacy as offline participation, and that the strength of this association for online political participation is stable over time and across diverse country contexts.Item Reinforcement effects between digital media use and political participation: a meta-analysis of repeated-wave panel data(2020) Oser, Jennifer; Boulianne, ShelleyAs digital media use has rapidly increased in prevalence and diversified in form, scholars across the globe have focused extensive attention on how the use of digital media relates to political participation. To assess the results of this emerging body of research, we conduct the first meta-analysis of repeated-wave panel data studies on the relationship between digital media use and political participation. The findings, based on 38 survey-based, repeated-wave panel studies (279 coefficients) bring new evidence to bear on two questions central to this literature. First, the findings provide new insight into the classic mobilization versus reinforcement debate: contrary to common assumption, the findings support a reinforcement effect, whereby those who are already politically active are motivated to use digital media. Second, the results indicate that the relationship between digital media use and political participation is durable, as studies with a longer time lag were more likely to yield positive and significant effects. Taken together, this evidence in support of a durable reinforcement effect implies the potential for digital media use to contribute to increased inequality in political participation over time. In the concluding discussion, we outline directions for further theoretical inquiry and empirical research that leverage the value of repeated-wave panel studies to make causal inferences.