Internet effects on political participation: An empirical study on the reinforcement vs. mobilization effect

Analyzing the Citizenship Involvement Democracy survey on American citizens, this paper investigates categorical and demographic disparities between offline and online political participants and differences in significant predictors for political participation between offline and online modes. The study presents three main implications. First, people who do political activities online are not categorically disparate from those who do so offline. Second, the patterns of cross-group differences in activeness of political participation make distinctions between offline and online modes. Demographic distinctions reveal a tradeoff between a generational gap in online activity and a racial gap in offline activity, but a divide in political participation is still large between better-educated, affluent people and their counterparts. Third, the Internet plays a dual role to mobilize new participation by offline inactivists as well as to reinforce continuous participation by offline activists. Offline inactive participants do online political activities actively with frequent use of the Internet.