Whose e-democracy? The democratic divide in American electoral campaigns

Abstract

This study examines whether a democratic divide (a gap in political participation via the Internet) exists among demographic segments during the campaign season of the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Five different types of online political activity are compared in terms of the divide pattern: conversation, mobilization, information consumption, information production, and activity on social networking sites. Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics such as age, gender, race, education and income are determinants for the degree of online political activism. Although political users of social networking sites mostly fall into the Y generation (DotNets), a high proportion of senior citizens who already use the Internet frequently communicate about politics by email and get political information through the Internet. The occurrence of more active online political participation by the better educated and more affluent is magnified for White males in comparison to non-Whites or females.