Surveying Online Political Participation in the Netherlands

Hamburg.
The last day at ECREA 2010 starts with a paper by Tom Bakker, whose interest is in mapping participation in citizen media activities in the Netherlands. He notes that participation in social media still appears to be growing strongly overall – and these shifts in the media ecology necessarily bring about some significant changes. The potential for such change has been highlighted for journalism (gatekeeping is said to be declining, agenda setting, news values, standards, and ethics are shifting, and diversity is increasing), as well as for the wider public sphere (thought to be more inclusive, active, deliberative, with more political discourse that is more representative of public opinion).

The present study tested this in a large-scale study in the Netherlands. It surveyed some 2130 people over 13 years of age during December 2009. One question asked in this context was whether people were reading comments: some 55% never did, the rest read them at various levels of intensity. 75% never read political comments, 83% never posted comments, and 94% never posted political comments online.

In terms of overall participation: 35% engage in social networking (6% in a political context); there is a similar balance between general and political participation in other forms of online participation. Political participants were mainly male, 25-54 years old, from higher social classes and highly educated. Largely, the driver for their participation was a desire to give their own personal opinion.

This can be seen to mean that changes towards a more active audience, towards greater diversity and representation may be overrated; to a large extent, it is still the usual suspects who engage in online political commentary and interaction. What is changing, however, are the overall discourse, and through this participants may be able to influence agendasetting and gatekeeping processes in the mainstream media. We need to zoom in to the 5-odd percent of politically active users to better understand what they’re doing, who they are, and what their motivations are.

Additionally, there is a need to examine these 5% as opinion leaders, and as hubs in a new two-step flow of communication. Indeed, what is the direction of those flows – across what media platforms, in what directions? Such examinations are especially important for smaller nations like the Netherlands, which are often underresearched by larger international surveys.