DIGITAL ISSUE MOVEMENTS: PREDICTING ONLINE AND OFFLINE CLIMATE ACTIVISM
Cato Waeterloos, Michel Walrave, Koen Ponnet
Abstract for the Political Communication Division, presented at Etmaal 2021
Digital media have added a new layer onto citizens ways of participating in civic and political life. Scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the fluid, personalized and creative forms of citizenship that are often enabled by social media platforms (Bang, 2005; Bennett &
Segerberg, 2012). Moreover, a growing body of literature acknowledges these forms of
‘digitally networked participation’ as proper political acts and therefore as an addition to citizens’ political repertoires, rather than a threat (Halupka, 2014; Theocharis, 2015). In addition to the changes in how one can be engaged, there are also significant changes in what people engage in (Ekström & Sveningsson, 2019). In this regard, the emergence of single issue movements illustrates how especially young citizens might be longing for more customized engagement (Kahne, Hodgin & Eidman-Aadahl, 2016). Indeed, evidence has shown how youth are developing new participation patterns, where democratic engagement is more short-term, spontaneous and case-oriented (Andersen et al., 2020). In turn, the rise of case-oriented politics embeds perfectly into the logic of connective action, where digital media allow citizens to adapt certain issues and causes to their personal experiences, if deemed relevant (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012).
Most research towards these changing political repertoires seems to focus on the predictive relationship between online media use and offline political engagement (Boulianne, 2018).
However, less research has been concerned with unraveling the predictors of both online and offline engagement within the same single issue movement. Therefore, this paper focusses on the case of the worldwide climate strikes in 2018 and 2019 and the movement behind it. One of the main variables of interest in this study is political efficacy. The concept of self-efficacy is rooted within social cognitive theory and concerns judgements about how well one can execute certain courses of action required to deal with prospective situations (Bandura, 1977, 1982). Many studies have proven the importance of efficacy in the context of political behavior (e.g. Wilkins et al., 2019; Yu, 2016). However, as noted by Velasquez and LaRose (2015a), measures of efficacy beliefs should be tailored to the context under study. Therefore,
this paper includes four different types of efficacy, tailored to both the social media modes of action, as well as the issue movement in which the political actions are embedded. Apart from efficacy, social cognitive theory also provides theoretical grounds to consider climate issue involvement as a predictor of both offline and online forms of climate related activism (Bandura, 1977).
This paper relies on data from a paper and pencil survey among 689 high school students in Flanders, Belgium. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to test whether (1) different forms of political efficacy, issue involvement and motivations for online self- expression are associated with two types of political participation on Facebook, and (2) political efficacies and issue involvement are associated with offline political participation regarding the climate issue.
Our results indicate how different types of efficacy tend to explain different forms of participation. Internal political efficacy, which describes one’s belief in his capability to influence government decisions, was a positive predictor of follower SNS participation and offline participation, but not expressive SNS participation. This might be explained by the fact that expressive participation on social media is not necessarily targeted towards the government, but rather a way of raising awareness. In turn, collective cause efficacy, which is the belief that we as citizens can solve the climate issue, was only predictive of follower SNS participation. The latter is a type of participation that is driven by citizens spreading and enhancing actions instigated by others on social media. The importance of collective efficacy in this regard is not surprising as this type of efficacy focusses on the power of the collective to bring about social and political change, which seems to correspond with follower SNS participation. In a similar manner, social media internal efficacy (i.e. the belief that one can employ SNS as a political tool) was a positive and significant predictor of expressive SNS participation, which is a type of participation on SNS where citizens create original content in the context of a social or political issue. Citizens who engage in this type of behaviour are the instigators of these actions, which can then spread among their networks. Our results indicate that for someone to claim this role as ‘political instigator’, there must exist a belief in the capability to employ these platforms accordingly.
Surprisingly, environmental concern was a negative predictor of expressive SNS behaviour, but a positive predictor of offline participation, as expected. This might be explained by the
flexible nature of SNS participation, which allows opponents of a certain movement to
‘hijack’ the online discourse on the cause. As such, it is likely that people who criticized the climate movement were more likely to engage on social media, while people most concerned and thus in favor of the movement engaged in offline participation.
Finally, with regard to the role of different motivations to engage in SNS participation we found that, of all considered motivations, only the motive of disseminating information was a positive and significant predictor (both for expressive and follower SNS participation). This is interesting, as this contradicts the so-called ‘slacktivism hypothesis’: SNS participation does not occur mainly as a way to impress others and construct a certain social image. Rather, it functions as an important way to raise awareness on a certain topic
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