Digital activism and democratic culture: can digital technologies help save democracy?

Silva, Diego Moraes; Kemer, Thaise

doi:10.1590/1981-3821202200020004

Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Brasil

Brazilian Political Science Review

Español English

Brasil

Español English

sumário « anterior atual seguinte »

Sumário

ARTICLE • Braz. political sci. rev. 16 (2) • 2022 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-3821202200020004 copy

Digital activism and democratic culture: can digital technologies help save democracy?

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

This study investigates digital activism and democratic culture among citizens of São Paulo, Brazil. It aims to understand: 01. whether digital participation is becoming a surrogate instance of other forms of participation; and 02. whether digital activists share a specific political culture regarding democratic attitudes and behaviors. Drawing on a representative sample of 2,417 interviews, we apply multivariate analysis techniques to characterize digital activists in terms of political participation and democratic culture. Our findings show that digital participation complements – rather than replaces – other forms of participation. We also found that although the levels of democratic culture among digital-only activists were lower than among activists who participate in several arenas, digital-only activists embrace democratic culture more significantly than non-activists. This finding suggests that digital-only participation could be an important first step in developing democratic attitudes in individuals, albeit this form of participation is not sufficient to foster the highest level of democratic culture.

Digital democracy; Digital activism; Political participation; Democratic culture; Local democracy

	Electoral participation	Institutional participation	Associative participation	Demonstrative participation	Digital participation
Never	75.07%	74.37%	59.31%	69.49%	56.89%
Rarely	11.23%	12.71%	14.61%	12.01%	11.73%
Sometimes	7.51%	7.94%	15.88%	11.33%	15.27%
Often	1.87%	2.14%	3.88%	2.92%	5.86%
Always	4.17%	2.70%	6.18%	4.25%	10.13%
Missing	0.15%	0.14%	0.14%	0.00%	0.12%

Number of arenas	% of all individuals	% from electoral activists	% from institutional activists	% from associative activists	% from demonstrative activists	% from digital activists
0	74.03%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
1	14.53%	22.90%	14.28%	30.87%	21.63%	48.77%
2	6.00%	25.82%	25.27%	29.40%	33.39%	24.24%
3	2.84%	21.22%	23.38%	19.15%	25.61%	14.61%
4	1.66%	22.39%	28.01%	15.46%	12.91%	9.03%
5	0.44%	7.25%	9.06%	4.36%	6.11%	2.74%
Missing	0.50%	0.42%	0.00%	0.76%	0.35%	0.61%

Number of observations	PCs	Eigenvalue	Difference	% of variance	Cumulative %
2,403	PC1	2.6943	1.9563	53.89%	53.89%
Number of components	PC2	0.7380	0.1715	14.76%	68.65%
5	PC3	0.5665	0.0548	11.33%	79.98%
Rho	PC4	0.5117	0.0222	10.23%	90.21%
1	PC5	0.4895	-	9.79%	100.00%
Variables	PC1	PC2	PC3	PC4	PC5
Electoral participation	0.449	-0.430	0.498	-0.059	0.600
Institutional participation	0.455	-0.449	0.088	0.281	-0.709
Associative participation	0.453	-0.120	-0.839	0.027	0.273
Demonstrative participation	0.458	0.368	0.093	-0.769	-0.232
Digital participation	0.418	0.679	0.174	0.570	0.085

	Digital-only activists ( n = 203)	Wide-spectrum activists ( n = 154)	Non-activists ( n = 1,707)
% of male	44.17%	55.70%	45.91%
% of young (from 16 to 29 years old)	33.12%	21.68%*	31.73%
% of highly educated (with higher education or more)	34.81%	47.23%	17.86%*
% of employed	64.97%	64.23%	56.65%*
% of high-income (household income above 10 minimum wages)	3.51%	5.07%*	1.90%*
% of non-religious	38.25%	34.05%	30.76%
% of single	45.90%	40.07%	42.14%
% of white	42.09%	46.76%	38.06%
% of left-wing (far-left, left, and center-left of the political spectrum)	29.77%	39.30%*	20.92%

	Digital-only activists ( n = 203)	Wide-spectrum activists ( n = 154)	Non-activists ( n = 1,707)
% of high level of political knowledge	37.24%	46.63%*	27.91%*
% of high level of willingness to get politically informed	64.40%	83.37%*	22.67%*
% of high diversity of sources of information	64.79%	72.55%	28.84%*
% of high level of political tolerance	19.04%	30.47%*	6.86%*
% of high level of openness to dialogue	46.99%	61.61%*	12.58%*
% of high level of openness to change	13.98%	28.82%*	6.17%*
% of strong sense of legitimacy of the law	39.14%	45.26%	27.07%*
% of high level of rejection of democracy relativization	34.66%	51.92%*	28.50%
% of high level of preference for democracy	45.68%	57.90%	29.86%*

Associação Brasileira de Ciência Política Avenida Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 315, sala 2047, CEP 05508-900, Tel.: (55 11) 3091-3754 - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: bpsr@brazilianpoliticalsciencareview.org

Acompanhe os números deste periódico no seu leitor de RSS

[1] Correspondence: Diego Moraes Silva. E-mail: moraessilva.diego@gmail.com