Political Participation in Mexico Offline and Through Twitter

Abstract

We used survey data and collected data from the online social network Twitter between October 5, 2015 to November 9, 2015 to provide an overview related to political participation in Mexico. With the former we provided a qualitative assessment of participation by examining electoral participation, participation between regions, interest in politics and sources of political information. With Twitter data, we described the intensity of participation, we identified locations of high activity and identified movements including agencies behind them. We compare and contrast participation in Mexico to its counterpart in Twitter. We show that participation seems to be decreasing. However, participation through Twitter seems to be increasing. Our research points towards the emergence of Twitter as a significant platform in terms of political participation in Mexico. Our study analyses the impact of how different agencies related to social movements can enhance participation through Twitter. We show that emergent topics are important because they could help to explore how politics becomes of public interest.