Social Media Use and Political Mobilization

Abstract

This article describes how political participation is a central component of democracy. Past research has found that a variety of factors drive individual decisions about participation, including the media that citizens use to gain political information. Social media offers the possibility of engaging citizens in a new way and potentially increasing various forms of participation. In this article, the role that social media use has in fostering a variety for forms of political participation is examined. This article finds that social media use can be a driver of participation, but that this impact is largely contingent on the political predispositions of the user.