An investigation into the elastic constants of rocks, more especially with reference to cubic compressibility

Abstract

Political participation is undisputedly essential to democracy. Yet, research continually shows that some people—usually those who are older, more educated, and wealthier— participate more than others and that overall participation is on the decline. Journalists, politicians, and pundits regularly assert that the Internet is a panacea to declining participation's threat to democracy, but scholarly studies on the subject have produced mixed results. Using the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES), this paper assesses the relationship between online and offline political participation during the 2008 presidential election. I find that online participation positively predicts offline participation, but this predictive power is less impressive when we group offline participatory activities into two categories—high and low effort—based upon the amount of effort they demand. Specifically, I find that online participation has a substantially smaller effect on high intensity offline participation.