Relationship between online and offline political participation in sub-national campaigns

Abstract

As part of the study of electoral behavior in digital environments, the question arises as to whether electoral campaigns with a high presence in socio-digital networks stimulate online participation by citizens and if this translates into a higher offline participation. In order to know and compare the relationship between online and offline political participation, in its conventional and non-conventional modalities, we applied a post-electoral digital analytical survey to the electoral campaigns of the Mexican states of Nuevo León in 2015 (N = 294) and Puebla in 2016 (N = 301), the first highly focused on digital media as opposed to the second. We found differences in digital involvement, which have an impact on the electoral game. For Nuevo León, we found a greater relationship between the use of social networks and the predisposition to participate online, while in Puebla non-conventional political participation was most related to the predisposition to participate politically online. We explain these findings in relation to the degree of digitization of each campaign and the techno-social context in general.