Does the Medium still Matter? The Influence of Gender and Political Connectedness on Contacting U.S. Public Officials On
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Does the Medium still Matter? The Influence of Gender and Political Connectedness on Contacting U.S. Public Officials Online and Offline Jennifer Brundidge & Kanghui Baek & Thomas J. Johnson & Larissa Williams
Published online: 9 April 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract This study employs a secondary analysis of U.S. nationally representative data from the Pew Internet 2008 civic engagement survey (N=2251) to examine the degree to which contacting public officials both online and offline is explained by the variables of gender and political connectedness. We find that while women are somewhat less likely to contact public officials through direct means, such as emailing or writing a letter, they are more likely to sign petitions, offline and especially online. Gender gaps in direct forms of contact are smaller in the online context than the offline context. We additionally find that that gender moderates the relationship between political connectedness developed via social networking sites and contacting public officials, such that women gain even further advantage in signing online petitions, but also gain further disadvantage in writing a letter/calling public officials and signing offline petitions. Finally, we find that political connectedness, achieved via social networking sites and offline
J. Brundidge (*) Department of Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78705, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. Baek : T. J. Johnson : L. Williams School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78705, USA K. Baek e-mail: [email protected] T. J. Johnson e-mail: [email protected] L. Williams e-mail: [email protected]
contexts, is related to contacting public officials through both online and traditional means, suggesting a blurring of offline and online worlds. Keywords Gender . Contacting public officials . Internet . Online . Political connectedness . Social networking sites
Introduction In the U.S., the rise of the Internet initially raised hopes that the costs of citizenship would be reduced such that women and other marginalized groups might have greater opportunities for learning and political participation (Browning 1996; Rheingold 1991). “Cyberspace” was thought to be a new frontier where anonymity shaped the contours of political communication, enabling “people to explore new relationships and even new identities” (Etzioni and Etzioni 1997, p. 295). Yet in contrast with these expectations, most early empirical research suggests that Internet use widened gendered political participation gaps (e.g., Bimber 1999; Katz and Rice 2002; Kennedy et al. 2003). Somewhat surprisingly, conclusions from these early studies essentially remain the state of the art. In spite of a dramatically altered contemporary media environment, more recent research has failed to thoroughly examine the lifespan of early empirical findings. We therefore employ U.S. nationally representative data from the Pew Internet 2008 Civic
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