1.
Outlining New Paths to Democracy
A Profile of Online Content Creators and its Participatory Effects
Ingrid Bachmann
Teresa Correa
Homero Gil de Zúñ iga
School of Journalism
University of Texas at Austin
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ONLINE JOURNALISM

2.
Rationale
The Web increasingly offers greater opportunities and
spaces for people to create, interact, and share material
online
Scholars have found that these creative behaviors are
not randomly distributed among groups
 Socio-demographic differences
 Psychological differences
Engaging in these creative activities may be important for
the democratic agenda

3.
Creating content
This study focuses on the creation of online political
content among US adults, and examines
 socio-demographic characteristics
 psychological predictors (personality traits and life satisfaction)
 political and civic effects (online and offline)
Political content creation:
 creating blogs
 posting comments on blogs
 contributing with citizen news
 uploading videos to the Internet

4.
Methods
Web-based survey
National data
Valid cases 1,482 (17.3% response rate)
Variables/Measures
Demographics
Life satisfaction, emotional stability, openness to new
experiences, extraversion
Media use & media trust
Participation
Online content creation

5.
Findings
Content
creation
Gender Race Education Income Age
Content
creation
--
Gender .04 --
Race -.04 .02 --
Education -.05 -.12*** -.05 --
Income -.07* -.13*** -.02 .42*** --
Age -.16*** -.12** .18*** .06* -.03 --
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001

6.
Findings
Content
creation
Extraversion
Emotional
stability
Openness to
new
experiences
Life
satisfaction
Content
creation
--
Extraversion .10* --
Emotional
stability
-.10** .10** --
Openness to
new
experiences
-.06# .35*** .18** --
Life
satisfaction
-.10* .14*** .40*** .10* --
# p <.10, * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001

7.
Findings
Online political
participation
Offline political
participation
Civic
participation
Demographics
R2 3.7%*** 13.4%*** 6.6%***
Personality traits
R2 2.5%*** 4.5%*** 4.8%***
Media use and trust
R2 22.2%*** 5.7%*** 15.3%***
Online content
creation
R2
12.5*** 3.0%*** 3.1%***
TOTAL R2
41.0%*** 26.5%*** 29.9%***
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001

8.
Conclusions
For certain people (young, lower income, extraverted,
less stable, less satisfied with their life) less favorable
segments of society, the Web may allow the space for
them to contribute to civic society and perhaps mitigate
their political frustrations.
Results indicate that the Internet may indeed be
providing new paths to foster modern democracies.
As the population of content creators online grows, so
does the possibilities for these citizens and other users to
engage civically and politically.