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
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.