Digital activism and democratic culture: can digital technologies help save democracy?

• Autor(a) principal: Silva,Diego Moraes
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Kemer,Thaise
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Political Science Review
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1981-38212022000200205
• topic: Digital democracy; Digital activism; Political participation; Democratic culture; Local democracy

This study investigates digital activism and democratic culture among citizens of São Paulo, Brazil. It aims to understand: 01. whether digital participation is becoming a surrogate instance of other forms of participation; and 02. whether digital activists share a specific political culture regarding democratic attitudes and behaviors. Drawing on a representative sample of 2,417 interviews, we apply multivariate analysis techniques to characterize digital activists in terms of political participation and democratic culture. Our findings show that digital participation complements – rather than replaces – other forms of participation. We also found that although the levels of democratic culture among digital-only activists were lower than among activists who participate in several arenas, digital-only activists embrace democratic culture more significantly than non-activists. This finding suggests that digital-only participation could be an important first step in developing democratic attitudes in individuals, albeit this form of participation is not sufficient to foster the highest level of democratic culture.