Reasons to Participate: The Role of Political Attitudes in Digital Activism

Abstract

In this paper, we study the effects of political attitudes on digital activism. We operationalise political attitudes through three constructs used in classical political science studies: citizenship norms, institutional trust and psychological political engagement. In addition, following the social-psychological models of explanation of political conduct, we suggest the existence of a qualitative difference between the affective component of attitudes, which would coincide with psychological political engagement, and the cognitive component of attitudes, which are made up of political beliefs and values. The latter influences the former, which, in turn, has an influence on political conduct. To achieve our goals, we have analysed digital political participation in Spain. Our results support the qualitative differentiation between cognitive and affective components of attitudes; as a result, there is a clear need to study those political beliefs that specifically characterise digital activism.