Social media use and participation: a meta-analysis of current research

AbstractSocial media has skyrocketed to popularity in the past few years. The Arab Spring in 2011 as well as the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns have fueled interest in how social media might affect citizens’ participation in civic and political life. In response, researchers have produced 36 studies assessing the relationship between social media use and participation in civic and political life. This manuscript presents the results of a meta-analysis of research on social media use and participation. Overall, the metadata demonstrate a positive relationship between social media use and participation. More than 80% of coefficients are positive. However, questions remain about whether the relationship is causal and transformative. Only half of the coefficients were statistically significant. Studies using panel data are less likely to report positive and statistically significant coefficients between social media use and participation, compared to cross-sectional surveys. The metadata also suggest that social media use has minimal impact on participation in election campaigns.Keywords: social mediasocial networkingpoliticssocial movementsresearch methodology Notes on contributorShelley Boulianne earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She conducts research on media use and public opinion, as well as civic and political engagement, using meta-analysis techniques, experiments and surveys. In 2013, she won the Best Paper award from the Communication and Information Technologies section of the American Sociological Association. email: bouliannes@macewan.ca