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Social media use and voting intention in the 2012 Quebec election campaign

  • Data, Measures and Methods
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French Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

The study of the relationship between online social media use and offline political action has mostly limited itself to an examination of political participation (or civic engagement) patterns. Does social media use also relate to the formation of citizens’ voting preferences during an election campaign? We examine this question using individual-level public opinion survey data collected during the 2012 provincial election campaign in Quebec. We find that the relationship between voting intention and social media use is significant, that it is stronger than that found for traditional (or offline) media use, and that it is stronger in the case of voting intention in favor of non-mainstream political parties.

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Notes

  1. Insightful conversations with Professor Dave Holford (Department of Management and Technology, Université du Québec à Montréal) regarding the impact of technology on social life have significantly influenced this paper, which would not have been written without his encouragements. We thank him very much for these stimulating discussions.

  2. The recent Canadian literature on this topic includes three major contributions (Marland et al. 2012, 2014, 2017).

  3. The data presented in Tables 1 and 2 are adapted from material collected by and presented in Giasson et al. (2013: 137, 142). On the use of social media by Quebec parties in the 2012 election, see also the elite interview data presented in Giasson et al. (2019).

  4. We thank Professor Bittner for granting us permission to use these data.

  5. The five media variables are only weakly correlated with each other, so their simultaneous inclusion into the model is not causing any estimation problems. Recall that Table 3 showed the user profiles to be quite different from one media to another.

  6. If political interest is added to Table 4’s model as a control, only the relationship between social media use and a vote for the PVQ (over the PLQ) ceases to be statistically significant (p = 0.107); all the other relationships remain unaffected.

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  1. Department of Political Science, McGill University, 855 Shebrooke Street West, Montreal, QC, H3A 2T7, Canada

    Éric Bélanger

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Correspondence to Éric Bélanger.

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Bélanger, É. Social media use and voting intention in the 2012 Quebec election campaign. Fr Polit 17, 468–481 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41253-019-00094-6

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