Alexandra Masciantonio, Gerasimos Spanakis & Philippe Verduyn (2023)
Working on Europe Paper Series, paper number: 4/2023
Abstract
The popularity of social media has raised questions about the impact of these platforms on civic life in Europe. In order to inform future research and provide relevant insights for policymakers and citizens, we conducted a scoping review of 49 records that deal with this relationship. The records showed that social media use is overall positively associated with many areas of civic life, especially political participation. However, the nature of this relationship depends on a wide range of factors including citizens characteristics (who), usage motivations (why), usage types (how), platforms features (what) and usage context (when). The article concludes by discussing avenues for future research.
Keywords: Europe, citizen, social media, Twitter, Facebook, political participation.
