Asymmetrisch verteilte Teilhabe

In an increasingly networked world, the internet offers comprehensive opportunities for political communication and, above all, communicative participation. More and more citizens are making use of this offer. The Reuters Digital News Report (RDNS) for 2022 documents for the first time that the internet is the main source of political information. The personal exchange of political topics, positions and opinions is seen as having a high potential for democratization in society. Follow-up communication on the internet is seen as an extension of the possibilities for desirable participation and inclusion of as many citizens as possible in political discourse. It can contribute to a revitalization and strengthening of representative democracy, as the discourse between political opinion camps and beyond the boundaries of personal communication networks is promoted. Researchers disagree on the extent to which this potential can be realized. On the one hand, studies point out that the possibilities of follow-up communication intensify the political debate and strengthen the inclusion of individual citizens. On the other hand, there are doubts as to whether this debate takes place across opinion camps and thus stimulates the political discourse, thus fulfilling the claim of being open to the public. Rather, there are fears that follow-up communication will take place in opinion-compliant environments (echo chambers). Doubts are also expressed as to whether the potential for democratization can be realized when assessing the potential for inclusion. An overview of the studies shows that the opportunities for follow-up communication are not used equally by all social groups, but by a group of people with a high socio-economic status and/or high political involvement that is not representative of the population. Based on this profile of users, it can be stated that the opposite of overall social inclusion, namely a growing gap in communicative participation, can be observed. The empirical findings on this are mainly the result of micro-level studies. However, the extent to which different social groups actually enter into communicative exchange with each other via the possibilities of follow-up communication can only be answered to a limited extent, as although these work out predictors to explain usage, they do not make any statements about the consequences of simultaneous stratification and segmentation processes in society. This study addresses this research desideratum and pursues the following research question with reference to the meso-level milieu approach: What differences can be identified between different milieus in terms of their participation in opportunities for follow-up communication?

The data basis for answering the research question was provided by an online survey conducted by Respondi in July 2020, which was split according to the characteristics of age, gender, education, occupation and location. Follow-up communication was conducted via the question used in the RDNS “In an average week, in which of the following ways do you share or actively participate in news and information source coverage, if at all? Please select all that apply”. The items were then summarized into four groups of follow-up communication activities that differed in terms of their degree of activity or participation. The twelve political-communicative milieus are the result of a cluster analysis with the topologizing variables proximity and distance to the political sphere (stratificatory dimension), measured via internal and external political efficacy, as well as the respondents’ positioning on two lines of conflict that characterize German political culture, measured via agreement with three conflicting value positions in each case. The results are presented for three milieus as examples. The selected milieus represent three typical forms of integration of social subgroups into the public sphere: (1) integrated milieus, (2) milieus with isolationist tendencies and (3) milieus disconnected from public discourse.

The findings show that the patterns of follow-up communication coincide with the knowledge of other communication practices in the political-communicative milieus. A politically self-confident, committed and informed milieu makes particular use of proactive opportunities to debate and exchange opinions. A milieu that is reluctant to participate in communication participates just as little in follow-up communication and thus disconnects itself from an integrated communication space. Milieus that isolate themselves place a strong focus on reactive forms of follow-up communication that are used to permanently affirm their own views.

These milieu-specific usage patterns support the findings of other studies that doubt the strengthening of communicative participation in society as a whole through the possibilities of follow-up communication and rather speak of an increasing divide between different social groups. The findings clearly show that communication spaces created by follow-up communication provide a distorted picture of social opinion distributions and positions, which are rather unsuitable as the sole source of information and research for politicians and journalists for the social climate of opinion.