POLS 34102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Early Voting, Asian Americans
29 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
CH 08 OUTLINE
Forms of Political Participation
1. Political participation refers to a wide range of activities designed to influence government.
Political participation can fall into two major categories: traditional political participation and online
digital political participation.
2. Common forms of traditional political participation are voting, protest, and volunteering or
fund-raising for a campaign.
3. Throughout American history, there has been a progressive, if uneven, expansion of suffrage
to groups previously denied suffrage, such as African Americans, women, and youths.
4. Though the United States now has a system of universal suffrage, voter turnout continues to
be low.
5. Online Digital political participation influences government by using the Internet, including
mobilizing support through email, visiting candidate websites, and campaigning on social
networking sites, and signing online petitions.
6. By 2016, virtually every serious candidate for higher office has social media accounts to reach
supporters, who in turn can signal amplify the candidate's message to their own friends and
followers.
7. Research suggests that digital politics does have an impact on participation, and new forms,
like expressive politics, such as the sharing of hashtags and symbolic profile pictures.
8. Digital participation reproduces some of the inequalities of offline life, but candidates have
found campaigning online extremely attractive because it is cost-effective and reaches a wide
audience.
Who Participates?
1. Americans with a high socioeconomic status are much more likely to participate in politics than
those with less education and less income.
2. One of the most significant patterns in political participation is that older people have much
higher rates of participation than young people.
3. Several strategies of mobilization emerged to guide African Americans' quest for equality in
the twentieth century, including protest, legal action, and political pressure. But the question
remains whether political participation can improve the lives of African Americans, especially the
poor.
4. Latinos, the largest minority in the United States, have relatively low levels of political
participation, partially due to a low naturalization rate. In many years, Latino political
organizations have attempted to tap this "sleeping giant" of political influence.
5. The diversity of national backgrounds among Asian Americans has impeded the development
of group-based political power.
6. The ongoing significance of gender issues in American politics are best exemplified by the
gender gap and the increase in the number of women holding public office.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
