DEMOKRATI I ENKOMMUNIKATONSTEKNOLOGISK EPOK : En kvantitativ studie om sociala mediers inverkan på medborgarnas stöd för denrepresentativa demokratin

Sammanfattning: Internet and social media are technologies that have increased in recent times, does it have potential for solving problems of democracy? Some researchers claim that the new technology brings new forms of communication and eases information gathering. While others believe that the technology leads to an individualization, which in turn weakens democracy. The aim of this study is to recognize causes and consequences of the Swedish citizens use of social media in the representative democracy.To achieve the purpose two tasks will be performed. The first one will be an analytical model to test two hypotheses about how the use of social media affects the individuals support for representative democracy. Second, empirical analyzes of the data from a national survey will be carried out to test the two hypotheses, the data is conducted through a statistical analysis. Based on this, an overall research question is formulated which reads: How does the individual's use of social media effect their support to representative democracy?The analyses reveals that the citizen’s use of social media has raised high expectations of vitalization and change of the representative democracy. This indicates that new technologies may reshape the political system and form new ways of political participation that strengthens democracy.