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Ideological Views, Social Media Habits, and Information Literacy

  • Conference paper
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Information Literacy: Key to an Inclusive Society (ECIL 2016)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 676))

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Abstract

According to liberal political theory, democracy can flourish only to the extent to which its citizenry have free access to information, are able to reason well, and, consequently, are able to make reasonable choices. The advent of Web 2.0 had opened up new ways to access, share and publish information about politics. Hence, many have argued how Web 2.0 represents the ultimate realization of participatory democracy. On the other hand, new information technologies have enabled consumers to filter and select content they want to be exposed to, thus making it possible for people to deprive themselves of “cross cutting” content. This could lead to group fragmentation and political polarization which is in contradiction with the republican ideal of deliberative democracy. By conducting a survey on social media habits on Facebook, the author tested this thesis about polarization in the case of Croatian students.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Digital democracy can be defined as “the pursuit and the practice of democracy in whatever view using digital media in online and offline political communication” [15, p. 3].

  2. 2.

    A gap between those “online and off line that falls along socioeconomic, ethnic, racial, and gender lines”.

  3. 3.

    Cross cutting content refers to “content with an ideological bent that is shared by, for example, a liberal, and then is consumed by a conservative, and vice versa” [24].

  4. 4.

    The tendency of individuals with similar sociodemographic, behavioural and interpersonal characteristic to associate with one another. According to McPherson et al., “homophily limits people’s social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience” [32, p. 415].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Applied Sciences “Baltazar” Zaprešić, Zaprešić, Croatia

    Stjepan Lacković

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  1. Stjepan Lacković
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Correspondence to Stjepan Lacković .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hacettepe University, Beytepe, Ankara, Turkey

    Serap Kurbanoğlu

  2. Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France

    Joumana Boustany

  3. University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Sonja Špiranec

  4. University of California (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, USA

    Esther Grassian

  5. University of California (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, USA

    Diane Mizrachi

  6. University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA

    Loriene Roy

  7. Hacettepe University, Beytepe, Ankara, Turkey

    Tolga Çakmak

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Lacković, S. (2016). Ideological Views, Social Media Habits, and Information Literacy. In: Kurbanoğlu, S., et al. Information Literacy: Key to an Inclusive Society. ECIL 2016. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 676. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52162-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52162-6_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52161-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52162-6

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