Mémoire
| Résumé : | This thesis holds forth whether an instrument such as the internet can re-energize political sophistication and democracy by answering the following question: How does the internet affect voters turnout, in France? In today society, the impact of the internet in the political sphere has deepened considerably over the years. Addressing a blind spot of the debate about the effects of the internet on political participation, we choose to scrutinize this topic from a stand point that has been vastly argued to be at the core of political participation, namely, political sophistication. In other word, the political knowledge and awareness of citizens. Several empirical studies witnessed a positive correlation between political sophistication and voter turnout. However, political sophistication hasn’t been revaluated since the expansion of the internet. Therefore, our objective is to analyze if the enormous amount of information, as well as the low cost of information available on the internet can enhance political sophistication and, as a snowball effect, impact turnout.Conducting this data analysis allowed us to confirm that the internet is indeed a pervasive environment able to enhance political sophistication. However, this Information and Communication Technologies occurs more as an amplifier of citizens existing conditions and opportunities than a tool reducing inequality by itself. Analyzing the opportunity to enhance political sophistication by way of the internet at various levels, such as the digital political conversation via the political use of Twitter, the exposure of information on the internet, and the evolution of penetration rate from the year 2012 to 2017, years of the most digital election to date, highlighted that all the possibilities brought by the internet fail short of bringing valuable change to existing structures. |
