Political Inequality in the Digital World: The Puzzle of Asian American Political Participation Online

Abstract

This paper adds to existing literature by reassessing the racial participation gap after placing online activity within the repertoire of minorities’ political actions. Even though Asian Americans are the most resourced in terms of Internet access, I theorize about how individual and structural-level impediments uniquely disadvantage this group from participating in politics online—widening overall participation disparities. Using data from the 2016 National Asian American Survey, I find that while the racial participation gap is similar for Latina/os and African Americans compared to whites, regardless of the activity’s platform either offline or online, disparities magnify solely for Asian Americans when considering digital modes of political behavior. The paper ends by noting how the Internet may contribute to rather than solve issues of political inequality across race and discusses distortions in which political voices are heard or muted offline and online.

Keywords

Asian American politics online political participation gap race and ethnicity political behavior

Introduction

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the United States. Along these lines, the overall share of Asian Americans in the electorate has also increased (Budiman 2020; File 2015). While voting may be one way in which the group can make their voice heard, Asian Americans can additionally make their impact on the political system by participating in other activities. This includes both electoral and non-electoral participation. However, Asian Americans may take further political action on the Internet. Online forms of involvement do not restrict action by political integration nor exclude the opportunity to participate to U.S. citizens. To include online modes into the repertoire of Asian American political participation is particularly important given they lead in terms of Internet access compared to other racial groups. While it is well documented that Asian Americans are le it is well documented that Asian Americans are less politically involved than their counterparts, there may be potential to make up lost ground in expressing their voice by taking action online. The conditions are seemingly fertile for there to be a shift toward equalization of the racial political participation gap. However, as I will lay out in full, we should be cautious about this assumption.

There are several goals of this paper. First is to include online activities more explicitly within the repertoire of Asian American political participation. This is crucial as Dalton (2017, 128) argues that the Internet “creates new ways for people to engage politically: to connect with others, to gather and share information, and to attempt to influence the political process.” The second is to theorize about the consequences of the overall Asian American political participation gap, inclusive of digital activism. The third is to empirically reassess the size of the racial participation gap after accounting for both offline and online activities. To accomplish these goals, I will answer the following research questions: To what extent do Asian Americans see online as a space for their politics? What disadvantages does the group face online, both on the individual and structural-level, and why do such factors shape discrepancies in Asian Americans’ online political behavior? Despite having more Internet resources, how does the proliferation of the Internet contribute to rather than reduce political inequality for Asian Americans?

I start with an overview of the status of the Asian American offline political participation gap. Then, I review the literature which examines the relationship between Internet usage and political involvement; I note that Asian Americans do not fit in well with previous explanations and that there needs to be a renewed understanding of the overall racial participation gap when including consideration of e-activities. I, then, propose a theory which accounts for both individual and structural-level impediments, which pose unique challenges to Asian American political participation online. My derived hypothesis suggests that the Asian American political participation gap widens when accounting for both online and offline behavior. Next, I test and find support for this expectation using the 2016 National Asian American Survey. While the gap in offline or online participation between Latina/os and African Americans compared to whites remains constant, the Asian American-White gap magnifies when comparing online to offline action. While Asian Americans are already less active on the ground, they fall even further behind in their political activity online. This is even though they access the Internet at the highest rates. I also empirically assess what mitigates this racial participation gap online according to the factors I proposed. This includes noting variation in psychological political interest, pan-ethnic identification, and recruitment. I conclude by discussing implications for Asian Americans’ political voice and inequality, particularly in an era characterized by the use of social media and the Internet.

The Asian American Political Participation Gap

The Asian American political participation gap has often been studied with a comparative frame of reference, looking at their rates of activity relative to other racial groups. In terms of voter turnout, Asian Americans lag behind (Krogstad 2014; Leighley and Nagler 2013; Ong and Nakanishi 1996; Ramakrishnan 2005). In a comprehensive study, Wong et al. (2011, 22) find that in the 2008 presidential election, “Asian Americans tied with Latinos at 57%, and behind whites at 74% and African Americans at 77%.” This trend persists with more recent data that Fraga (2018) presents from the Current Population Surveys and American National Election Studies.

In line with how Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) conceptually define political participation as “activity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action either directly or indirectly (p. 38),” voting is not the only mode of action important to consider. Asian Americans may turn out to vote less often because some may not have access to the ballot box but “rather than being passive objects of social forces, Asian American men and women have been pragmatic and calculating actors who have adopted a multifaceted style of politics to maximize their chances of survival and [realizing] their interests” (Lien 2001, xii). Political activities beyond voting, then, are important to take into account for them. Yet research shows that this gap also remains across political activities apart from voting (Lien 2001; Wong et al. 2011).

Scholars have thought about why this disparity persists across different actions. They argue that socio-demographic and compositional factors such as differences in average age, income, and education explain the gap in political participation between whites and minorities (Leighley and Nagler 2013; Ramakrishnan 2005; Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2013). Related to immigration status, those born outside of the United States may also have high information costs to become involved in politics (Barreto 2005; Frey 2013). Accompanying the lack of resources to stay politically informed and lack of language assistance, Asian Americans are often not recruited into politics in the same manner as other groups. Particularly in an era of weak institutions (DeSipio 2011), they may be left out from outreach efforts by the Democratic or Republican Parties (Kim 2007) and by other mobilization efforts (Ramírez, Solano, and Wilcox-Archuleta 2018). García-Castañon et al. (2019) note the lack of partisan recruitment efforts at influencing minorities’ political involvement, although community-based organizations serve as alternatives.

While work on Asian American political participation has grown vastly over the last 20 years (Watanabe 2018), this literature has heavily focused on offline activities. Given the time in which she was writing, Lien (2001) is critical of the notion of cultural docility and political complacency that is often stereotyped of Asian Americans and, as a result, examines voting and non-voting, offline forms of involvement. Similarly, Wong et al. (2011) utilize a survey of Asian Americans, which includes some measures of online activities but focus on five participatory activities: voting, campaign donations, contacting government officials, community activism, and protesting. Some recent scholarship has looked at how Internet engagement and ethnic media consumption may influence political action among Asian Americans (García-Castañon, Rank, and Barreto 2011; Lai 2011). Additionally, Lai (2018) centralizes the relevance of social media and “connective action” as crucial for understanding Asian American politics on Twitter.

With these exceptions, to the best of my knowledge, looking at online political participation as an outcome separate from offline action for Asian Americans has been taken less seriously. Asian American political participation is primarily characterized by voting, electoral, and non-electoral activities. Their participation is also generally confined to offline spaces even though Theocharis and Van Deth (2018, 139) emphasize online modes of action are “creative, expressive, individualized, and digitally enabled (which) can be classified as parts of the repertoire of political participation.” Assessing alternative participation avenues, such as ones that can be done online alongside those traditionally done offline for Asian Americans is important as Masuoka, Ramanathan, and Junn (2019, 995) note that “election-related activities tend to capture (only) a particular set of politically integrated individuals.” Non-electoral actions are privy to a larger share of Asian Americans, regardless of incorporation or citizenship status. Then, online political participation is another potential means to which Asian Americans can voice their public opinion, and thus should be given more attention.

Internet Access and Political Participation

Earlier studies noted that racial minorities fell behind in terms of online access (Livingston 2011; Servon 2008). However, they did not report on the status of Asian American Internet access. More recent evidence suggests that the “digital divide” does not apply to this group. According to Ryan and Lewis (2017), Asian households are most likely to own or use a laptop or desktop. Asian Americans are also most likely to have broadband Internet subscriptions or own/use a smartphone. Perrin (2016) also finds that this group leads in terms of Internet usage, owning a smartphone, or having broadband at home.¹

Given this research shows that Asian Americans are the most digitally wired out of all racial groups, it is somewhat reasonable to expect that they may translate this connective advantage to disproportionately higher political activity online and attempt to equate the overall participation gap. After all, Internet usage has been found to correlate to more political activity. These theories attribute this positive relationship to various reasons. First, the Internet provides opportunities to participate in ways as alternatives to offline political participation. The Internet can substitute for offline platforms (Quan-Haase et al. 2002). Signing petitions is not solely done via writing or on-paper but now can be done through e-petitions (Kenski and Stroud 2006); contacting government officials can also be done through email, which is often more convenient (Boulianne 2009). Second, the Internet expands the types of activities that can be done (Polat 2005). This may be the case for political activity done on social media sites that do not simply substitute for offline political action. Scholars have gone as far to say that the Internet has the “potential to revitalize democracy” through expanding the number of participating individuals (Kenski and Stroud 2006; Krueger 2002).

The Internet also matters for increasing political participation because it is a potential source of information about political issues from candidates and campaigns (Bimber 1999; Dulio, Goff, and Thurber 1999). Coming across this information online lowers time and costs, helping individuals acquire information useful for participation (Boulianne 2009). Information seeking approaches argue that more time spent on the Internet increases the likelihood to be exposed to politically relevant information, which then spurs more political action (Weber, Loumakis, and Bergman 2003). Using social media can also increase participation through information exposure (Bode 2012). Political information can circulate through those in family and friend social media circles (Dimitrova and Bystrom 2013; Pasek, More, and Romer 2009; Towner 2013). Shifts in coverage by television media to Internet sources, which can also provide necessary information, has spurred the influence of the Internet on political participation (Tolbert and McNeal 2003). Boulianne (2018, 15) argues that “clearly, there is a positive relationship between digital media use and participation in civic and political life” (see also: Boulianne 2015).

Studies have further shown that the Internet can equalize differences in political participation between social groups. Some convincing evidence is shown among the younger and older. Delli Carpini (2000) finds that the Internet affects young people’s level of political engagement, as they are most likely of all age groups to be online. Some work has argued for an equating effect by gender and socioeconomic status (Bode 2017; Krueger 2002; Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2013; Weber, Loumakis, and Bergman 2003).

Asian Americans have access to and use the Internet at the highest rates. In line with aforementioned theories, such suggests that since they are most digitally connected, the racial participation gap may close when considering online political activities alongside actions primarily done offline. Asian Americans are in a good position to take advantage of the Internet by expanding their options for voicing their political opinions and may have lowered information costs to participate. As a result, Asian Americans should be able to make up for the disparity in offline political participation through their involvement in online modes, thus closing the overall racial participation gap. This, however, is a strong assumption.

The Puzzle of Asian American Political Participation Online

Theories that argue for the positive relationship between online connectiveness and participation have not looked at how the Internet shapes political behavior specifically for Asian Americans. In addition, studies have not fully shown the extent to which the Internet may equate political participation gaps across race in the same manner as income, age, and gender.² Even with more Internet resources, why might the Asian American action gap widen more in the digital sphere than in the context of in-person political involvement? My theory accounts for individual and structural-level concerns due to variation in (1) political interest, (2) pan-ethnic identity, and (3) recruitment in the digital realm, which I argue drive the Asian American online political participation gap.

Being connected to the Internet may not proportionately translate to political activity done online for Asian Americans to make up lost political ground. Conditional learning models of political behavior argue that increases in media choice may lead to less political knowledge and less involvement in politics. According to Prior (2007), as a “post-broadcast democracy” is characterized by more choice of available media content, individuals can more easily avoid political information. To add, the Internet contains a swarm of non-political information and potential, political distractions, which may come off as overwhelming (Tedesco 2011). Just because one has increased access to online media, does not mean they are destined to consume more information and become more politically active.

The Internet may not necessarily be salient for political involvement, not only due to easy avoidance of political information, but because technology may primarily be used for entertainment (Putnam 2000; Shah, Kwak, and Holdbert 2001), recreational uses, and social interactions (Day, Janus, and Davis 2005; Nie and Erbing 2000). Much of this is related to the admittedly little we know about what Asian Americans actually do online. Even as this digitally wired group has been anecdotally touted as the “Kings of the Internet” (J. Chan 2013), Asian Americans are not as motivated to seek out political information. Spooner and Rainie (2001) note that they are more likely to seek out school, financial, or hobby-related rather than political information. The preference for non-political usage of the Internet among Asian Americans may help explain why the lack of psychological, political motivation or interest does not spillover into proportional online political activity.

In addition, leading in Internet usage may only be a potential resource at Asian Americans’ disposal—one that mimics their higher socioeconomic status. Resources such as income and education have been heavily examined in its relationship to political participation. However, traditional socioeconomic models are unsatisfactory for explaining Asian Americans’ political behavior. It has been argued that they defy conventional wisdom on resource-driven action (Jang 2009; Lien 1994; Shaw, De La Garza, and Lee 2000). Even with more assets, the group underperforms. (Lien 2001; Lien et al. 2001; Nakanishi 1985). Junn (1999) writes that with few exceptions resource-centric models are “grossly undertheorized” (see also: Xu 2005).

It is unlikely then that given these critiques to resource-centric theories that just because Asian Americans have the resources to go on the Internet and do so at higher rates than other racial groups, that the participation gap will close when taking online political activities into account. Furthermore, Fraga (2018) suggests that increases in resources may not change any motivation to be involved in politics. Asian Americans’ advantages in Internet access do not extrapolate well to their equivalent political participation, even online. With all this said, Norris (2001) may be correct in noting that the Internet perpetuates political inequality, exacerbating the divide between those who are already more versus less involved in politics. Even as Asian Americans are widespread Internet users, the literature I previously drawed on suggests they are a relatively lower participating group to begin with. As Schlozman, Verba and Brady (2010) put it: The Internet is only a “weapon of the strong”—in this case leaving out less active Asian Americans.

Leading up to this point, I suggested that Internet resource advantages do not necessarily change Asian Americans’ motivation or interest to be politically involved online. I do not mean to say, however, that the group is disinterested in Internet politics. A next important question, then, is the extent to which Asian Americans even have a sufficient space online needed for digital political participation to manifest. What complicates this individual-level factor, comes with more notable structural issues, which together drive the racial political participation gap online. In reference to on the ground, Watanabe (2018) reminds us that Asian Americans are “strangers from a different shore.” Their place in the U.S. political system remains unclear. If such is the case on the ground, then Asian Americans might be able to find their political footing in the digital sphere. Unfortunately, this is also a strong assumption to make because there are organizational and structural impediments, which hinder Asian Americans from participating in Internet-based politics.

While offline political participation, for example, attending political meetings, often require a physical space for this action to occur, political participation online also needs a digital space for expression. Platforms for online political behavior, for example, on social media, are more available and present when there are strong pan-ethnic group ties. From the minority politics literature, scholars note the malleability of Asian American pan-ethnic identity compared to others’ racial group ties. Solidarity among African Americans is particularly salient, which can be attributed to the group’s unique experience with institutionalized racism and prejudice (Masuoka and Junn 2013; Miller et al. 1981; Sears and Savalei 2006). The stability of this solidarity (Chong and Rogers 2005) as well as the pressure to abide by African American group norms (Chong 2014; White and Laird 2020; White, Laird, and Allen 2014), facilitate the development of a racial politicized space needed for digital political participation. Online venues for group activism and organizing are more present among this community, giving them some space to be involved in online politics. For example, scholars deem digital structures for African Americans as “Black Twitter” (Graham and Smith 2016; McDonald 2014). Political participation online may be a symbolic act, just as other academics suggest is the case for voting (Valenzuela and Michelson 2016). Online, minorities such as African Americans can use social media platforms, to perform their cultural and racial identities (Clarke 2019). African Americans then utilize digital structures and online avenues such as “Black Twitter” in order to organize and participate in politics online on behalf of their racial group by attempting to advance mutually desired interests.

The difficulty for Asian Americans, compared to other racial groups, to share a common pan-ethnic identity with one another helps explain why digital venues are far less developed for them. Even as Asian Americans can muster up and use group-based resources (Wong, Lien, and Conway 2005), the political salience of a pan-ethnic racial identity is less pronounced among this group (Junn and Masuoka 2008; Masuoka 2006; Masuoka and Junn 2013). As McClain et al. (2009) summarize, the malleability of Asian American pan-ethnic identity is due to internal variation in national origin, acculturation, and diversity of languages spoken (see also: Gay, Hochschild, and White 2016). The complexity of the group’s pan-ethnic identity makes it all the more difficult for them to develop sufficient Asian American-centric digital spaces necessary for the group’s online political participation.³

While Asian Americans and Latina/os are both composed of a large share of immigrants, the racial political participation gap may still widen among the former group uniquely. Previous research provides evidence that pan-ethnic solidarity is present among Latina/os (Sanchez 2006; Valdez 2011) and when revisited more recently by Sanchez, Masuoka, and Abrams (2019). Latina/os may further be able to find more digital footing, structure, and opportunity to participate in online politics because many share a common Spanish language for communication. Scholarship has also shown that because of recent changes in demographics and the election of the first Black president, whites are now politically influenced by their identification with similar racial group members, both in terms of in-group solidarity and out-group animosity (Jardina 2019, 2020; Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck 2019). In such, whites may also have the group-based resources needed to incentivize the creation of a digital space for them to participate in politics on the Internet.

It may be the case that Asian Americans do not see the Internet as a means to their own political goals because Asian American digital spaces, even though they do exist, are less developed to begin with compared to that of other racial groups. Difficulties for Asian Americans to establish politically salient pan-ethnic ties has consequences for whether there are sufficiently built organizational, digital structures necessary for them to express their online political voice. On the other hand, the racial group solidarity among African Americans, Latina/os, and recently among whites, incentivizes the creation and stronger development of Internet forums structurally necessary for pursuing and voicing racial group interests by means of online political participation. As a result, Asian Americans who were already disadvantaged offline, fall even further behind in the digital world; this prompts the widening of the Asian American political participation gap.

When these digital mediums are less prevalent for Asian Americans, the problem of recruitment into politics compounds. Asian Americans are often left out of mobilization efforts by major political parties (Kim 2007) and are often neglected by organizational outreach (DeSipio 2011; Hajnal and Lee 2011; Wong 2008). This has been the case for offline political activity, where only 30 percent of them have been encouraged to participate (Wong et al. 2011). However, following my line of argument, the lack of these online pan-ethnic Asian American forums makes mobilization less likely as recruiters have a harder time finding where to reach out to Asian Americans on the Internet. They cannot as easily contact pockets and communities of Asian Americans in the digital world. The group then loses out on chances to be mobilized by external forces online. On the other hand, recruitment is facilitated among other racial groups because they have a more formalized pan-ethnic digital presence and organizational structure. It has been found that the turnout gap lessens in areas where minorities are larger shares of their communities. This is because mobilization efforts have more incentive to target larger proportions of people of color (Fraga 2018). Considering online, without a strong digitized Asian American political space, disparities in mobilization also widen the overall racial political participation gap.

If contact does happen, there still remains the problem of effective communication. One language is not enough to guarantee online political behavior responses via mobilization of Asian Americans. It may also be that when recruitment occurs, encouragement focuses on stimulating offline participation. Asian Americans are not as likely to proportionally participate in digital activities even when they are most well-positioned because they are simply not asked to participate (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995) explicitly in such digital activities. Recruiters might not only have a hard time reaching the group because of the lack of potent Asian American digital spaces. Messages may not reach the entire community due to lingual diversity, and further, have not explicitly asked them to respond to calls to make their online political voices heard.

My main theoretical argument for why the racial participation gap widens for Asian Americans when considering online behavior accounts for individual political interest concerns as well as structural disadvantages that the group faces on the Internet. I now set off to test the Asian American online participation gap hypothesis. That is, despite being the most technologically equipped, I expect that the overall racial participation gap should widen when including online modes within the repertoire of political action uniquely for Asian Americans. This worsens political inequality.

Data

This research requires data that oversamples for minorities who are often left out of national surveys. In such, I use data from the pre-election wave of the 2016 National Asian American Survey, NAAS (Ramakrishnan et al. 2017). The 2016 NAAS was a two-wave cross-sectional survey each with a set of different respondents. The participation questions were only asked in the pre-election wave. Interviews were conducted between August 10 and September 29, 2016. Respondents opted to complete the survey in one of ten Asian native languages or in English. In all, 72 and 28 percent were interviewed on landlines and mobile phones, respectively. Individuals were asked to complete a survey from a random selection of respondents in a listed sample, stratified by race and national origin. The NAAS is the “only nationally representative academic survey of this population’s social and political integration and attitudes” (Ramakrishnan et al. 2016, 4). A distinguishing feature of this data is that it includes an oversample of Asian Americans and also allows for comparisons across whites (n = 514), African Americans (n = 502), and Latina/os (n = 494). Out of the total 4,744 respondents analyzed here, 3,206 identified as Asian American. Table 1 includes a sample breakdown. Although the 2016 NAAS provides sufficient power to look at intra-Asian diversity by national origin, the focus here is on interracial differences.

Table 1.

Breakdown of the 2016 NAAS, Pre-Election Wave.

	N
Cambodian	290
Chinese	384
Filipina/o	402
Hmong	325
Indian	386
Japanese	322
Korean	367
Vietnamese	370
Other Asian	360
White	514
African American	502
Latina/o	494
Mixed	28
Asian American	3,206
Total	4,744

Political Participation Variables of Interest

Offline Political Behavior

I construct an index of political participation traditionally done offline utilizing the following questions: People can take part in different types of civic and political activities. In the last 12 months, have you done any of the following?

Contributed money to a candidate, political party, or some other campaign organization

Contacted your representative or a government official in the United States

Worked with others in your community to solve a problem

Attended a protest march, demonstration, or rally

Signed a petition offline

Bought or boycotted a certain product or service because of the social or political values of the company that provides it

Attended a public meeting, such as for school board or city council

Following the conceptualization of political participation by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995), it would be inaccurate not to include voter turnout as an offline measure. The NAAS 2016 participation questions were asked prior to that year’s general election and did not assess self-reported turnout for previous contests. In such, I proxy turnout with a measurement of voter likelihood: Thinking ahead to this November’s presidential elections, how would you describe your chances of voting? Absolutely certain or pretty likely (1), 50–50 (0.5), and less than 50–50 or not vote (0). Including this, the offline index sums all eight activities and divides by 8, so that the minimum is 0 and the maximum of the scale is 1.

Online Political Behavior

I also construct an index of participation online, utilizing these available questions: In addition, some people are involved in political activities online or by email, while others are not. In the last 12 months, have you done any of the following?

Posted or commented about politics on social media, like Facebook, Twitter, [or WeChat/KakaoTalk]

Signed an online or email petition

Forwarded or circulated a post about [racial/ethnic group]⁴

The scale sums up the three activities and also divides by three so that the minimum is 0 and the maximum is 1.

Methods

First, I present descriptive statistics showing how active groups are in online and offline modes by each measure and scale. Then, I test the online participation gap hypothesis by assessing the racial gap in online political action for minorities to whites, particularly giving attention to Asian Americans. I will look at how the mean difference for the racial gap compares for offline and online political participation. In a further test, I run multivariate analyses, looking at the influence of race on my two main dependent variables scales separately—offline and then online behavior. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models help isolate the association between race and political participation, controlling for standard indicators related to demographics and socioeconomic status (age, gender, income, and education), psychological engagement (partisanship, political party strength of attachment, political interest, internal, and external political efficacy), immigration status and racial identity, and structural factors such as having been recruited to participate in politics.

In an effort to better understand the relationship between offline and online participation, I, lastly, create an alternative dependent variable which measures the net association between online and offline political action at the individual level. The measure takes the difference between the proportion of participated online activities by the proportion of participated offline actions. I will look at the relationship between race and this computed difference score, as well as use this dependent variable to see how this online action gap is mitigated, as it relates to my theory.

Results

Table 2 presents descriptive statistics showing how active groups are in both offline and online political activity. It shows that White turnout is highest compared to other groups. Whites are also largely involved in community action, signing petitions online, and political consumerism. Blacks also take political action within their communities (50%) and many attend political meetings (33%). Out of all non-voting offline modes, Latina/os (29%) and Asian Americans (26%) are also most invested in community-based activity. Petitioning offline is also a popular means by which Asian Americans and Latina/os express themselves. Turning to online political participation, Asian Americans are moderately involved in all three activities. In all, 14 percent of Asian Americans have signed an e-petition, while a similar percentage of them forwarded or circulated a post about their racial/ethnic group online. Out of all three digital activities that are measured in this survey, Asian Americans are least likely to post or comment about politics on social media.

Table 2.

Rates of Offline and Online Political Participation by Race.

	Whites	African Americans	Latina/os	Asian Americans
Buycott	38	32	19	17
Community action	50	50	29	26
Community meeting	28	33	28	18
Contact electeds	28	18	12	12
Donate	34	25	13	15
Petition offline	49	42	28	22
Protest	15	18	13	8
Vote	89	87	81	80
Petition online	36	24	18	14
Posted or commented about politics on social media	42	40	27	17
Forwarded or circulated a post about racial group	32	41	21	11
Online Participation Scale	37	35	22	14
Full Participation Scale	38	35	25	21
Offline Participation Scale	42	39	29	27
N	514	502	494	3,206

Figures are in percentage points. Data from the 2016 NAAS.

Next, I look at how minorities differ in their average rate of offline political activity compared to whites. Figure 1 displays these results. The circle plots the mean difference for offline participation between minorities and whites. The x-axis represents the estimated racial minority action gap in comparison to whites, ranging from most political inequality (-30 percentage points) to political equality (0 percentage points). The figure shows that African Americans and whites are not all that different in terms of their mean level of offline activity (-2.8 points). However, there are substantive differences between Latina/os (-12.2 points) and Asian Americans (-14.5 points) compared to whites.

Figure 1.

Visualizing the racial participation gap between online and offline behavior.

Figure 1 also presents the difference of means for online participation, indicated with a triangle. There is a similar magnitude difference for the African American racial gap regardless of the platform of activity, lagging behind whites by about two to three percentage points both online or offline. While the differences of means are larger, Latina/os too exhibit a similar racial participation gap compared to whites both online or offline; regardless of medium, whites are 12–14 points more likely to take political action than Latina/os. Newer opportunities to express political voice do not contribute to more racial political participation disparities among Latina/os and African Americans.⁵

If the online participation gap hypothesis holds, the racial gap should uniquely widen for Asian Americans when considering online compared to offline action. That is, while the average differences for offline and online political behavior are similar across Latina/os and African Americans, I should observe that the online difference of means is substantially more negative for Asian Americans compared to whites than for the offline index. Figure 1 helps visualize empirical support for this expectation and shows how the political participation gap becomes more unequal for Asian Americans depending on platform of involvement. For African Americans and Latina/os, the circle and triangle overlap around -3 percent and -14 percent, respectively. However, the triangle point estimate, which represents the online difference in Figure 1, is much further to the left (political inequality) than the circle point estimate is for Asian Americans. The difference of mean offline behavior for Asian Americans compared to whites is -14.5 percent; the racial gap is much larger when considering only online political activities (-23.1%). This indicates that the overall racial political participation gap between Asian Americans and whites magnifies by about 8 percentage points. Looking back at Figure 1, there is little physical space observed between the circle and triangle point estimates for Latina/os and African Americans. Alternatively, there are larger, widening spaces, which signal that political inequality worsens for Asian Americans. Such a racial participation gap opens for this group when including actions that can solely be done online.⁶

In an attempt to provide more evidence, I now look at how race is associated with my two different indices of political participation, online separately from offline. Models also account for standard controls (coded between 0 and 1), noted previously. Empirical verification of the online participation hypothesis here should show that Latina/os and African Americans compared to whites are about equally less likely to participate in both online or offline modes of political activity. On the other hand, Asian Americans should be less likely to participate offline but even more substantially less active online, compared to whites. I pay close attention to differences in estimated coefficients for Asian Americans’ offline and online political behavior.

Table 3 presents regression results. Group membership variables use whites as a baseline for comparison. After accounting for controls, African Americans are 10–12 points less likely than whites to take online or offline action. This is also the case for Latina/os (13–15 points less likely than whites to participate offline or online). The approximate relationship between racial groups and different platforms used for Black and Latina/o political activity are similar. The racial participation gap gets no better or worse when considering digital modes of behavior.

Table 3.

How Race Shapes Offline and Online Political Participation Differently.

	Dependent variable
	Offline political actions	Online political actions
African American	−0.10	−0.12
African American	(0.063)	(0.095)
Asian American	−0.14**	−0.20**
Asian American	(0.062)	(0.095)
Latina/o	−0.13**	−0.15
Latina/o	(0.063)	(0.096)
Mixed	−0.08	−0.14
Mixed	(0.083)	(0.128)
Age	0.0003	0.0003
Age	(0.0004)	(0.001)
Female	0.005	0.007
Female	(0.011)	(0.017)
Income	0.09***	0.08**
Income	(0.021)	(0.033)
Education	0.7***	0.15***
Education	(0.023)	(0.036)
Republican	0.01	0.05*
Republican	(0.020)	(0.031)
Party Strength	0.06***	−0.06*
Party Strength	(0.021)	(0.031)
Interest	0.12***	0.08***
Interest	(0.017)	(0.026)
Internal efficacy	0.05***	0.10***
Internal efficacy	(0.016)	(0.025)
External efficacy	0.003	−0.043
External efficacy	(0.017)	(0.027)
Not born in the United States	−0.07***	−0.13***
Not born in the United States	(0.013)	(0.020)
Strength of pan-ethnic racial identification	0.02	0.08***
Strength of pan-ethnic racial identification	(0.018)	(0.027)
Recruitment	0.09***	0.05***
Recruitment	(0.012)	(0.019)
Constant	0.167**	0.232**
Constant	(0.066)	(0.101)
Observations	1,381	1,377
R ²	.288	.174
Adjusted R²	.280	.164
Residual SE	0.203 (df = 1,364)	0.309 (df = 1,360)
F Statistic	34.549*** (df = 16; 1,364)	17.847*** (df = 16; 1,360)

Ordinary least squares regression coefficient estimates (standard errors are in parentheses).

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

However, again, Asian Americans tell an outlier story. Table 3 notes that while Asian Americans are about 14 points less likely to participate in offline modes, they are even less likely, -20 percentage points, to express their voice online. This suggests an overall magnification of the racial political participation gap for Asian Americans by about six percentage points more. The widening of participation disparity is distinctive to Asian Americans, as the coefficient estimates for other racial groups are similar across various platforms used for activism.

Mitigating the Asian American Online Political Participation Gap

I also create an alternative dependent variable, which measures the difference in proportion of completed online activities between minorities and whites by the difference in proportion of completed offline activities between minorities and whites, at the individual level. The result is reported in Table 4, Model 1. It shows that the net association between online and offline activities disadvantages Asian Americans compared to whites by about 12 percent. This is substantively the most negative when considering the estimated coefficients for Latina/os and African Americans. Asian American online political activity is unique in that it is less than other racial groups and is also less than their own group’s action offline. By examining digital political behavior, I find that Asian Americans’ overall racial participation inequality worsens. The results here support the Asian American online participation gap hypothesis.

Table 4.

Mitigating the Online Racial Participation Gap.

	Dependent variable
	Base model(1)	Psychological motivation factors(2)	Immigration and racial identity factors(3)	Recruitment factors(4)
African American	−0.041	−0.013	−0.016	−0.016
African American	(0.074)	(0.087)	(0.087)	(0.087)
Asian American	−0.118*	−0.083	−0.051	−0.051
Asian American	(0.073)	(0.086)	(0.086)	(0.086)
Latina/o	−0.059	−0.030	−0.012	−0.013
Latina/o	(0.074)	(0.088)	(0.087)	(0.087)
Mixed	−0.141	−0.078	−0.074	−0.067
Mixed	(0.096)	(0.115)	(0.116)	(0.116)
Age	0.0002	0.0001	−0.0001	−0.0001
Age	(0.0004)	(0.0005)	(0.0005)	(0.0005)
Female	0.004	0.009	0.003	0.003
Female	(0.012)	(0.016)	(0.016)	(0.016)
Income	0.010	−0.001	−0.004	−0.005
Income	(0.024)	(0.030)	(0.030)	(0.030)
Education	−0.005	−0.015	−0.020	−0.011
Education	(0.025)	(0.031)	(0.032)	(0.033)
Republican		0.034	0.045	0.044
Republican		(0.028)	(0.028)	(0.028)
Party Strength		−0.117***	−0.131***	−0.127***
Party Strength		(0.029)	(0.029)	(0.029)
Interest		−0.037	−0.041*	−0.033
Interest		(0.023)	(0.023)	(0.024)
Internal efficacy		0.056**	0.052**	0.050**
Internal efficacy		(0.023)	(0.023)	(0.023)
External efficacy		−0.048**	−0.046*	−0.043*
External efficacy		(0.024)	(0.024)	(0.024)
Not born in the United States			0.072***	0.068***
Not born in the United States			(0.025)	(0.025)
Strength of pan-ethnic racial identification			−0.054***	−0.056***
Strength of pan-ethnic racial identification			(0.019)	(0.019)
Recruitment				−0.033*
Recruitment				(0.017)
Constant	0.005	0.082	0.058	0.059
Constant	(0.075)	(0.091)	(0.091)	(0.092)
Observations	2,019	1,373	1,353	1,343
R ²	.016	.031	.045	.047
Adjusted R²	.012	.022	.034	.035
Residual SE	0.27 (df = 2,010)	0.28 (df = 1,359)	0.28 (df = 1,337)	0.28 (df = 1,326)
F statistic	4.8*** (df = 8; 2,010)	3.35*** (df = 13; 1,359)	4.2*** (df = 15; 1,337)	4.1*** (df = 16; 1,326)

Ordinary Least Squares Regression Coefficient Estimates (Standard errors are in parentheses).

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

One step further: my theory for why this online political participation gap is group-specific to Asian Americans revolves around three indicators, both accounting for individual and structural-level influences related to political interest, pan-ethnic identity, and recruitment. If such explanations drive this disparity, accounting for these three sets of factors in various models should lessen the Asian American difference in proportional online and offline political participation gap compared to whites. When including these sets of independent variables in multivariate analysis, I should see that the estimated coefficient for Asian Americans is less negative than in the Base Model, previously discussed in Table 4 (Model 1).

Lastly, in Table 4, I group together related sets of explanatory variables and gradually add them in various model specifications. Model 2 includes variables in the Base Model and adds in psychological motivation factors. As a result, the estimated coefficient for Asian American drops from -0.12 to -0.08. This is also the case for Model 3; when pan-ethnic identification is included, the Asian American coefficient drops to about -0.05. Lastly, when recruitment is added, the coefficient comparing the Base and Model 4 for Asian Americans is also substantially lower. This provides some evidence about the mechanisms that drive the Asian American racial political participation gap online. Influences such as psychological motivation, importance of pan-ethnic identification, and organizational mobilization, play a role in closing the racial gap in online and offline participation, predominantly among Asian Americans.

The Muting of Asian American Political Voices

The racial political participation gap widens for Asian Americans when considering online behavior. My theory begins by addressing individual-level concerns. Even with more Internet resources, this does not necessarily change Asian Americans’ motivations to be involved in online politics. Furthermore, one must take structural disadvantages that Asian Americans as a group face online seriously. Disproportional online political participation is a function of the lack of well-developed, pan-ethnic Asian American political spaces in the digital world, a precursor for online group expression. I attribute this to the complexity and complication for Asian Americans to identify in pan-ethnic terms compared to the more stable and politically salient racial solidarity among Latina/os, African Americans, and in the present day, among whites. Without these matured pan-ethnic structures needed for Asian Americans to make their concerns heard, external recruiters then lack a sense of where and how best to mobilize the group to make their political presence felt in the digital world. I demonstrated empirically that while Asian Americans are already less active offline, they are even more muted on the Internet. The paper contributes to existing scholarship by illuminating yet another puzzle in Asian Americans’ political behavior, one that mirrors the peculiarity of their higher than average socioeconomic status. Even though they have the most access to the Internet, Asian Americans fall even further behind in online political activity and in their overall involvement in politics.

Here, I focused on interracial political behavior comparisons. Future research should seek to address variation by national origin (Appendix, Figure A). For example, research can follow Lai’s (2018) work on Chinese Americans’ activism on Twitter via the 2014 #PeterLiang social media campaign. Future work may seek to explain racial disparities by exploring the different characteristics of Asian Americans who take part in offline and digital activities (Supplemental Appendix, Table 1). Somewhat comporting with theoretical expectations posited here, recruitment and political interest are more strongly related to offline rather than online participation. Differences in income, partisan identification strength, and place of birth are also worthy of future investigation. I recommend research to continually examine how online behavior differs in nature and purpose from participation offline.

Building on my digital pan-ethnic structures argument, which I position as an impediment to Asian American online political participation, future research may also address recent emergence of Asian American-centered digital forums created as a response to Asian American discrimination during the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak (see: Griffin, Sides, and Tesler 2020). This includes online examples (Shen-Berro 2020) on Facebook and national social media campaigns and hashtags such as #RacismIsAVirus on Twitter, which urges Asian Americans to shed light on anti-Asian sentiment. In the wake of recent attacks, threat, and discrimination targeted at this group, the construction of Asian American political forums online may provide more psychological motivation as well as necessary opportunity to participate in group-based digital activism.

In all, the Internet does not create a level playing field in the realm of politics. Particularly in regards to race, Asian Americans are seemingly drowned out online. Their voices are muted even more on online political platforms than they already are on the ground. The furthering of political inequality via studying participation shown here echoes distortions that other scholars have also alluded to (Dalton 2017; Fraga 2018; Phoenix 2019; Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2013). The puzzle of the Asian American online action gap may lead to more political disparities since participation in online political groups is also correlated to more offline activity (Conroy, Feezell, and Guerrero 2012)—a potentially vicious cycle. As politics has and continues to move online, we need to be cognizant of how the Internet may contribute to rather than alleviate racial political inequality, particularly as it relates to differences in whose political voice gets heard and whose gets drowned out.

Supplemental Material

online_appendix – Supplemental material for Political Inequality in the Digital World: The Puzzle of Asian American Political Participation Online

Supplemental material, online_appendix for Political Inequality in the Digital World: The Puzzle of Asian American Political Participation Online by Nathan K. Chan in Political Research Quarterly

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A.

Racial Participation Gap by Medium of Political Activity.

	Column A	Column B
	Difference in mean offline activity between racial minorities and whites	Difference in mean online activity between racial minorities and whites
African American	−2.8*	−1.8
Latina/o	−12.2***	−14.6
Asian American	−14.5***	−23.1***

Sample sizes reported in Table 1. Data from the 2016 NAAS.

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01 for Columns A and B.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the three anonymous reviewers and the PRQ race, ethnicity, and immigration field editor for their constructive feedback. I thank Russell Dalton, Louis DeSipio, James Lai, Steven Mejia, Paul Hanselman, Davin Phoenix, and Michael Tesler for their time and effort reading various drafts of the manuscript. I thank the participants of the Critical Observations on Race and Ethnicity Conference hosted by UCI’s Center for the Study of Democracy, particularly Marisa Abrajano, Jane Junn, and Natalie Masuoka, for their comments on this work.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author acknowledges generous funding support from The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (ID#2018254511).

ORCID iD

Nathan K. Chan

Data Availability

The 2016 National Asian American Survey is available publicly and can be accessed at . Readers can contact the author for the code for analyses in the article.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental materials for this article are available with the manuscript on the Political Research Quarterly (PRQ) website.

Notes

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