Abstract

The current ease of online education allows students to acquire the professional and personal competencies demanded for the XXI century. In this article we study the media empowerment of students, as citizens, using multiple means of communication. We have established the first scale for the measurement of such empowerment, analyzing the exercise of active citizenship and the use of various media, as skills acquired through e-learning. The study was carried out with alumni of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (n=544), constructing a consistent and reliable scale for the two subscales that comprise it: active citizenship (5 items, α = 0.93) and diversified use of media (3 items, α = 0.95).

Abstract

Social networks are considered one of the most important developments of the Internet. They are also seen as spaces for social movements in which the channels of information, debate, and participation merge. Using content analysis this article explores social media as an instrument to motivate political participation by citizens from ten countries. Based on the political action axes (Vedel, 2007), a content analysis is conducted to compare the following factors between two years (2010 and 2015): the type of open social networks used, the evolution of their use and potential to generate information, and deliberative and participative processes. The outcomes show that parliaments of the analyzed countries use social media tools to communicate their activities and news. However, they don’t use them as a deliberative and participative scenario integrated into the political decision process.