The voice of distrust? The relationship between political trust, online political participation and voting

In this article, we examine how political trust is associated with participation in political discussions on social media and voting activity. We explore whether social media can provide platforms for those who are passive in terms of formal political participation. Our data were derived from a representative survey based on a sample collected in 2017 from the Finnish population register (N = 2470). Our key findings were that online and offline participation were highly linked to each other. Those citizens who participated formally by voting were also more likely to participate online. Moreover, we found a moderating effect of political trust on the relationship between online and offline participation. Therefore, we concluded that social media platforms also provide channels for political participation for individuals with low political trust who do not participate formally by voting.