Limits and virtues of a web survey on political participation and voting intentions. Reflections on a mixed-method search path

Abstract

[EN] The Internet offers new opportunities for the empirical research, especially if we consider that nowadays most citizens are made up of web surfers: on the one hand, we are seeing the transfer of some traditional methodologies on Internet, on the other hand we are witnessing the development of new innovative data collection and analysis tools. The study was conducted through a classical survey tool (the questionnaire), using it as part of a web survey. Secondly, we chose Facebook as an instrument which is particularly suitable for the investigated topic (political participation and voting intentions), because the election campaign for the 2018 Italian general election took place, for all parties and candidate leaders, mainly on this Social Network. Two surveys were carried out, the first one in September 2017 and the second one in February 2018, reaching about 850 and 1,400 cases, with similar percentages over the whole block of variables and with stable connections among them. The aim is to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of a Web survey on the topic of political participation, showing particular attention to strategic choices and decisions that impact positively on the data quality, according to a mixed-method approach.Keywords: web survey; political participation; voting intentions; Social Network; mixed method approach.