Article News Platform Preference as a predictor of political and civic participation Ingrid Bachmann Pontificia Universidad Cato ´ lica de Chile, Chile Homero Gil de Zu ´n ˜ iga University of Texas at Austin, USA Abstract Scholars have observed the influence of online and offline media use on the promotion of political and civic engagement. Findings indicate a positive correlation between media use and participation. This study moves beyond such effect on participation. Using data from an original national US survey, this article explores the effects of News Platform Preference Scale – a construct that measures the contrast between online and traditional news use in a continuum – on participatory behaviours. Controlling for usual online and offline media use, results show that a preference for digital media has strong positive effects over political and civic participation, suggesting these media may indeed be different. Keywords Civic participation, offline news, online news, political participation, survey In the digital era, the way people get their news has changed, at least in the United States. In 2010, for the first time, more people in the United States said they were getting their news online over print newspapers, with the Web coming second only to television (TV) among American adults as a destination for news – and the gap is closing (Smith, 2011). Survey data show that Americans are also spending more time following the news than they have for the past decade, supplementing their newspapers and TV news with news from the Internet (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2011), and a quarter of adults in the United States report getting their news from mobile devices (Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2012). This has Corresponding author: Ingrid Bachmann, Facultad de Comunicaciones, Pontificia Universidad Cato ´ lica de Chile, Av Libertador Bernardo O Higgins 340, Santiago, Regio ´ n Metropolitana, Chile. Email: ibachman@uc.cl Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 19(4) 496-512 ª The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1354856513493699 con.sagepub.com