Media Use and Youth Civic Engagement

Abstract

The media have attracted a great deal of attention regarding their role in informing citizens about politics and in preparing them for citizenship and civic engagement. In recent decades, young people have also been the focus of research studies and public scrutiny. However, conceptualizations of “youths” and “civic engagement” require clarifications, in particular since the possibilities for participation in politics have expanded tremendously over the previous decades. This change has been further accelerated with the rise of social media. Researchers have been primarily interested in the effects of media use on civic engagement, initially in the role that exposure to news content in traditional media plays in promoting civic knowledge and participation. The possibilities of creating and sharing content through digital media have moved attention toward these technologies, which further blur the line between civic and non‐civic‐related engagement. Social media have also been of interest to researchers across the globe due to their potential in empowering citizenship. On the other hand, some scholars meet these new technologies with skepticism due to the worry that greater media choice may imply that youths pay less attention to politics which might lead to a decline in democratic citizenship. Finally, when studying the effects of media use on youth civic engagement and its mechanisms, researchers also need to pay attention to issues of measurement, model building, and contexts of media use and participation.