Abstract
A large body of existing research has consistently demonstrated that the use of social networking sites (SNS) by citizens in elections is positively related to different forms of both offline and online participation. The opposite argument, however, is often advanced with regard to increased viewing broadcast or cable television, particularly entertainment programming. This study proceeds from this broad vantage point by examining survey-based indicators of active SNS use and conventional television viewing in the 2016 presidential primaries, as well as the frequency of streaming television viewing during the early stages of this campaign. Data for this study was drawn from a representative nationwide online panel, and findings observed here suggest that more personalized communication through the ongoing morphology of social networking sites and streaming both political and apolitical television content are significant factors in positively shaping both online and offline participation. Comparisons with other media including conventional television viewing are introduced, and theoretical implications from a media system dependency framework are discussed.
Highlights
As has been well documented, the contemporary media landscape is constantly evolving the modalities of human communication, in the political arena
While certain linkages from macro-level indicators, such as the prevalence and use of social networking sites (SNS) for political purposes have been connected to structural changes in citizen engagement and mobilization at the individual level, the field is nearly absent an overarching framework that takes into account the drastic rise in media personalization, access, and the corresponding dependency cultivated in “always-on”
With significant main effects for content type in each model, these results suggest that the type of content is important but even viewing apolitical content— in combination with political content—can relate positively to forms of political participation
Summary
As has been well documented, the contemporary media landscape is constantly evolving the modalities of human communication, in the political arena. Sci. 2016, 5, 65 increased agency, (algorithmic) filtering, and choice in media may manifest as empowerment and transfer to differing dimensions of political participation It continues to explore how streaming television may be situated as an emerging phase in the continuum of media personalization and that this relatively active and highly individualized form of television use might fundamentally reshape the medium and the agency ascribed to its users and its uses in the political arena. For millions of users, the act of television viewing is personal, unique, and individually determined due to time-shifting technologies, such as DVR, Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, and other online streaming television services that likewise interface directly with social media in terms of recommendations and sharing functions. It is vital to identify that such stratified online quota samples are contemporarily being used in the discipline and regularly apply inferential statistics [6]
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