Political Media Use Research Articles

(Mis)measurement of Political Content Exposure within the Smartphone Ecosystem

The affordances of the smartphone are shifting individuals toward ever smaller and more fragmented units of political experience. In this piece, we make use of a novel approach to granular assessment of political exposure on smartphones, revealing an incredible level of complexity in modern political content diets, somewhat at odds with simplifying assumptions commonly made by political communication research. Based on five million screen-recording frames taken from 119 smartphones over two weeks, we find clear challenges to three common assumptions in the literature, with clear impacts on new theories about fragmented political media use: Assumption (1) unique encounters with political content can be aggregated by tabulation as though they are equivalent experiences; (2) durations of exposure to political content can be aggregated (e.g., at a monthly or daily level) without regard for how those time units are clustered at smaller timescales; and (3) singular political formats or sources (particularly the news formats and sources) are sufficient proxies for measuring and manipulating overall political content exposure. Regarding the first and second assumptions, our findings suggest that the majority of political content exposure occurs in bursts of only a few potentially-forgettable seconds, and that the remainder follow a power-law curve that reemerges across apps and individuals, with extreme variability within and across individuals. Regarding the third assumption, we find the vast majority of political content is encountered from formats and sources other than news and social media. We articulate how these results fit within and augment literature focused on political content exposure.

Political media use, civic knowledge, civic self-efficacy, and gender: measuring active citizenship in Turkey

Despite many extensive and fruitful studies, assessing and analysing active citizenship behaviours in various cultural contexts remains a topic of research interest. A significant proportion of citizenship studies rely on evidence from adolescents, with their expected participation as the dependent variable rather than the actual civic engagement of adults. Prior research has also neglected to examine the internal civic self-efficacy of adult citizens, particularly concerning gender differences. Based on new data obtained from 731 Turkish citizens over eighteen, this study examines the effects of political media use, civic knowledge, civic self-efficacy, and gender, along with other demographic variables, on civic engagement and participation. We investigate research evidence that women’s tendency to interest in unconventional activities at a higher rate than men would make a difference and enhance their civic self-efficacy. Findings indicate that, at the empirical level, active citizenship is a multidimensional and interrelated concept with dimensions of civic knowledge, civic self-efficacy, engagement, and participation. Civic self-efficacy was found to be a psychological construct that predicts adult citizens’ active citizenship behaviours. Contrary to our hypothesis, gender differences in civic self-efficacy in community engagement closely related to daily life remain present, although women are expected to prefer greater participation than men. Only education indicated some equalising effect. Based on our findings, we suggest that research on citizenship should consider not only whether society values what women do, but also whether it promotes what they value.

A Stratified and Segmented Citizenry? Identification of Political Milieus and Conditions for their Communicative Integration

Integration through public communication is challenged by the parallel tendencies toward the stratification and segmentation of the citizenry. The milieu concept takes up this notion: According to this meso-level approach, basic political orientations and political efficacy are aligned with specific information repertoires and modes of communication. Aggregations of individual data display group-specific patterns of heterogeneous political communication practices. First, this paper aims to characterise milieus within the German citizenry. Based on an online survey (n = 1488) and a hierarchical cluster analysis, we identified 12 distinct milieus. Second, we analyse the status of two citizen-level conditions of political integration. These include overlapping information repertoires and milieu-specific issue agendas. Overall, we argue for using social groups’ lifeworld-specific contexts to explain patterns of political and communicative behaviour. Our typology serves as the basis for future projects on lifeworld-shaped political media use, the processing of media content, and its effects.

Perceived News Media Importance: Developing and Validating a Measure for Personal Valuations of Normative Journalistic Functions

ABSTRACTThis study features the development and validation of a multidimensional scale for Perceived News Media Importance (PNMI), a concept pertaining to how much individuals personally value normative functions of political/public affairs journalism. Comprised of six different dimensions that represent the weight of what citizens deem to be desirable about news work, the PNMI concept exhibits the capacity to strengthen scholarly explanations about the public’s perceptions of the news media and related democratic outcomes. More specifically this research, which employs three data sets, is designed to (1) explicate the PNMI concept, (2) develop and validate a PNMI scale, (3) and explore PNMI’s predictive value relative to news media use and support for freedom of the press. Evidence of validity is confirmed with media trust, political media use, political interest, and ideology. Furthermore, PNMI is shown to be predictive of (a) mainstream and social media-based news use, as conditioned by perceptions of the press satisfactory performing normative functions, and (b) support for press freedoms. While the hypothesized PNMI model (as a higher order latent construct with six lower order dimensions) exhibits a sound model fit, a combined data set (total N=912) reveals that PNMI could also be treated as a multi-factor, lower-order latent construct.

Communication Behaviors as Mediators: Examining Links Between Political Orientation, Political Communication, and Political Participation

This study reveals the mediation process of mass and interpersonal communication between antecedent political orientation variables and the outcome response variable of political participation. It provides insight into the direct and indirect effects of political communication on political behavior using an advanced social cognitive approach. The study explores the interrelations among political orientations, communication behaviors, and political participation using the theoretical framework of the Orientation 1–Stimulus–Orientation 2–Response model (Markus & Zajonc, 1985; McLeod, Kosicki, & McLeod, 2002). A structural equation model was built and supported by 2004 American National Election Survey data. After controlling for demographic variables, both political interest and need for cognition had direct effects on political media use, whereas political interest and need to evaluate had direct effects on interpersonal political discussion. These results suggest that need for cognition and need to evaluate—2 important personality constructs—affect political communication on 2 different levels. Meanwhile, as antecedent orientation variables, political interest, political extremity, and need to evaluate all contribute to political participation. Both political media use and interpersonal discussion directly affect political participation while they also mediate the effect of the political orientation variables on political participation. Furthermore, interpersonal political discussion mediates the effect of political media use on political participation, and political media use mediates the effect of political interest and need for cognition on interpersonal political discussion.