Research Insights: Are Young Latin American Voters Politically Engaged?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Scartascini ◽  
Razvan Vlaicu
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Young Voters ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Mandatory Voting

Data on political engagement of newly eligible young voters in 34 countries during 2004-2016 indicate that voting eligibility is associated with higher political engagement, casting doubt on the view that voters are rationally ignorant. Voting eligibility is associated with higher political interest, more discussion of political issues and attendance of political meetings, and more political knowledge. These effects are stronger in countries with enforced mandatory voting. The increase in political engagement is larger closer to the prior election, and it is driven by the engagement of eligible voters, implying that young voters acquire political information in anticipation of elections rather than ex post.

scholarly journals Does incidental exposure on social media equalize or reinforce participatory gaps? Evidence from a panel study

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 2463-2482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffael Heiss ◽  
Jörg Matthes
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Incidental Exposure ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Using Data ◽  
High Effort

Existing research indicates that incidental exposure to political information on social media may function as an equalizer, stimulating political engagement among the politically detached. In this article, we challenge this notion and propose that there are good reasons to assume that incidental exposure may reinforce existing gaps. We test the equalizing against the reinforcing hypothesis using data from a two-wave panel study ( N = 559). We find a positive main effect of incidental exposure on low-effort digital participation. However, this effect was not conditional on political interest, as the equalizing assumption would have suggested. More interestingly, we found that the effect of incidental exposure on high-effort digital participation was conditional on political interest. However, against the assumption of equalization, individuals with low levels of political interest were negatively affected by incidental exposure, thus lending support for the reinforcement hypothesis. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

Voices of Convergence or Conflict? A Path Analysis Investigation of Selective Exposure to Political Websites

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Johnson ◽  
Weiwu Zhang ◽  
Shannon L. Bichard
Keyword(s):  
Path Analysis ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Politically Active ◽  
Path Analysis Model

This research used a path analysis model to explore the degree to which reliance on off-line and online media, off-line and online discussion of political issues, as well as political attitudes predict whether an individual will engage in selective exposure to political websites. The study also looked at selective avoidance of contradictory information on websites. The results indicate that respondents did indeed practice selective exposure when accessing information on political websites, especially among those who are politically active online and those who rely heavily on websites and blogs for political information. However, the results showed that selective avoidance did not occur, with those exhibiting increased political interest and online participation significantly less likely to avoid information that challenges their views.

scholarly journals Perceived Political Effects of Following Celebrity Activists on Social Media among Egyptian University Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 02 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaimaa Zoelfakar Zoghaib
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
First Semester ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Undergraduate University Students ◽  
Academic Year

A survey was conducted on a convenience sample of 360 undergraduate university students in the first semester of the academic year 2019/ 2020. The study tested the model of presumed media influence and depended on the tool of a questionnaire that included scales of celebrity involvement, motivations of following celebrities, receptivity, political knowledge, political interest, political engagement, civic engagement, and perceived political effects on the self and others. The significant variables on perceived political effects of celebrities on the self were receptivity and identification, and on others were affinity and identification. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Piquing Political Interest, Forging Political Engagement

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-108
Author(s):  
Magda Hinojosa ◽  
Miki Caul Kittilson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Multivariate Analyses ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Gender Gaps ◽  
Over Time

How do sizable and visible gains in women’s officeholding affect women’s and men’s political engagement? This chapter examines how women’s political presence shapes gender differences in political knowledge, interest, discussion, and citizens’ beliefs about their own efficaciousness. The authors draw on their unique survey in Uruguay before quota implementation and after the resulting increase in women’s descriptive representation to track gender differences over time. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal a consistent pattern of rising engagement for women as a consequence of the changing face of descriptive representation. After the election, previously statistically significant gender gaps in favor of men evaporate for political interest, political knowledge, perceptions of understanding issues, and political discussion.

Political Knowledge and Misinformation in the Era of Social Media: Evidence From the 2015 UK Election

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Kevin Munger ◽  
Patrick J. Egan ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Jonathan Ronen ◽  
Joshua Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Media Platform

Abstract Does social media educate voters, or mislead them? This study measures changes in political knowledge among a panel of voters surveyed during the 2015 UK general election campaign while monitoring the political information to which they were exposed on the Twitter social media platform. The study's panel design permits identification of the effect of information exposure on changes in political knowledge. Twitter use led to higher levels of knowledge about politics and public affairs, as information from news media improved knowledge of politically relevant facts, and messages sent by political parties increased knowledge of party platforms. But in a troubling demonstration of campaigns' ability to manipulate knowledge, messages from the parties also shifted voters' assessments of the economy and immigration in directions favorable to the parties' platforms, leaving some voters with beliefs further from the truth at the end of the campaign than they were at its beginning.

scholarly journals Chiming In: A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Popular Musicians’ Political Engagement on Twitter

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110190
Author(s):  
Josephine Lukito ◽  
Luis Loya ◽  
Carlos Dávalos ◽  
Jianing Li ◽  
Chau Tong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Christian Music ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Qualitative Case Studies ◽  
Systematic Examination ◽  
Assisted Analysis

While music as an artistic form is well studied, the individuals behind the art receive relatively less attention. In this article, we provide evidence of celebrity advocacy with a systematic examination of musicians’ political engagement on Twitter. This study estimates the extent to which musicians use Twitter for political purposes, with particular attention to whether such engagement varies across music genres. Through a computational-assisted analysis of 2,286,434 tweets, we group 881 musicians into three categories of political engagement on Twitter: not engaged (comprising the majority of artists), circumstantial engagement, and active political engagement. We examine the latter categories in detail with two qualitative case studies. The findings indicate that musicians from different genres have distinct patterns of political engagement. The Christian music genre shows the most engagement as a whole, especially in philanthropy. On the contrary, the most active accounts are rock and hip-hop artists, some of whom discuss political issues and call for mobilization. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

Het publiek in de tribune : vormen van politieke informatie

Res Publica ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-470
Author(s):  
Guido Dierickx
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Discriminating Power ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Rules Of The Game

This contribution should be seen as an attempt to retrieve information from restcategories, such as «does not know» and «no answer».  From these, and from other data as well, we constructed 10, mostly summating, indexes of political ignorance. Among them is an index of objective ignorance, that is about political events, persons and situations.  The others aim at more subjective dimensions. Does the respondent feel informed about the political process : about government and party performance, partisan congeniality, modalities of voting, local politics social problems, political issues ?There seems to be some evidence in favor of the following hypotheses.1. The indexes tend to compensate each other: respondents who score low on one index, do not necessarily score low on the next one.2. I t is difficult to ascertain the validity of an index of objective ignorance. Moreover it does by no means express all the (relevant) dimensions of political information.3. A mong indexes of subjective ignorance one should distinguish between «policy» and «political» information ; the latter seems to refer to a situation where strictly political rules of the game, a.o. those of political conflict, prevail.4. Of all indexes the «political issues» index showed the most discriminating power, as well as the most expected associations.

Seeing Women, Strengthening Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magda Hinojosa ◽  
Miki Caul Kittilson
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Gender Gaps ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
The Impact

How does the more equitable representation of women in positions of power affect male and female citizens? We argue that the election of women to political office—particularly where women’s presence is highly visible to the public—strengthens the connections between women and the democratic process. For women, seeing more “people like me” in politics changes attitudes and orientations toward the democratic process. Substantial variation persists across Latin America in gender gaps in political engagement and political support. To assess the effects that women’s officeholding has on these, we pair comparative survey data from Latin American countries with case study evidence from Uruguay. The Uruguayan case offers a unique laboratory for testing the impact of women’s representation in elected positions of power on political engagement and support. Our panel survey of Uruguayan citizens reveals that the expected gender gaps in political knowledge, political interest, and other forms of political engagement were alive and well six weeks before the elections. Yet, just six weeks following the election—after the use of a gender quota had led to a doubling of women’s representation in the Senate—those gender gaps had largely disappeared or had significantly waned. Our findings indicate that far-reaching gender gaps can be overcome by more equitable representation in our political institutions.

Political sophistication

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Παύλος Βασιλόπουλος
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Political Sophistication

This dissertation is concerned with the concept of political sophistication, referring to the extent and organization of a person’s stored political cognition (Luskin 1987).Available empirical evidence on the levels of political sophistication in mass publics comes almost exclusively from the United States and point to two broad conclusions: First, systematic empirical research has demonstrated that political information in the mass public is particularly low (Converse 1964, Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). Citizens lack basic knowledge over political affairs. Time and again empirical studies have systematically showed that citizens in the United States and elsewhere fall short of passing even the most rudimentary political knowledge tests. This finding that was first illustrated by the Michigan school in the early 1960s (Campbell et al. 1960) resulted in a wide pessimism over the meaning of public opinion and even of representative democracy (Inglehart 1985).The second broad conclusion is that the politically sophisticated and unsophisticated differ: Political sophisticates have the cognitive capacity to translate their deeper held political values and predispositions into consistent political attitudes (Zaller 1992). They are able to use their political knowledge in order to make informed vote choices in the sense that they accurately adjust their political positions to the parties’ platforms (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, Lau and Redlawsk 1997, 2006). What is more, they are more likely to participate in elections and other political activities and are less susceptible to political propaganda (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996).However the idea that political sophistication matters for the quality of the public’s political decision-making has met strong theoretical and methodological criticism by the ‘low information rationality’ perspective (Popkin 1991, Lupia 1994,Graber 2001). This group of theories argues that politically inattentive citizens can form their political judgment on the basis of heuristics that allow them to make reasonable choices reflecting their predispositions and interests even though they lack political knowledge.The principal aims of this thesis are: a)to compare different measurement perspectives on political sophistication and assess their methodological potential especially in regard with comparative research on political knowledgeb)to explore the extent to which the pattern of ignorance that has been repeatedly highlighted in the American literature is an internal characteristic of political behavior stemming from the low expected utility of acquiring political information or it is subject to particular cultural and systemic characteristics. To this direction I use Greece as a case study by undertaking an analytical survey of political sophistication, one of the very few that have been conducted across the Atlantic.c)The third aim is to investigate the determinants of political sophistication and especially the potential of the mass media in political learning and in the context of the Greek political and media system.d)d) Finally this thesis addresses the unresolved question concerning the differences in quality of political decisions between the political sophisticated and unsophisticated layers of the public by evaluating the explanatory potential of two competing theories (political sophistication v. low information rationality) in the multi-party political environment of Greece

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