Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, we contend that youth engagement — both in the form of civic behaviors such as volunteering and organizational memberships and more overtly political behaviors such as political expression and campaign participation — is critical to early adulthood socialization, and the accompanying responsibilities of citizenship (McLeod, 2000). However, we question whether media — television, campaign ads, and the Internet — are culprits reducing participation, contending instead that certain forms of mass media use may be agents of socialization into civic and political engagement. As a robust test of these relationships, we conducted two multimethod studies of campaign communication effects. Our studies merged campaign advertising placement and content data on a community-by-community basis during the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential election seasons with two national panel surveys conducted during these elections. We then run separate models of younger and older adults' civic and political participation during these two election seasons. Findings reveal that campaign effects on younger and older generations are mediated through information seeking and citizen expression about politics to encourage civic and political engagement.