Social media's role in college students' political efficacy and involvement

Kushin et al. (2009). Did Social Media Really Matter?

College Students' Use of Online Media and Political Decision Making in the 2008 Election

The authors address the question of how important was social media among young people in the 2008 election. The relevance of the question is motivated by two kinds of studies. One type is previous studies indicating a decline in the use of traditional media for public affairs content among young adults and an increase in the use of social media for political information in the same population. The other kind is studies finding contradictory evidence in the relationships among Internet use and political efficacy and involvement. Social media is conceptualized as communities organized around the creation, collection and exchange of information, such as YouTube and Facebook. Traditional media is seen as radio, online newspapers, candidates' websites, etc.

This study poses six hypotheses. Three tests the association of political efficacy with: (a) consumption of campaign information in social media, (b) online expression of opinions about the campaign (such as engaging in discussions in blogs), and (c) use of traditional Internet sources for campaign information. The other three hypotheses test the relationships between political involvement and the three variables just mentioned (a) to (c). Political involvement was conceptualized as seeking or paying attention to information about the campaign. A standard conceptualization of political efficacy was used.

A sample of students at a university in the Northwest was drawn from the Registrar's record and an online survey was administered two weeks prior to the 2008 presidential election. The response rate was low but yielded 423 acceptable responses. The survey was in a Likert type scale format.

Regressions among the variables were performed. In the first set of three hypotheses, only one -- the use of traditional Internet sources for campaign information -- was significantly related to political efficacy. In the second set of hypotheses, only online expression and use of traditional Internet sources were found to be significantly associated with political involvement. Yet by defining political involvement as the seeking or paying attention to information, its relationship with the use of Internet sources for information seems tautological. It is something like people use information because they are paying attention to information.