Uninterested and unequal?: examining SES-based gaps in youth political behavior on social media

ABSTRACT

Despite evidence that social media are transforming American political life, fundamental questions remain about their influence on political inequality among the next generation of citizens. This study examines whether youth political behavior on social media is stratified by socioeconomic status (SES) and if political interest is the primary mechanism. Analyzing two nationally representative surveys of young Americans (18–34), we find youth political behavior on social media is less stratified by SES than voting or offline campaign participation. In one case, social media political expression is counter-stratified. While the relationship between SES and youth political behavior on social media can be partially explained by political interest, general political knowledge and positive perceptions of Facebook for politics also emerged as potential mechanisms. Findings suggest that SES-based youth political inequality persists on social media, but it is less severe than for offline forms of participation, and is likely explained by a range of factors beyond political interest.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• politics
• social media
• political inequality
• socioeconomic status

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their significant contributions to this paper. We are grateful to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement and the American National Election Studies for access to the data used in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Timing of US presidential primary elections varies by state. At the time of this data collection, all state primaries were complete.

2 For GfK Knowledge Panel methodology see:http://www.gfk.com/fileadmin/user_upload/dyna_content/US/documents/KnowledgePanel_Recruitment_Sample_Survey_Methodology.pdf.

3 Cases in the over-sample were not analyzed because they were not included in the general population weight that we utilized to improve representativeness.

4 GfK constructed weights for the sample (over-sample not included) using geodemographic benchmarks from the US Census Current Population Survey. Benchmarks included gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, census region, household income, home ownership, and metropolitan area.

5 The same pattern of results is found if SES is measured using an index that combines income and education

6 Quintiles created with the ‘ntiles.wtd’ function in R which ensures cases with the same value always end up in the same quintile. This leads to quintiles with slightly different sizes.

7 Factor analysis using parallel analysis and direct oblimin rotation found that items in the SM political consumption and SM political expression indexes loaded on to discrete factors.

8 In the US context, primary elections typically draw much lower levels of turnout than the primary national election.

9 Results do not meaningfully change if engagement in behaviors are re-defined as 3 days per week instead of 1 or as ‘fairly often’ instead of ‘occasionally.’ See Figure A1, Supplemental Appendix.

10 Table A2 (Supplemental Appendix) reports correlations between variables. Results from regression models do not meaningfully differ if household size is included as a control variable.

11 Statistical significance of coefficients related to our hypotheses does not change when covariance between dependent variables is taken into account.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel S. Lane

Daniel S. Lane (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, UC Santa Barbara, where he studies how individuals and groups use communication technology to create social and political change.

Kjerstin Thorson

Kjerstin Thorson (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin–Madison) is an Associate Professor in the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at Michigan State University. Her research explores how people use digital and social media to learn about and participate in politics, and how social media platforms are reshaping the visibility of news and politics.

Yu Xu

Yu Xu (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is an assistant professor in the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. His research areas lie at the intersection of media and technology, communication networks, socio-cultural evolution, and organizational communication.