Civic identity: media, belonging, & Latiné youth in the 2020 US presidential election

ABSTRACT

We explore how Latiné immigrant-origin youth used and made sense of media to enact their civic identities during the 2020 US presidential election cycle. In a polarized national context, this project highlights the voices and experiences of the participants (n = 39). We conducted and analysed semi-structured interviews to identify three comprehensive themes. Findings suggest that how participants used social media to dispel misinformation allowed them to redefine community and belonging, becoming informed citizens to protect and strengthen these communities, acting on their distrust of media, democracy’s fourth pillar, and reframing what it means to belong to and engage in a democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Latiné
• immigrant-origin
• civic engagement
• social media
• belonging
• political polarization

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank our amazing research team at UT Austin who assisted in initial participant recruitment and data collection: McNair scholar, Arlen Rodriguez-Varela (B.A., 2022) whose senior thesis prompted this broader inquiry, Alejandra Zúñiga (B.S., 2022), Stefanie Thompson (B.S., 2023), and Dr. Dani Lindo (Ph.D., 2024), as well as Dr. Stephanie Oudghiri (Ph.D., 2021, Purdue).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We use the term Latiné rather than Latinx as it can be pronounced in both Spanish and English, our participants’ languages and because, relative to the masculine-dominant term Latino, this gender-neutral term avoids masking the non-male experience.

2. While we refer to the ‘Latiné community’ as our participants did, we remind the reader that Latinés in the U.S. are neither politically or socially homogenous; rather the political beliefs of the pan ethnic Latinx population represents a broad array of political, social, and religious ideologies (Beltrán 2010). While our participants referred to the ‘Latinx/Latiné population’, our data suggest they generalized familiarity with peers and relations outward.

3. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-mexico-vice-versa/story?id=41767704.

4. It was also important to our team to protect any potential participants who may have lacked legal documentation from unintentionally exposing themselves; thus, our protocols eliminated non-citizens from data collection.

5. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/30/new-trump-poll-women-hispanic-voters-497199.

6. https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/young-people-created-media-uplift-their-voices-2020.

7. https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart.

Additional information

Funding

The authors were supported by grant P2CHD042849, Population Research Center, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the granting agencies or any director, officer, or employee thereof.