When Private Talk Becomes Public Political Expression: Examining a Practice-Field Hypothesis of Youth Political Development

Abstract

Previous research indicates the importance of interpersonal communication in the political socialization process. Investigations of political talk have mostly been restricted to frequency, and the theorizing of its effects centered on cognitive outcomes such as knowledge and ideological identification. This study examined the part played by private political talk in promoting expressive forms of political participation among adolescents. Recent survey panel data from Swedish 13–18-year-olds were analyzed. Results showed that frequency of private political talk predicted the extent of public political expression even when self-selection and previous levels of political expression were accounted for. Data offered some support for an expected interaction of private political talk and political interest in predicting public expression. The overall findings are consistent with the theoretical idea that political talk offers adolescents opportunities to enact participation in safe settings, and that this is a mechanism that can explain why talking about politics is favorable for political development during adolescence.

Keywords:

• political socialization
• interpersonal communication
• political talk
• adolescents

Acknowledgments

This study was made possible by access to data from the Political Socialization Program, a longitudinal research program at YeS (Youth & Society) at Örebro University, Sweden. Professors Erik Amnå, Mats Ekström, Margaret Kerr, and Håkan Stattin were responsible for the planning, implementation, and financing of the collection of data. The data collection and the study were supported by grants from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Notes

1. The following formulas were used to transform the Poisson estimates to percentage of change in the outcome: for categorical predictors, 100(e ^β  − 1) where e is the natural logarithmic base and β the unstandardized Poisson estimate, and for continuous predictors, 100(e ^β × δ – 1), where e is the natural logarithmic base, β the unstandardized Poisson estimate, and δ the units of change in the predictor (Long, 1997, pp. 224–226).

2. Post hoc analyses were conducted to see if the relationship between private talk and public expression differed across the junior and senior high school cohorts, since previous research indicates that communication effects on political knowledge increase with age, due to general cognitive development (Eveland et al., 1998). This test turned out nonsignificant, suggesting no evidence that talk is a more potent resource for older adolescents (though it is certainly reasonable to assume that the 16–17-year-olds in this sample generally express themselves politically in more sophisticated ways than the 13–14-year-olds).

3. It should be noted that the three interaction terms were sensitive to model specification, as they were all positively significant in ordinary least squares regression.