News consumption and political and civic engagement among young people

Abstract

This study examined whether the use of various types of media for news consumption would influence young people's political and civic engagement through a survey of university students in Singapore. The findings showed that news consumption through different platforms related to the respondents' political and civic participation in different ways. Consumption of news through the traditional media was not significantly associated with either offline or online political participation. Instead, news consumption through the Internet and social network sites was significantly associated with both offline and online political and civic engagement and political knowledge. In addition, print and Internet news consumption was found to be significantly associated with political knowledge. Implications of the findings were also discussed.

Keywords:

• news consumption
• political engagement
• political knowledge
• Internet
• social media

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information of Nanyang Technological University for funding this project.