Psychological predictors of political Internet use and political knowledge in light of the perceived complexity of political issues

ABSTRACT

In the era of the Internet, political communication becomes increasingly complex due to an abundance of available information. Moreover, many people evaluate politics as complex in a globalized world. The present study examined whether the perceived complexity of political issues would be related to individuals’ political Internet use and political knowledge. Further, we investigated the associations of three key psychological concepts with political Internet use and political knowledge acquisition in light of the potential perceived complexity of political issues: time affluence, informational self-efficacy, and need for cognition (NfC). Findings are based on a national online survey of 1082 German Internet users. The degree of perceived complexity was weakly associated with political knowledge but was not related to political Internet use. Political Internet use, time affluence, and NfC were positively related to political knowledge, and informational self-efficacy predicted political knowledge through an increase in political Internet use. The perceived complexity of politics did not moderate the relation between these psychological concepts and political Internet use. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and future research directions.

KEYWORDS:

• Political knowledge
• political internet use
• time affluence
• self-efficacy
• need for cognition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Laura S. Loy is a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate at the School of Communication at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. She studied Psychology at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and the University of Padova, Italy. Her research interests include media effects of sustainability communication, climate change communication and political communication as well as social identity processes resulting from media reception.

Philipp K. Masur is a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate at the School of Communication at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He studied communication science, economics, and philosophy at the University of Mainz, Germany, and the Macquarie University of Sydney, Australia. His research interests include computer-mediated communication, online media use, and empirical research methods. Currently, his research focuses on privacy perceptions and self-disclosure processes in offline and online contexts.

Josephine B. Schmitt, Ph.D. (University of Hohenheim), is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Psychology, Media and Communication Psychology, University of Cologne, Germany. In her research, she is interested in the effects of (political) information behavior, media literacy as well as the role of online media for the dissemination and effects of propaganda and counter-messages.

Cornelia Mothes, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at TU Dresden. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher in media psychology at the University of Hohenheim (2014) and at the School of Communication at the Ohio State University (2014-2016), funded by the German Academic Exchange Service, to study antecedents and effects of selective exposure to political news. Her main research interests lie in the field of political communication, media psychology, and journalism.

ORCID

Philipp K. Masur http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3065-7305

Josephine B. Schmitt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4689-3049

Notes

1. We conducted the following quality checks, which we determined before data collection: (a) We used only data from individuals who had completed the survey (N = 1146); (b) We excluded cases with more than 20% missing data (n = 38); (c) We excluded cases that were more than two standard deviations faster than the average (n = 18); (d) We excluded individuals who had incorrectly answered both of two very simple knowledge questions that we had additionally included in order to detect random responses (n = 8).

2. As variables for validating the knowledge scale, the study included political interest, political participation (criterion validity), subjective political knowledge (convergent construct validity), as well as demographic variables.

3. We excluded a sixth reverse-coded item from further analyses because this exclusion increased the internal consistency from .79 to .85.