Rocking the Youth Vote Through Debate: examining the effects of a citizen versus journalist controlled debate on civic engagement

Abstract

During the 2003–4 US presidential primary campaign, the national youth vote organization Rock the Vote partnered with CNN to sponsor a nationally-televised debate where eight Democratic presidential candidates participated in a town hall forum responding to questions posed by young citizens. In fact, this was the first-ever televised presidential debate (primary or general election) devoted exclusively to the concerns of young voters. The current study examines the effects of viewing this debate, and particularly the debate's influence on young citizens’ “normative” democratic attitudes and values. To help us better understand how the Rock the Vote/CNN debate may have affected young voters, we compare reactions to the youth-targeted debate to young citizens’ responses when viewing a traditional candidate debate in which journalists questioned the candidates. Results suggest that the youth-targeted Rock the Vote/CNN debate dialogue was framed in ways that encouraged greater identification between young citizens and the candidates, contributing to a heighten level of political efficacy among young voters.

Keywords:

• Civic Engagement
• Debates
• Political Efficacy
• Rock the Vote
• Young Voters

Notes

According to the history and frequency of primary debates provided by McKinney et al. (2001), the 2003–4 Democratic primary season—featuring no fewer than 27 debates—may well set a record for the most primary debates in a single campaign season.

The survey-items reported in this study were part of a larger questionnaire that was used at each location with each session.

A CNN producer admitted to “planting” the PC or Mac question by having an audience member ask the question during the debate. CNN (2003) claimed this was the only “planted” question during the entire program. The Brown University student who agreed to ask the question claimed CNN producers would not allow her to ask her original question regarding the candidates’ views on technology, “because it wasn't lighthearted enough and they wanted to modulate the event with various types of questions.”