Pathways to Youth Political Participation: Media Literacy, Parental Intervention, and Cognitive Mediation

ABSTRACT

The present study aims to investigate pathways to political participation among children and youth. From the perspective of the cognitive mediation model, we attempt to analyze youth participation by considering two socializing factors (i.e., school education for media literacy and family intervention for technology use) as external antecedents to the intrinsic process of cognitive mediation involving surveillance motivation, elaboration/reflection, and engagement. Our extended cognitive mediation model on youth participation is tested with national survey data collected in South Korea with the use of a multistage random sampling technique. Results show that media literacy education and parental mediation nurture surveillance motivation, and indirectly increase youth participation through motivation, reflection, and online news engagement. Implications for the cognitive mediation model and youth participation are discussed.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2022.2122846.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Seungsu Lee

Seungsu Lee (M.A., Yonsei University) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on media effects on political attitude and public opinion and psychological mechanisms of the effects.

Jaeho Cho

Jaeho Cho (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Davis. His research concerns the influence of mass media and communication technologies on political decision-making and behavior.

Sangmi Kim

Sangmi Kim (Ph.D., The University of Tokyo) is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Language and Cultures at Nagoya University, Japan. Her expertise is in social and psychological impacts of communication and information technologies, information behavior, network communication, ubiquitous media, social and cultural impacts of digital technology, culture, and policy in US, South Korea and Japan.