Social media use and political cynicism among German youth: the role of information-orientation, exposure to extremist content, and online media literacy

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the predictors of adolescents’ political cynicism in the social media environment. Given that social media are one of the main sources of information for many young people today, it is crucial to investigate how and in which ways social media use is associated with political cynicism. To that aim, we use data from computer-assisted personal interviews of N = 1,061 adolescents between 14 and 19 years in Germany. Our findings reveal that relative information-oriented social media use is related to lower political cynicism, while exposure to extremist political content on social media predicts higher levels of political cynicism. Furthermore, although self-perceived online media literacy is negatively associated with political cynicism, it does not moderate the relationship between political cynicism and relative information-oriented social media use or exposure to extremist content. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

IMPACT SUMMARY

Prior State of Knowledge: Nowadays adolescents often express high levels of political cynicism, which gives reason for concern. Existing research suggests that the media as political socialization agent may both dampen or increase youth’s political cynicism depending on the content.

Novel Contributions: We identify a lack of research on the role of social media use to explain youth’s political cynicism. To address this, we focus on two key predictors: the degree of information-orientation of social media use and exposure to extremist content.

Practical Implications: This study has practical implications for educational interventions that aim at training adolescents’ understanding of political processes. The findings are also crucial for policymakers and platform operators who tackle extremism on social media platforms.

KEYWORDS:

• Political cynicism
• adolescents
• social media
• extremism
• literacy

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. The covariates are included to demonstrate the robustness of the findings. The significance of the hypothesized findings does not depend on the inclusion or exclusion of these covariates and changes due to the inclusion of the covariates are negligible.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia (Landesanstalt für Medien Nordrhein-Westfalen).

Notes on contributors

Desirée Schmuck

Desirée Schmuck (PhD University of Vienna) is a tenure-track assistant professor of digital media effects at the School for Mass Communication Research of KU Leuven. Her research interests focus on the effects of digital media use on indicators of social cohesion such as democratic engagement, intergroup relations, and subjective well-being.

Nayla Fawzi

Nayla Fawzi (PhD LMU Munich) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich. Her research focuses on trust in the media, the relation between populism and the media, online user behavior and adolescents’ media use.

Carsten Reinemann

Carsten Reinemann (PhD University of Mainz) is a professor of political communication at the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich. His research interests include populism, extremism, and political media effects.

Claudia Riesmeyer

Claudia Riesmeyer (PhD University of Göttingen) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich. Her research focuses on media literacy, journalism and Public Relations, political communication and qualitative methods.