ABSTRACT

For social media to be beneficial for democracy, citizens have to actively expose themselves to political information to become informed and politically active. To foster such political exposure, individuals need to be competent and interested to seek political information. In this study, we investigate the roles of digital media literacy (i.e., personal curation skills) and personal interest (i.e., political interest) in order to predict exposure to political information on social media. Furthermore, we investigate how exposure to political information on social media is then connected to citizen’s level of political knowledge and their intention to vote. Results of a 2-wave panel study (N = 559) indicate that personal curation skills indeed foster exposure to political information, but only for politically interested individuals. Individuals with lower levels of political interest use their personal curation skills to avoid political information. Additionally, exposure to political content on social media may induce a less positive effect than previously expected. We found that political exposure on social media did not affect individuals’ levels of political knowledge. However, we did find some weak evidence that it might stimulate individuals’ voting intentions in electoral times.

摘要

为了使社交媒体有益于民主，公民必须积极地向政治信息公开，以变得知情和活跃于政治。为了增强这种政治影响力，个人需要有能力和兴趣来寻求政治信息。在这项研究中，我们调查了数字媒体素养（即个人管理技能）和个人兴趣（即政治兴趣）的作用，以便预测社交媒体上政治信息的曝光率。此外，我们研究了如何将社交媒体上政治信息的曝光与公民的政治知识水平及其投票意图联系起来。2波面板研究的结果（N= 559）表明，个人策展技巧确实会增加政治信息的曝光率，但仅限于对政治感兴趣的人。具有较低政治兴趣的人会使用自己的个人策划技巧来避免政治信息。此外，接触社交媒体上的政治内容可能会产生比以前预期的负面影响小。我们发现社交媒体上的政治曝光不会影响个人的政治知识水平。但是，我们确实发现了一些微弱的证据，表明它可能会在选举时期刺激个人的投票意图。