The survival of democracy depends on the active participation of citizens in the political processes. South Africa’s nascent democracy is at risk as long as her young citizens continue to show apathy towards participation in politics. This perceived paucity of youth participation in politics can be reversed through the mass media’s provision of political education. This study, therefore, investigated the influence of media use on university students’ political participation in South Africa. This study adopted a mixed methods design. Questionnaires were administered to 372 students selected, using the stratified random sampling techniques, from one university in the Eastern Cape Province. Semi-structured interviews were conducted among five purposively selected members of the Student Representative Council. Simple descriptive and Pearson correlation statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data while thematic content analysis was performed on the qualitative data. Of the 372 participants, 243 (65.3%), 124 (33.3%), 160 (43.0%), 81 (21.8%) reported the use of the internet, newspaper, television, and radio respectively for political information on a daily basis. A total of 183 (49.2%) and 113 (30.4%) voted in the SRC and national elections respectively. The bivariate analysis reveals that mass media exposure is significantly associated with students’ participation in politics (P<0.001). In conclusion, it is established that there is a strong and positive relationship between students’ mass media use and their participation in politics. It is, therefore, recommended that political education through the mass media would be significantly required to improve students’ interest and participation in politics. The potential advantage of the media especially the social media must be tapped by the university authorities, political organizations and other concerned agencies of government to increase university students’ political knowledge, interest and participation in South Africa.

中文翻译：

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南非大学生的媒体使用和政治参与

民主的生存取决于公民积极参与政治进程。只要南非的年轻公民继续对参与政治表现出冷漠的态度，南非的新生民主就有危险。可以通过大众媒体提供政治教育来扭转这种青年参与政治的匮乏的局面。因此，本研究调查了媒体使用对南非大学生政治参与的影响。本研究采用了混合方法设计。使用分层随机抽样技术，对来自东开普省一所大学的372名学生进行了问卷调查。在学生代表委员会的五个有意挑选的成员中进行了半结构化访谈。使用简单的描述性和皮尔逊相关性统计数据分析定量数据，同时对定性数据进行主题内容分析。在372位参与者中，有243位（65.3％），124位（33.3％），160位（43.0％），81位（21.8％）报告称每天分别使用互联网，报纸，电视和广播获取政治信息。在SRC和全国大选中，分别有183（49.2％）和113（30.4％）的投票。双变量分析表明，大众传媒的曝光与学生的政治参与显着相关（P <0.001）。总之，可以确定的是，学生大众媒体的使用与他们对政治的参与之间存在牢固而积极的关系。因此，建议强烈要求通过大众媒体进行政治教育，以提高学生对政治的兴趣和参与度。大学当局，政治组织和其他政府有关部门必须利用媒体尤其是社交媒体的潜在优势，以提高大学生对南非的政治知识，兴趣和参与度。