Do people ever learn from social media? A cross-national and cross-temporal analysis of social media use on political knowledge

• Political knowledge is considered a vital condition for citizens to make political decisions or become politically involved. Social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook increasingly play a role in informing citizens about current affairs, replacing or complementing traditional news channels. However, the question arises to what extent citizens' use of social media actually results in them being more or less knowledgeable about politics and current affairs. Recent studies on knowledge effects from using social media suggests people learn little about political events and societal issues from social media. However, it remains unclear whether such findings hold across time and space, as comparative research on this topic is largely absent. Furthermore, there is virtually no research on whether the knowledge effects differ between normal times and periods with abrupt exogenous shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. To fill this lacunas in the literature, we will draw upon a two-wave survey tapping into people’s online information habits and political knowledge. The data were collected in December 2019 (wave 1) and May-June 2020 (wave 2) in 17 Western democracies, mainly European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK). To test for the potential impact of the health crisis, we make use of measures tapping into general surveillance knowledge as well as knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that the use of social media is negatively associated to levels of political knowledge virtually across the board. Although the negative effect is not equally strong in all countries under investigation, it was never positive. More surprisingly, the negative learning effect is also present in the months after the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. So also in times of crisis, those using social media for news did not increased their individual knowledge, even not when we only focus on questions related to the pandemic. Overall, our design proved to be very efficient in rejecting the assumption that social media use can be expected to make a meaningful contribution to political knowledge gain.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

political learning

social media

comparative research

COVID-19

political knowledge

media effects

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)