The relationship between young people’s use of social media with civic engagement and knowledge

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Preparing Young People for Citizenship: Recent Developments and New Challenges from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016

Proposal

Developing technologies provide new possibilities for the mobilization of young people. The use of social media and the internet is widely regarded as having a profound effect on civic engagement among youth (Kahne, Lee, & Feezell, 2011), and research suggests that new social media can be more effective in enhancing civic participation when the content is interactive in contrast to the one-way communication prevalent in traditional media (Bachen, Raphael, Lynn, McKee, & Philippi, 2008; Rainie, Smith, Schlozman, Brady, & Verba, 2012). Social media platforms can be a valuable tool for activists and allow for immediate and direct communication between individuals. Further, the accessibility of social media platforms by youth can allow for more engagement in the political process.

Results from IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016 show differences across countries in the degree in which students use social media and the internet to engage with political and social issues. The proposed paper will explore the relationships between civic engagement using social media and with both civic knowledge and contextual factors including more traditional forms of civic engagement. Preliminary analyses with the data have yielded positive relationships with this type of engagement and other forms of civic engagement, as well as a complex relationship between social media use, civic engagement, and civic knowledge.

In addition to exploring the relationships between civic engagement using social media, other forms of civic engagement, and civic knowledge in 2016, links between other cycles of ICCS will be explored, with comparisons made with data from ICCS 2009. Changes both within and across countries will be highlighted.

While engagement in political and social issues over social media is relatively limited in the 2016 results, future directions of this content area for future cycles of ICCS can be explored to allow for a more detailed measurement of students’ online behaviors for engaging with social and political issues. Therefore, the presentation will conclude with a brief discussion of plans for examining these variables in the ICCS 2022 cycle.

Authors

• Lauren Elizabeth Musu, IEA

• Tim Friedman, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)