Changes in Students’ Civic Engagement After the Invasion of Ukraine: Exploring High Impact Events Effects in Maltese and European Students

• In Event: ICCS Panel 1: Civic Engagement and Democratic Dispositions in Times of Crisis

Proposal

Remaining well-informed about political and societal developments and engaging in dialogues within one's personal network are fundamental pillars of democratic societies. In this investigation, we assess the repercussions of a significant political occurrence on the way teenagers participate in the exchange of information and discourse within their social spheres. In teenagers, aspects like their engagement with the search of information or discussion of political events may be related with further actual engagement (Amnå and Ekman, 2014). Some previous evidence suggests that shocking events, such as war or terrorist attacks, have significant effects on the citizens’ civic attitudes (e.g., Legewie, 2013; Muñoz et al., 2019).

We analyze the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the frequency with which children engage with political and societal matters with their families, friends, and within the educational context. The Russian invasion marked a new stage in the Russo-Ukrainian war ongoing since 2014. Media outlets experienced record-breaking levels of readership, and the extensive coverage on social media platforms provided people all over the world with unprecedented access to information about the events of the war (Pavlik, 2022). Our hypothesis is that Russian invasion of Ukraine, an unprecedented exposition to a close conflict, shaped the students’ civic attitudes, increasing their civic engagement.

Coincidentally, in early February 2022 started the fieldwork of the last cycle of ICCS. Since the date of the invasion is logically unrelated with the ICCS fieldwork calendar, this unique coincidence constituted as a natural experiment and allows us to explore what were the effects of the invasion of Ukraine coverage on the European students’ civic engagement in 2022. We use the Malta sample, that was the only country that administrated ICCS before and after the invasion. We estimate a model predicting the responses of the students on those who answered before and after the day of the invasion on February 24th, controlling by the civic knowledge, sociodemographic variables, and the distance in days from the event (to control possible time-related effects). We focus on four variables: the scale of discussion of political or social issues outside the classroom, the scale of engagement with political or social issues using digital media, how often the students use the internet to find information on political and social issues, and how frequently the students bring up current political events for discussion in class.

Our results show that the invasion had a strong positive effect on all outcomes, except for the question of classroom discussion. Further additional analyses using the full European sample show that the change after February 24th fades over time. This reinforces the idea that teenagers –contrary to the stereotype- are not apathetic or indifferent to current issues, and students look for more information and actively discuss them with their peers and parents. However, it also shows that the school did not configure as the environment where the students wanted to get informed or discuss these issues. The presentation ends with a discussion of the assumptions and limitations behind this kind of analysis.

Authors

• Andrés Strello, International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement

• Rolf Strietholt, International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)

• Sabine Meinck, International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)