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POL11
Political Knowledge and Learning
PP 430
With a Little Help from My Friends: How Informal Discussions Increase Political Knowledge Among Adolescents with Low Media Use
D. Hopmann
1
, K. Andersen
1
1
University of Southern Denmark, Centre for Journalism- Dept. of Political Science, Odense, Denmark
The aim of this study is to examine to what extent informal discussions about politics with friends, family, and peers help adolescents with a low news
media use to acquire knowledge about current political affairs. Low political engagement among this young generation of citizens is a fundamental concern
for the future functioning of our democracies. Political knowledge is a central predictor of political engagement (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). Studying
how adolescents obtain current affairs knowledge can thus help us understand which information sources can prepare young people for becoming active
citizens. We know that news media use has a positive effect on political knowledge (e.g., de Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006), also among adolescents (Mo‑
eller & de Vreese, 2015). At the same time, many citizens turn away from the news media (Prior, 2007). These findings raise the question through which
alternative sources citizens may be exposed to information about current political affairs. Previous research indicates that informal discussions about politics
are very important for adolescents in this regard (Shah, McLeod, & Lee, 2009) and might also interact with media use (Schäfer, 2015). Theoretically, media
use and informal political discussion can interact in two different ways when affecting political knowledge. Within the two-step flow framework, so-called
opinion leaders disseminate information from the media in their network and thereby indirectly expose people to news that they have not been expose to
themselves (Lazersfeld et al., 1968). In an alternative explanation, political discussions increase knowledge by helping people to repeat and process infor‑
mation from the media (Scheufele, 2002). Both explanations lead us to hypothesize that political discussions are a particularly important source for political
knowledge for adolescents with low or no news media use. To test this hypothesis we employ a four-wave panel survey with 549 adolescents between
17 and 21 years. The panel survey was conducted in the seven months leading up to the 2015 Danish National Election. The sample contains first-time
voters, which were randomly sampled from the Danish Civil Registration System. Based on this data we use a series of fixed effects models to examine how
the effects of individual changes in political discussion on growth in knowledge about current political affairs is moderated by individual changes in news
media use. The results support our expectations. Approximately 75% of the adolescents in our study use less than two news sources a day, on average. For
these adolescents, there is a positive interaction between informal political discussion and media use, with the largest effect for those with the lowest news
media use. For the other 25% of the adolescents with a higher amount of news media use we find no interaction effect with informal political discussions.
In short, discussing politics thus helps to fill knowledge gaps among young news avoiders. In a concluding section, we discuss the societal implications
of these findings.
PP 431
The Link Between Reading News Online and Offline, Visual Attention and Learning: An Eye Tracking Experiment
S. Kruikemeier
1
, S. Lecheler
1
, M. Boyer
1
1
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School of Communication Research ASCoR, Amsterdam, Netherlands
With the rise of the Internet, printed newspapers gradually make way for digital news. It has been suggested that people read online news differently than
offline news. Scholars claim that news website are suitable for rapid and shallow reading, while printed newspapers are best suitable for effortful learning.
Moreover, personal preferences and higher user control might promote filtering behavior. As a consequence, citizens may not learn from online news,
compared to traditional news consumption (such as reading a printed newspaper). This could have detrimental consequences for society, as democracies
largely rely on an informed citizenry. So far, there are no studies available in political communication research that examined why people learn more from
printed than from online news, by investigating the way in which they read news. This research fills this void by examining to what extent modality of news
(i.e., whether news is presented in a printed newspaper, in a e- newspaper on a tablet or news website) affects visual attention to news, and subsequently,
recall of news. Data for this study was collected using a laboratory experiment with eye tracking (N = 162). Visual attention was measured using two
eye trackers. For the newspaper and tablet, data was collected using a mobile eye tracker, the SMI wearable Eye-Tracking Glasses (ETG). For the website
condition, the SMI RED eye tracker that was attached to a 22-inch computer screen was used. Following previous research, learning from the news is con‑
ceptualized using two variables: recall and recognition. Results show that reading news in a printed newspaper, leads to more news learning than reading
news on a website. This might partly be explained by the fact that citizens, who read news on a website, read less articles. But if they do read those articles,
they read these specific articles for a longer period of time. This has then a positive effect on recall of information. In addition, no differences were found in
visual attention or news learning between newspaper reading and e-newspaper reading from a tablet.This implies that learning differences between news
modalities seem to be mainly driven by the structure in which the news is presented that increaser user control and selectivity, instead of the difference
between reading frompaper or from a screen.Taken together, this study is one of the first that deploys eye-tracking data in a research on the learning effects
of news media. It is crucial to understand these implications of the digitalizing news environment for citizens, especially since less people read newspapers
and online news consumption will continue to grow.