To Örebro University

This study examines the effects of informational, interactional and creative forms of Internet use on behavioral and cognitive indicators of youth democratic engagement. Data from an extensive two-wave panel survey of Swedish adolescents (N = 1,520) were examined. Results show that the effects of informational and interactional Internet use on political participation are indirect, with online political interactions acting as an intervening variable. In addition, creative production was found to be a direct positive predictor of online and offline political participation, but negatively related to political knowledge. The effects were statistically significant even when accounting for self-selection and previous levels of democratic engagement. Taken together, these findings contribute novel theoretical insights into the mechanisms by which Internet use may encourage or hinder youths’ democratic engagement.

Current research suggests that the media play an important part in informing and engaging citizens in environmental issues. Building on these findings, this study adopts a political socialization approach to citizens' involvement in everyday-life pro-environmental behavior. Multivariate analysis of recent survey data from Swedish adolescents (N = 1148) demonstrates direct as well as indirect relationships between frequency of news media use, talk about environmental issues with parents and peers, and extent of pro-environmental behavior. The findings are consistent with the notion that news media use promotes behavior by raising awareness of environmental issues. The results are also discussed in terms of a citizen-communication framework according to which interpersonal communication translates environmental information gleaned from news sources to adolescents' everyday-life reality, thereby motivating pro-environmental behavior. Future directions for examining causal mechanisms in more detail are discussed.

This study focuses on interpersonal communication in the family and among peers in order to empirically examine the general idea that everyday civic talk might develop young people’s civic orientation. Two questions are addressed: (1) What is the significance of civic talk in relation to key dimensions of young people’s civic orientation? (2) What does civic talk in peer settings specifically contribute to young people’s civic orientation? The study is based on survey data from high school students and their parents (N = 1148). The findings offer clear support to the idea that civic talk in everyday contexts matters for young people’s development of political knowledge, democratic values and different forms of civic practices. Civic talk in peer settings contributes uniquely to all dimensions of youths’ civic orientation. Implications of the findings for political socialization research and theories of the democratic mechanisms of civic talk are discussed.

Previous research indicates the importance of interpersonal communication in the political socialization process. Investigations of political talk have mostly been restricted to frequency, and the theorizing of its effects centered on cognitive outcomes such as knowledge and ideological identification. This study examined the part played by private political talk in promoting expressive forms of political participation among adolescents. Recent survey panel data from Swedish 13–18-year-olds were analyzed. Results showed that frequency of private political talk predicted the extent of public political expression even when self-selection and previous levels of political expression were accounted for. Data offered some support for an expected interaction of private political talk and political interest in predicting public expression. The overall findings are consistent with the theoretical idea that political talk offers adolescents opportunities to enact participation in safe settings, and that this is a mechanism that can explain why talking about politics is favorable for political development during adolescence.

A number of studies have linked citizens’ involvement in user-generated content (UGC) on the internet to democratic engagement. Whereas previous research implies a view of UGC involvement as the processing of political information, this study conceptualizes and operationalizes UGC involvement in terms of a distinct audience experience based on expressivity, performance and collaboration. Analysis of survey data from Swedish adolescents in the 13–17 age range shows that UGC involvement predicts offline as well as online political participation. In contrast to informational media use, however, UGC involvement is negatively related to political knowledge. The findings are compatible with recent theories suggesting that the expressive, performative and collaborative features of UGC involvement can promote political participation. Implications of the findings for youth democratic engagement are discussed.

This dissertation is a contribution to the social analysis of nationalism. Its disciplinary context comprises the field of empirical studies that explore how forms of mediated quasi interaction can function in processes of reproduction and transformation of nationality. The study poses the question of how news journalism can establish national frames of reference within which social reality is made meaningful by citizens.

The research design facilitates a novel contribution to a field of research that is largely dominated by analyses of media output. Two distinct but intertwined domains are empirically studied: news as a form of discourse and the moment of news decoding as a form of social interaction between readers and texts.

The results from the empirical studies show that phenomena deemed undesirable by the prevailing moral order tend to be symbolically expelled from the national community that news audiences recognize as their own. As a conclusion, two sets of structures and mechanisms are identified as generative of this logic. Their joint articulation in news decoding can establish nationalist closure of meaning by connecting morality to nationality.

First, certain established interpretive repertoires can be brought into play in the moment of decoding. These function ideationally to depict other nations and ethnic minorities pejoratively. Thus they indirectly give meaningful content to the nation and its majority population. The invocation of such frameworks of meaning tends to employ discursive resources from the news domain itself. This is a feature that ultimately reveals the subordination of news reception to elite news journalism as a knowledgeable institution.

Second, as a textual system, news discourse can function interpersonally to establish a configuration of identities and relations between itself, the news consumer and other institutions and actors in society. In accordance with this configuration, the audience can incorporate the position of being citizens (in a moral sense) and national members (in a geopolitical or an ethnic sense). The character of these identities and relations is an effect of news journalism being an inherently national institution, and of the normative presuppositions built into the structure of news values itself.