This paper examines panel data from two waves of the Youth Participatory Politics Survey, a nationally representative sample of young people in the United States. It employs a cross-lagged design to investigate the extent to which common forms of online activity create pathways to online and offline forms of political activity. Specifically, we examine the influence of Friendship-Driven (FD) and Interest-Driven (ID) online activity on online participatory politics and on offline forms of political action. Our findings reveal that FD and ID activity relate to political engagement, but in different ways. In addition, we find that the size of young people's social networks interacts with both FD and ID online activity to promote political activity. This indicates that having exposure to "weak-ties" (resulting from large social networks) promote higher levels of political engagement. These findings demonstrate the need to specify the kinds of online activities in which youth are engaged and, more broadly, the political significance of social media and social networks
This article investigates youth judgments of the accuracy of truth claims tied to controversial public issues. In an experiment embedded within a nationally representative survey of youth ages 15 to 27 (N = 2,101), youth were asked to judge the accuracy of one of several simulated online posts. Consistent with research on motivated reasoning, youth assessments depended on (a) the alignment of the claim with one's prior policy position and to a lesser extent on (b) whether the post included an inaccurate statement. To consider ways educators might improve judgments of accuracy, we also investigated the influence of political knowledge and exposure to media literacy education. We found that political knowledge did not improve judgments of accuracy but that media literacy education did.
How do majority group members in emerging multicultural and multiracial societies respond to the experience of living amidst ethnic diversity? Recent public opinion surveys are analysed to assess the contextual determinants of English whites' opinions towards ethnic minorities and immigrants. Multilevel analyses reveal that whites' racial hostility is affected by local ethnic context; however, the direction of this effect depends on which ethnic minority groups reside in the area. Consistent with the contact hypothesis, whites who live in neighbourhoods with relatively large black populations display lower levels of racial hostility than respondents with few black neighbours. However, in line with racial threat theory, residential proximity to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis is associated with more negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities.' [N]umbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent y'Enoch Powell 1In his infamous 1968 speech in Birmingham, the Conservative Member of Parliament Enoch Powell contended that the increasing numbers of non-white immigrants to Great Britain would lead to racial conflict of a magnitude comparable to that which embroiled the United States at that time. Powell's speech was widely criticized for being more provocation than prognostication at a moment when the major political parties in Britain were trying to avoid any appearance of condoning racism, though it did win him a substantial popular following. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the size of England's ethnic minority population was approaching the level that Powell feared. According to the 2001 Census, slightly more than 9 per cent of the population of England identify themselves as belonging to a non-white ethnic group. 2
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