Young people's engagement in political discussions with parents and friends represents a significant component of the political socialization process and can be seen as an activity where they learn some very basic democratic skills. Based on data from qualitative interviews and a questionnaire survey, this article explores how young people experience political discussions in their everyday life. Our data indicate that young people who feel that their father, mother or friends, respectively, hold more distant political views are less likely to engage in political discussions with each of them. These findings support previous studies in political communication suggesting that people tend to avoid social situations where political disagreements are likely to appear. Furthermore, the results show that there are significant gender differences when analysing the role of the parents as political discussion partners.
In both the public and scientific debates on journalism in western countries, it would appear to be taken for granted that journalists' political opinions can influence their professional output. Since journalists tend to lean more to the left than the general population, it is often assumed that media content has a left-wing bias. This article discusses and analyses the political motivations among journalism students. A case study of Danish journalism students indicates that most of the students were not politically motivated when choosing to pursue an education in journalism. Left-wing students tend to be slightly more politically motivated; however, the differences between the respective groups of journalism students are minor. Moreover, other sources of motivation are deemed more important, irrespective of political opinions. The case study concludes that political motivation plays a limited role in the decision to study journalism.
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