Evolving Learning: The Changing Effect of Internet Access on Political Knowledge and Engagement (1998–2012)

Abstract

This study addresses the changing role of Internet usage on the political knowledge and participation gap between individuals of low and high socioeconomic status (SES). Analysis of data collected by the Pew Research Center's Biennial Media Consumption Studies (1998–2012) shows that the percentage of the population that accidentally encounters political information online has risen dramatically. Results show that accidental exposure and SES are positively related to political knowledge, and that accidental exposure reduces the SES knowledge gap. Moreover, accidental exposure appears to be mitigating the SES voting gap at an increasing rate over time.

Learning without seeking?: Incidental exposure to science news on social media & knowledge of gene editing

“…The internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s that Prior's work examined, however, is very different in its structure and social reach than the internet of today, in large part because of the advent and spread of social media sites. There is increasing evidence that online use and social media in particular allow for incidental exposure to news [Feezell, 2018;Fletcher and Nielsen, 2018;Lu and Lee, 2019;Scharkow et al, 2020;Shearer and Gottfried, 2017], and that this relationship between online media use and likelihood of incidental exposure has greatly increased overtime [Morris and Morris, 2017]. For our purposes, we are less interested in how incidental exposure to social media relates to particular political engagement behaviors and more interested in how it may relate to scientific knowledge, with such knowledge having a role in deliberation of science-related issues in society.…”

“…The difference between the percent of Americans who reports seeing science information on social media and the percent who actively seeks it out points to an important understudied feature of social media: the potential for incidental exposure to information, particularly science-related information. A growing body of work, particularly in communication and political science, is examining how social media facilitates, or not, incidental exposure -or exposure to information that people were not deliberately seeking out when they went online [Morris and Morris, 2017;Scharkow et al, 2020;Tewksbury, Weaver and Maddex, 2001]. Research suggests that many people often find news on social media without directly seeking it out [Morris and Morris, 2017], and that this incidental exposure has the potential to remedy gaps in knowledge and engagement on political and social issues [Valeriani and Vaccari, 2016] (although this is not always the casee.g., Heiss and Matthes [2019]).…”

From incidental exposure to intentional avoidance: Psychological reactance to political communication during the 2017 German national election campaign

“…For only one out of three elections under investigation, the authors were able to show a small, but significant, positive effect from IOEP on current-affairs knowledge. Using various methods, the knowledge-gain hypothesis in later studies was either supported (Bode, 2016;Lee and Kim, 2017;Morris and Morris, 2017) or rejected because no link between IOEP and knowledge could be found (Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018). Some studies even hinted at a negative effect (Flemming and Marcinkowski, 2016)-at least for those who rely on being informed only incidentally (Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2017).…”

Twitter Versus the Traditional Media

“…Indeed, political campaigns are regularly and effectively deploying Twitter and other social media tools in unison with traditional media outlets in order to interact with voters and influence news cycles and campaign narratives (Kreiss, 2014; Parmelee & Bichard, 2012). This can occur even if voters are not purposefully seeking political information when using social media due to accidental exposure to news and campaign information placed by friends and contacts on platforms like Twitter (Morris & Morris, 2017). Gainous and Wagner (2014) go so far as to say that use of social media platforms in politics has effectively placed itself alongside the traditional media and has fundamentally shifted how voters make their decisions regarding who will govern.…”