The News Media in Children's Political Socialization

Abstract

The research reported examines the impact of the news media as an agent of political socialization on children's political knowledge, their attitudes toward political parties and electoral systems, and their activities relative to politics. Children news media use and level of political knowledge function as primary sources of causal effects for each other. They are consistently more important in their effects on the attitudes and types of participation studied in this research than are the parental and educational system socialization indicators or the structural variables of grade and gender.