Communication, Context, and Community

TLDR

The study investigates how mass media use and community context affect civic engagement. The authors conduct a multilevel analysis of print, broadcast, and Internet effects on trust and civic participation, examining individual media use and community context across generational subsamples using pooled data from the 1998 and 1999 DDB Life Style Studies. Informational media use is positively linked to social capital and civic engagement, especially when combined with supportive community context, while social‑recreational use is negatively associated; among young adults, internet information exchange more strongly boosts trust and participation than print or broadcast news.

Abstract

This research explores the influence of mass media use and community context on civic engagement. The article presents a multilevel test of print, broadcast, and Internet effects on interpersonal trust and civic participation that acknowledges there are (a) micro-level differences in the motives underlying media use, (b) age-cohort differences in patterns of media use and levels of civic engagement, and (c) macro-level differences in community / communication context. Accordingly, the effects of individual differences in media use and aggregate differences in community context are analyzed within generational subsamples using a pooled data set developed from the 1998 and 1999 DDB Life Style Studies. The data suggest that informational uses of mass media are positively related to the production of social capital, whereas social-recreational uses are negatively related to these civic indicators. Informational uses of mass media were also found to interact with community context to influence civic engagement. Analyses within subsamples find that among the youngest adult Americans, use of the Internet for information exchange more strongly influences trust in people and civic participation than do uses of traditional print and broadcast news media.