Description

1. Introduction 

Young people increasingly turn to social media platforms for news and political information: 50% of citizens between 18–24 years use Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat to access and discuss news in different countries (Reuters, 2019). In 2017, 75% of Danes between 18–29 years report getting news daily from social media, and 61% of 20–29 year old Danes discuss politics on Facebook with strangers (Matsa, Silver, Shearer, & Walker, 2018; Rossi, Schwartz, & Mahnke, 2016). During an election campaign, first-time Danish voters see campaign news on more than one third of campaign days and thereby significantly more often than older citizens (Ohme, 2019). This suggests that how younger generations seek out and consume political information is changing with the shifting modern media environment and growing relevance of social media platforms. News organizations still play a key role in this information environment; however, citizens also ‘follow’ and ‘like’ politicians’ or parties’ social media representation and receive regular status updates on events, policy announcements, or personal news (e.g., Manning, Pennfold-Mounce, Loader, Vromen, & Xenos, 2017). Hence, a key aspect of social media is that it enables direct communication between politicians and citizens, allowing political actors to circumvent traditional news outlets (Parmelee & Roman, 2019; Weeks, Kim, Media and Communication, 2020, Volume 8, Issue 2, Pages 196–207 196 Hahn, Diehl, & Kwak, 2019). This form of presentation resonates particularly well with younger citizens, who value politicians who are able to show themselves as ‘one of us’—that is, a ‘regular’ person in contrast to the ‘official’ political persona (Manning et al., 2017). In line with this, more than one fifth of 18–24-year-old Danish citizens report following a political party on social media, and 17% follow at least one politician (Reuters, 2019; see also Fisher, Culloty, Lee, & Park, 2019). While a growing body of research investigates politicians’ strategies on social media (e.g., Kreiss, Lawrence, & McGregor, 2018; Stier, Bleier, Lietz, & Strohmaier, 2018), the effects on citizen’s political participation of following political actors online are understudied (but see Weeks et al., 2019). Furthermore, we lack insights into the effects of young people’s engagement with politicians on social media. Late adolescence is a crucial time for the development of political and civil interests (e.g., Literat, Kligler-Vilenchik, Brough, & Blum-Ross, 2018), while youths’ online peer networks are a determining source of political socialization (Lee, Shah, & McLeod, 2013). Therefore, the interplay of different actors in young people’s political news diet must be investigated from a networked communication perspective to understand the impact of information acquisition on social media for political participation