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Political Socialization

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Political socialization is the process by which individuals internalize and develop their political values, ideas, attitudes, and perceptions via the agents of socialization. Agents such as family, education, media, and peers influence the most in establishing varying political lenses that frame one's perception of political values, ideas, and attitudes. These perceptions, in turn, shape and define individuals' definitions of who they are and how they should behave in the political and economic institutions in which they live. This learning process shapes perceptions that influence which norms, behaviors, values, opinions, morals, and priorities will ultimately shape their political ideology: it is a "study of the developmental processes by which people of all ages and adolescents acquire political cognition, attitudes, and behaviors." [1] These agents expose individuals Through varying degrees of influence, inducing them into the political culture and their orientations towards political objects. Throughout a lifetime, these experiences influence your political identity and shape your political outlook.

how you vote pooltidal participation want whatsa more ocnnected to you

Agents of Political Socialization

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Agents of socialization, sometimes referred to as institutions, work together to influence and shape people's political norms and values. In the case of politcal socialization, the most significant agents include, but are not limited to: families, media, education, and peers. Other agents include, religion, the state, and community. These agents shape your understanding of politics by exposing you to political ideas, values, and behaviors.

Family

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Over the decades, literature has heavily emphasizes that the agent of the family is the most influential, with literature suggesting that family and the transmission of attitudes from parent to child are the most prominent agents of socialization.[1] Literature examines how aspects of family structures and dynamics change the varying influence of the offspring's values as a function of the distribution of their parent's attitudes. Families perpetuate values that support political authorities and can heavily contribute to children's initial political ideological views, or party affiliations[2]. Literature suggest that the transmission of intergenerational political attitudes shows a strong lineage concerning their parents and siblings.[3] Families have an effect on "political knowledge, identification, efficacy, and participation", depending on variables such as "family demographics, life cycle, parenting style, parental level of political cynicism and frequency of political discussions."[4]

  • Parents: Earliest literature of the influence of parents suggests that the varying ways parents raise their children become a significant catalyst in influencing their political attitudes [5]. It is argued that the different methods of raising a child result in the child establishing formative values about all aspects of one's social life, such as religion and cultural traditions. In turn, suggesting that approaching social institutions in this context is vital as they bring a primary influence as opposed to economic or more formative organizations. Literature also suggest that predjudice influence from parents was found to be more influential towards political attitudes rather than economic and social stratification. Ultimately, literature has found it significant in studying the transmission of attitudes from parent to child as parents are generally more conservative, commonly associated with traditional attitudes and pushing towards continuity, opposite of their offspring. [1]
  • Siblings: Literature suggest that children and adolescents are far more successfully socialized with cohort centric attitudes with siblings close in age. Thus, this cohort centric difference of multiple generations within the family with parents and siblings supports the idea that siblings who share the core agents of familial socialization and often develop coherent political attitudes[6] . Linkage to the transmission of political attitudes via siblings include social trust and civic engagement.

Media

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Mass media is not only a source of political information; it is an influence on political values and beliefs. The culmination of information gained from entertainment becomes the values and standards by which people judge. Most people choose what media they are exposed to based on their already existing values, and they use information from the media to reaffirm what they already believe. From news coverage and late-night programs, to exposure to social media apps, present varying political stances that are often associated with increasing political participation.[4] However literature suggests that media coverage increasingly motivates users to delve into politics, as media outlets are leaning toward what stories will get them more views and engagement .[7]  In turn, suggesting that having more political motives and financial motives presents more partisanship polarization if it means they will have an increase in viewership. These reinforced segments that bring more viewership have been proven to be more likely for individuals to rewatch or pay for reinforcing congruent evidence.[8] Suggesting that reinforced media segments become confirmatory evidence that continuously polarizes biased political information.  This has become the perfect environment to enhance partisan polarization among voters through national outlets that reinforce extremist positions. These extremist positions have consistently found their way into partisan positions that have moved both parties towards supporting more extremist values, increasing mass partisan polarization.[7] Ultimately, however, the common core of information, and the interpretation the media applies to it, leads to a shared knowledge and basic values throughout a given entity. Most media entertainment and information does not vary much throughout the country, and it is consumed by all types of audiences. Although there are still disagreements and different political beliefs and party affiliations, generally there are not huge ideological disparities among the population because the media helps create a broad consensus on basic US democratic principles.Overall, the increase in the media market demand for viewership has encouraged more polarized political discourse, and with advancing technologies, our dependency on the Internet and the media's vulnerability will only continue increasing. In turn, making it more vital in addressing the threat misinformation holds to the integrity of democracy.

  • Print Media: In the case of print media, it is the oldest form of political socialization of media, as this includes books and poems. and newspapers. Until 1900, after the invention of radio, print media was the primary way individuals received information that shaped their political attitudes and beliefs. Studies show two-thirds of newspaper readers do not know their newspaper's position on specific issues- and most media stories are quickly forgotten. Older people read more newspapers than younger people, and people from the ages of twelve to seventeen (although they consume the most media) consume the least amount of news.
  • Broadcast Media: Broadcast Media's role in political socialization continues with both fictional and factual media sources. Adults have increased exposure to news and political information embedded in entertainment; fictional entertainment (mostly television) is the most common source of political information. The most common form of broadcast media is television and radio, increasing attention to politics as people become more informed with information and beliefs shaping political attitudes. Studies on public opinion of the Bush administration's energy policies show that the public pays more attention to issues that receive a lot of media coverage and form collective opinions about these issues. This demonstrates that the mass media's attention to an issue affects public opinion. More so, extensive exposure to television has led to "mainstreaming," aligning people's perception of political life and society with television's portrayal of it.
  • Digital Media: Digital media such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitch, accounted for viewership rates of 27.9 billion hours in 2020. examples of digital media include content rhat is created distributed and viewed on a given platform that one views from a digital electoric device.This in turn bring to increasing poltical polarization with the recommended algorthms that confine users to echo chambers, confine a user to content they agree with and enjoy while also increasing ones political polarization.[9]
  • Social Media: The role of social media in politcal socialization, from scrolling on Tiktok to checking the trending page on Twitter, social media has increasingly become powerful in presenting news and varying political perspectives. This presents political socialization at the palm of your hand with constant production of new content brining a new variable in its infancy shaping how people establish their political beliefs.[10] The media has significantly had increasing in users that has covered relevant political information, increasing exposure to political discourse. These platforms have created the perfect environment for individuals to be presented with reinforce their beliefs through the advancing programming of echo chambers and algorithms are increasingly confining users in a cycle of content-related videos.[11] This gives media outlets an increasing power to manipulate biased presented news as supporting evidence to a partisan issue, reinforcing confirmatory information to potential false realities shaped by misinformation. Exposure to political accountability through the media creates the motive for increasing polarization as it exposes how potential candidates stand on a given issue.[12]

Education

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Spending numerous years in school, through primary, secondary and high schools, students are taught key political principles such as voting, elected representatives, individual rights, personal responsibility and political history of their state and/or country. There is also evidence that education is a significant factor in establishing political attitudes during the crucial period of adolescence, with three central themes examining how civic courses, teachers, and peer groups often provide alternative perspectives to their parent's political attitudes.[1] In turn, identifying that civic influences towards change in an educational setting are vital in establishing generational political differences during socialization during adolescence. Other literature has found that involvement with high school activities provides adolescents with direct experience with political civic engagement and implementing activist orientations toward one's attitudes with an increase in political discourse. [13]

  • Earliest introduction to political practices:
  • Classroom dynamic
  • Classroom environment

Peers

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  • Cohort effect  : generational cohgort
  • impresionable to those you have similarites to

Religion

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Religious beliefs and practices play a role in political opinions, priorities and political participation. The theological and moral perspectives offered by religious institutions shape judgement regarding political attitudes and ultimately, translates to direct influence on political matters such as "the redistribution of wealth, equality, tolerance for deviance, individual freedom, the severity of criminal punishment, policies relating to family structure, gender roles, and the value of human life."[14]

The State

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State government are capable of holding control over mass media to "inform, misinform, or disinform the press and thus the public", a strategy which may be referred to as propaganda. Having the ability to control agents of socialization such as what media bring control to the state in order to serve a political, economic or personal agenda that holds some beefit to the state. [15]

Community

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Community mobilization brings significant experiences of political socialization events that could play pivotal influence in ones politcal attitudes with a collective community goal[16]. An example is how Prop 187 was specifically targeting illegal immigrant in LA County within the state of California. Given the severity of the policy targeting a specific community , this created a mass mobilization of the Latino and immigrant community, creating a voting bloc that prevent the initiative of Prop 187.[17] Harvey Milk was a significant political mobilizing the queer community during the 1978 race for California governor with increasing support for Prop 6, a law that would mandate firing any queer teacher or employee in any California public school. As this threatened the queer community and increased immigration of gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals specifically in the San Francisco area, Milk was able to mobilize the queer community to gain enough momentum to vote against Prop 6 successfully.[18] For those in these given areas, this very well could have been a pivotal introduction to politcal participation, motivating many to continue voting in future elections.[16] In many cases the experience of community mobilization is the first introduction to political polices and political participation, starting their political journey connected with their home.

collective goal arizona 1070

Region

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Sometimes geographical location plays a role in ones political socialization of media for example , news outlets on the East Coast tend to cover international affairs in Europe and the Middle East the most, while West Coast news outlets are more likely to cover Asian affairs; this demonstrates that community region affects patterns in political socialization. Region is also significant for specific political attitudes. Living near the Pakistan - India border, an individual is likely to have strong political attitudes to the Pakistan-India tension.[19] Given the socialization of their parents, cousins, grandparents, peers, and education all have a significant role in teaching their youth about the relationship one has with the other state. If one immigrated from Cuba to the United States, they are going to be more inclined to obtain conservative attitudes in the United States because of their regional movements from a leftist government in Cuba.

Life Stages of Political Socialization

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The life stages that are most relevant to political socialization are childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, with adolescence being the most influential period of socialization.

Childhood

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Political socialization begins in childhood. Research suggest that family and educational environment are the most influencial factors in socializing children, however recent literature suggest that increasing influence is coming from mass media such as digital and social media. On average, both young children and teenagers in the United States spend more time a week consuming television and digital media than they spend in school.[20] Young children consume an average of thirty-one hours a week, while teenagers consume forty-eight hours of media a week. Given that childhood is when a human is the most impressionable the influential of agents of socialization is significant as children's brains are "prime for learning", thus more likely to take messages of political attitudes of the world at face value.[21]

Adolescence

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With media influence carrying into adolescence, high school students attribute the information that forms their opinions and attitudes about race, war, economics, and patriotism to mass media much more than their friends, family, or teachers. other literature suggests that political identification and political participation often stem from values and attitudes attained during one’s adolescence.[22] The literature argues that pre-adult socialization in both childhood and adolescence has a longstanding and stable catalyzing influence from political events. This political socialization of these catalytic events establishes predispositions that are often felt by mass and collective political socialization.[22] Literature also suggests that adult political participation shows a longitudinal influence from adolescent forces of political socialization, with three models assessing the effects of parental influence in the context of socioeconomic status, political activity, and civic orientation.[23] A decade later, this literature observed a longitudinal impact of socialization that stems from adolescent political socialization. Literature found that parents' socioeconomic status and high school activities impact the most. Primary carriers of pre-adult political socialization play a crucial role in later political participation, with the parent political participation model contributing to an understanding of political activity.[23] This literature suggests that political socialization during the adolescent period significantly influences political participation and voting behavior.

Adulthood

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While political socialization is lifelong process, after adolescence, people's basic values generally do not change. Most people choose what content they are exposed to based on their already existing values, and they use information from a favorable source to simply reaffirm what they already believe. internal outcomes during adulthood can have far more significant development if these beliefs remain constant over time, especially if an attitude is present for the remainder of one's adolescence, the odds of that belief being consistent during adulthood are very likely.[24]  

Patterns of Political Socialization

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There are different patterns in socialization based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, income, , and geographic region.

mis info consumed more by hisp black than whites.

Race and Ethnicity

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george floys, rody king, vanessa guillen, immigraiton tension at US Mexicio border

Generational Cohorts

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critical poltical events

Silent Generation

boomers

Gen X

Millennials

Gen Z

Literature has found that other agents also have varying impressions when shaping political attitudes, as generational cohorts have seen collective political attitudes greatly influenced by a series of significant political events. Extensive literature has shown longitudinal experiments of three generations with data essentially consisting of Baby Boomers and Gen X. Influential events for the first generation include the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the assassination of JFK, and Watergate beginning in the early 1960 s and ending in the early 1970s, significantly shaping the identity of the early Baby Boomers (Jennings & Stoker, 2004, 346). This series of events hold more significant influence compared to the events Gen X experienced, in which literature shows that they are far less politically active than their parents. This difference reflects that important political events surrounding social development and environmental uncertainty during a given period play a more prominent role in political attitudes (Jennings & Stoker, 2004, 353).  This reflects that Baby Boomers past the adolescence period have less effect in developing collective values of civic engagement and social trust related to the 80s and 90s period (Jennings & Stoker, 2004, 346).


See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c Jennings, M., & Niemi, R (1974). The Political Character of Adolescence: The Influence of Families and Schools. 1974. Pp.357. $12.50). American Political Science Review, 71(2), 717-719. doi:10.2307/1978430
  2. ^ Ventura, Raphael (2016). "Family Political Socialization in Multiparty Systems". Comparative Political Studies. 34 (6): 666–691. doi:10.1177/0010414001034006004.
  3. ^ Jennings, M. K., & Stoker, L. (2004). Social Trust and Civic Engagement across Time and Generations. Acta Politica, 39, 342-379. 0001-6810
  4. ^ a b Kononova, A.; Saleem, A. (2011). "The role of media in the process of socialization to American politics among international students". International Communication Gazette. 73 (4): 302–321. doi:10.1177/1748048511398592.
  5. ^ Frenkel-Brunswik, E. (1952). Interaction of Psychological and Sociological Factors in Political Behavior. American Political Science Review, 46(1), 44-65. doi:10.2307/1950761
  6. ^ Eckstein, K., Šerek, J., & Noack, P. (2018). And What About Siblings? A Longitudinal Analysis of Sibling Effects on Youth’s Intergroup Attitudes. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47(2), 383–397. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0713-5
  7. ^ a b Martin, Gregory and Josh McCrain. 2019. “Local News and National Politics,” American Political Science Review, 113(2), p. 372
  8. ^ Gentzkow, Matthew and Jesse M. Shapiro. 2010. “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers,” Econometrica V78 p. 35-71.
  9. ^ Levy, G., & Razin, R. (2019). Echo chambers and their effects on economic and political outcomes. Annual Review of Economics, 11, 303-328.
  10. ^ Seppälä, M. (2022). Creative Political Participation on TikTok during the 2020 US Presidential Election. At the Breaking Point: Media and Politics in the 2020 US Presidential Election, 84.
  11. ^ Montanaro, D. (2021, April 22). Documentary Unravels Twisted Knots Of QAnon Movement. NPR.
  12. ^ Lee, N. J., Shah, D. V., & McLeod, J. M. (2013). Processes of political socialization: A communication mediation approach to youth civic engagement. Communication Research, 40(5), 669-697.
  13. ^ Berinsky, A. J., & Lenz, G. S. (2010, August 19). Education and Political Participation: Exploring The Causal Link. Springer Science, 33, 357-373. 10.1007/s11109-010-9134-9
  14. ^ Pearson‐Merkowitz, Shanna; Gimpel, James G. (2009-08-19). Religion and Political Socialization. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195326529.003.0006.
  15. ^ Glasberg, Davita Silfen; Shannon, Deric (2011). Political sociology: Oppression, resistance, and the state. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. p. 56.
  16. ^ a b Cho, W. K. T., Gimpel, J. G., & Dyck, J. J. (2006). Residential concentration, political socialization, and voter turnout. The Journal of Politics, 68(1), 156-167.
  17. ^ Zabin, C., & Escala, L. (2002). From civic association to political participation: Mexican hometown associations and Mexican immigrant political empowerment in Los Angeles. Frontera norte, 14(27), 7-41. Chicago
  18. ^ Gimpel, J. G., Lay, J. C., & Schuknecht, J. E. (2003). Cultivating democracy: Civic environments and political socialization in America. Brookings Institution Press.
  19. ^ Khan, M. A., & Shahbaz, M. Y. (2015). Role of social networking media in political socialization of youth of Multan. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 35(1), 437-449.
  20. ^ Graber, Doris; Dunaway, Johanna (2014). Mass Media and American Politics. CQ Press. ISBN 978-1-4522-8728-7.
  21. ^ Searing, D., Schwartz, J., & Lind, A. (1973). The Structuring Principle: Political Socialization and Belief Systems. American Political Science Review, 67(2), 415-432. doi:10.2307/1958774
  22. ^ a b Sears, D. O., & Valentino, N. A. (1997). Politics matter. Political events as catalysts for preadult socialization. American Political Science Review, 91(1), 45-65.
  23. ^ a b Beck, P., & Jennings, M. (1982). Pathways to Participation. American Political Science Review, 76(1), 94-108. doi:10.2307/1960445
  24. ^ Sharot, T., Rollwage, M., Sunstein, C. R., & Fleming, S. M. (2023). Why and when beliefs change. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(1), 142-151. Chicago
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