Department of Psychology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
Education and Human Development, DIPF, Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt, Germany.
J Adolesc. 2023 Dec;95(8):1553-1563. doi: 10.1002/jad.12225. Epub 2023 Jul 26.
Adolescence is regarded as a formative period for political development. One important developmental context is media. Negatively perceived political media content can foster populistic attitudes, which in turn decreases support of political institutions, such as the European Union (EU). As media valence effects are short-lived, this study examined intra-individual associations of media valence with European identity commitment and affect towards the EU, as well as indirect effects via populistic attitudes across 10 days.
We implemented a 10-day daily diary study with 371 adolescents from Germany (January to February 2022). Adolescents were on average 14.24 years old (SD = 0.55) and 60.4% were female. We estimated the hypothesized associations using multilevel structural equation models and dynamic structural equation models.
We found significant associations between populistic attitudes and negative affect towards the EU on the same day and the next day. The lagged effect became nonsignificant, when including both same day and lagged effects into one model. Populistic attitudes were not significantly associated with European identity commitment within days or across days. Negative media content was associated with higher populistic attitudes on the same day and indirectly associated with negative affect towards the EU (b = -.01, 95% credible interval [-0.010, -0.004]).
Negatively perceived political media content was associated with higher populistic attitudes and more negative affect towards the EU concurrently. Our results imply that media plays an important role for adolescents' development.
青春期被认为是政治发展的形成期。一个重要的发展背景是媒体。负面感知的政治媒体内容可能会助长民粹主义态度，进而降低对政治机构的支持，例如欧盟 (EU)。由于媒体效价效应是短暂的，本研究在 10 天内考察了媒体效价与欧洲身份承诺和对欧盟的情感之间的个体内关联，以及通过民粹主义态度的间接影响。
我们在德国实施了一项为期 10 天的青少年日常日记研究（2022 年 1 月至 2 月），共涉及 371 名青少年。青少年平均年龄为 14.24 岁（SD=0.55），其中 60.4%为女性。我们使用多层结构方程模型和动态结构方程模型来估计假设的关联。
我们发现民粹主义态度与对欧盟的负面情感在同一天和第二天之间存在显著关联。当将当天和滞后效应都包含在一个模型中时，滞后效应变得不显著。民粹主义态度与当天或多天内的欧洲身份承诺没有显著关联。负面的政治媒体内容与当天更高的民粹主义态度相关，并且与对欧盟的负面情感间接相关（b=-.01，95%可信区间[-0.010，-0.004]）。
负面感知的政治媒体内容与更高的民粹主义态度和对欧盟的更负面情感同时相关。我们的结果表明，媒体对青少年的发展起着重要作用。
