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When digital natives enter the electorate: Political social media use among first-time votersand its effects on campaign participation

Ohme, J.

Published in:Journal of Information Technology & Politics

DOI:10.1080/19331681.2019.1613279

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Citation for published version (APA):Ohme, J. (2019). When digital natives enter the electorate: Political social media use among first-time voters andits effects on campaign participation. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 16(2), 119-136.https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2019.1613279

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Journal of Information Technology & Politics

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When digital natives enter the electorate: Politicalsocial media use among first-time voters and itseffects on campaign participation

Jakob Ohme

To cite this article: Jakob Ohme (2019): When digital natives enter the electorate: Political socialmedia use among first-time voters and its effects on campaign participation, Journal of InformationTechnology & Politics

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2019.1613279

© 2019 The Author(s). Published withlicense by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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When digital natives enter the electorate: Political social media use amongfirst-time voters and its effects on campaign participationJakob Ohme

ABSTRACTIn this study, we explore the media exposure of digital native first-time voters and test for itsmobilizing potential for their campaign participation. We compare first-time voters’ and experi-enced voters’ exposure to political information on social network sites, non-social online media andoffline media. Using a unique research design that involves a smartphone-based diary study, weassess voters’ (n = 1108) media exposure every other day of the Danish parliamentary electioncampaign in 2015. We distinguish between different content types that first-time voters receiveon social media and test for variation in the mobilizing potential of these content types. Findingsshow that social media platforms play a superior role in the media diet of digital native voters andcan foster campaign participation. First-time voters are more exposed to direct communicationfrom political actors than experienced voters while content from news media on social mediaplays an equal role in both groups’ media diet. Results suggest that a digital media environmentpotentially socializes young voters into polarized information environments that nevertheless mayincrease their involvement in an upcoming election.

KEYWORDSelection campaigns; socialmedia; campaignparticipation; digital natives;first-time voters

Much scholarship has examined how young peo-ples’ use of social media for political purposesinfluences political participation, be it politicalengagement in digital spheres or offline (Ekström& Shehata, 2016; Kahne, Lee, & Feezell, 2013; Tang& Lee, 2013; Theocharis & Quintelier, 2016;Vissers & Stolle, 2014; Xenos, Vromen, & Loader,2014). A large share of these studies focusses onpotential mobilizing effects in non-election peri-ods, while fewer address how successfully socialmedia use can engage young voters during anelection campaign (e.g. Baumgartner & Morris,2010; Holt, Shehata, Strömbäck, & Ljungberg,2013). Election campaigns are high-stake events,and news media have an important influence onmobilizing citizens and their formation of votedecision (Fletcher & Young, 2012). News mediause increasingly takes place on social media plat-forms (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, Levy,& Nielsen, 2017). At the same time, political actorsmore often use platforms like Facebook or Twitterfor direct communication with their electorate, forexample, in Demark where this study is conducted(Soerensen, 2016; van Dalen, Fazekas,

Klemmensen, & Hansen, 2015). Direct politicalcommunication can be established if voters followpolitical candidates or parties on social media aswell as through micro-targeting, which increas-ingly takes place on these platforms (Bimber,2014; Kruikemeier, Sezgin, & Boerman, 2016).

Young citizens top the list when it comes to usingsocial media for exposure to news (Gottfried &Shearer, 2016; Newman et al., 2017). In this study,we zoom in on the youngest cohort of voters, namelythose who, as potential voters, experience an electioncampaign the first time. We are interested in howthese first-time voters use different media during thecampaign and to what extent especially social mediause shapes their news diet and affects their engage-ment with an election campaign.

Most studies investigate mobilizing effects of socialmedia use during an election campaign based onactivities voters performed on these platforms, suchas publishing, sharing or discussion content (e.g. Holtet al., 2013; Kahne et al., 2013). In contrast, we focuson the exposure to campaign news on social media.Special attention, hence, is dedicated to different typesof political content citizens can find on social media.

CONTACT Jakob Ohme j.ohme@uva.nl Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166,Amsterdam 1018 WV, The Netherlands

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICShttps://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2019.1613279

© 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or builtupon in any way.

The possibility of political micro-targeting and theincreasing presence of political actors on socialmedia have dominated discussions about recent elec-tion campaigns (Baldwin-Philippi, 2017; Kreiss &McGregor, 2017). Yet, we know little about how pro-minent this type of direct political communication isin young citizens’ campaign news diet in comparisonto content from legacy news media or informationfrom friends or followers. Furthermore, how exposureto these different information sources, at last, mobi-lizes citizens, is understudied (Aldrich, Gibson,Cantijoch, & Konitzer, 2016).

This study addresses these questions in three ways:first, it applies an innovative research design, assessingpolitical information exposure via a smartphone-based media diary. This new method is used to tapcitizens’ information diet throughout the 2015Danishnational election campaign. The high-frequency mea-surement makes it possible to survey media use ona more granular level and to distinguish exposure todifferent content types via social mediaplatforms. Second, it compares the effects of informa-tion exposure via offline, non-social online and socialmedia channels on citizens’ campaign participation.This extra engagement with the election is importantto make an informed vote decision and therefore alsocrucial for first-time voters (Dimitrova, Shehata,Strömbäck, & Nord, 2014; Verba, Schlozman, &Brady, 1995). Third, most studies only consideryoung citizens (e.g. Baumgartner & Morris, 2010;Moeller, Vreese, de Esser, & Kunz, 2014; Vissers &Stolle, 2014; Yamamoto, Kushin, &Dalisay, 2013), butwe compare first-time and experienced voters. Thissheds light on whether first-time voters, who grew upwith digital media, show a different susceptibility topolitical information during an election campaignthan experienced voters (Aalberg & Jenssen, 2007;Colwell Quarles, 1979). The study thereby extendsexisting knowledge with a state-of-the-art analysisabout campaign information patterns and subsequentvoter mobilization in the digital media environment.

First-time voters and social media

News consumption among young citizens, in gen-eral, is declining (Mindich, 2005), but to theextent, they do receive news, social media plat-forms are their main source of information(Gottfried & Shearer, 2016). Likewise, turnout

rates and political participation are declining inthe younger age segments, which is a problem fora healthy democratic system (Moeller et al., 2014).First-time voters are no different than other youngcitizens when it comes to these developments. Butmoreover, they are an important group to study,since their first vote flags their entry into thepolitical system, it has a predictive power fortheir future political behavior, and studies haveshown that they rely strongly on media whenforming their vote decision (Aalberg & Jenssen,2007; Colwell Quarles, 1979; Gerber, Green, &,Schachar, 2003; Ha et al., 2013; O’Keefe & Liu,1980). Finally, the current generation of first-timevoters are the first digital natives to be called to theballot (Moeller et al., 2014). Beyond their youngage, these factors make them a special and impor-tant group of voters to study.

Here, we define first-time voters as a group ofcitizens who belong, by their year of birth, to theyoungest age bracket of the electorate and have notvoted in a national election before. Although theymayhave voted in other elections, given the focus of thisstudy, the previous voting in national elections is usedas a reference point. Research describes local orEuropean elections to be perceived as being of ‘secondorder’ (Marsh, 1998), where there is less focus ontopics important for young citizens in media coverage(Moeller, Kühne, & Vreese, 2018). However, little isknown about how this special group of citizens utilizesthe new media environment as political informationprovider during a national election campaign. Hence,we need to know more about how susceptible first-time voters are to socialmedia as a source of campaigninformation in general and to emerging types of poli-tical communication, such as being directlyapproached by political actors on these platforms.Although comparing the youngest cohort of votersagainst all older cohorts of experienced voters presentsan obvious misfit, we still believe that contrasting themedia effects of these two groups on electoral behaviorcan give valuable insights about future mobilizationpatterns.

The usage of social media in an electioncampaign

It is important to understand where first-timevoters obtain information about politics in an

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election campaign. Young adults use social mediafor a number of purposes (Lenhart, 2015). Thepossibility to personalize the news diet on theseplatforms (Thorson & Wells, 2015) can lead toa narrower information diet, while inadvertentexposure to information from their network(Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017) might broaden theirhorizon. A few studies have investigated the useof social media as a source of political informationin an election campaign. Dimitrova et al. (2014)found rather limited usage of social media assources of information among the general popula-tion in the Swedish 2010 national election.Baumgartner and Morris (2010) found thataround a quarter of 18–24-year-old voters in the2008 U.S. presidential election received news viasocial media networks, outnumbered by TV orprint media use. More recent reports, however,indicate that if young citizens receive politicalinformation at all, it is from social media plat-forms (e.g. Mitchell, Gottfried, & Matsa, 2015;Newman et al., 2017). Hence, we expect youngcitizens to use social media as their main informa-tion source in an election campaign.

H1: First-time voters are more often exposed topolitical information on social media than on non-social online and offline media channels during theelection campaign.

One goal of this study is to detect whether first-time voters, given their age and inexperience withvoting, show characteristics not found amongmore experienced voters. The use of social mediaplatforms as news sources is not restricted toyoung citizens (Holcomb, Gottfried, & Mitchell,2013). In the Danish context, Newman et al.,(2016) find that citizens under 35 years use socialnetwork sites for news only slightly more ona weekly basis than the general population. Giventhe rather large age span and the non-electioncontext in these studies, it is difficult to say if first-time voters are special in this regard. We there-fore ask:

RQ1: Are first-time voters more often exposed topolitical information on social media during anelection campaign than more experienced voters?

Content exposure on social media during theelection campaign

Users can receive political information via socialmedia platforms in several different ways, i.e. bymainly following news media, by subscribing toinformation from political actors or by randomexposure to political content that is shared byothers. Direct political communication (i.e. regularnewsfeed posts or paid, personalized advertisingstemming from political actors) is a special char-acteristic of social media platforms (Bimber, 2014).Political micro-targeting (i.e. paid, personalizedadvertising; Kruikemeier et al., 2016) is a way forpolitical actors to reach out to specific groups ofthe electorate, circumventing content curation byusers and algorithmic decisions by the platforms.In the aftermath of the 2016 US election (Kreiss &McGregor, 2017) and the 2016 Brexit referendum(i.e. the decision of Great Britain to leave theEuropean Union; Bodó, Helberger, & Vreese,2017), questions have been raised about the con-sequences of reaching voters with this new style ofdigital, political communication.

As far as content diversity on social media,previous studies have mainly looked at generalexposure (Baumgartner & Morris, 2010;Dimitrova et al., 2014; Ha et al., 2013; Holt et al.,2013) and neglected individual differences inusers’ personalized news diet. However, especiallyduring an election campaign, it is of great interestto know whether citizens are addressed directly bypolitical communication in social media newsfeedsor whether they rely on third party information,such as news media or friends and followers. Theextensive literature on the use of digital media inelection campaigns points to the increasing use ofsocial media platforms by politicians (e.g. Bimber,2014; Howard, 2006; Karlsen, 2011). One hundredand seventy of 175 Danish MPs maintaina Facebook account with generally high postingactivities (Soerensen, 2016), and the case ofDenmark can thus shed light on future develop-ments in countries where political actors are onlybeginning to use social media more. However, it isunclear how successful political actors are when itcomes to appearing in a curated news diet of first-time voters, who might find this personal andaccessible connection to political actors convenient

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS 3

but may not want to be bothered by a candidaterunning for parliament. The following questionsare therefore posed:

RQ2: Are first-time voters more often exposed todirect political communication than to informationfrom news media or friends and followers?

On social media, political actors focus especiallyon young voters in the election campaign (Enli &Skogerbø, 2013). All parties know that it is impor-tant that young citizens vote and they are alwaystrying to win new voters. We know little aboutwhether politicians’ increasing attempts to reachout to young voters via social media (Lilleker,2015; Sloam, 2015; Soerensen, 2016) is effective(see Aldrich, et al., 2016 for a recent exception).In a non-social media context, Strandberg (2013)finds that voters below 25 years rely more onparty – and candidate websites than any otherage groups in the 2011 Finish parliamentary elec-tion. Because of the high social media activities ofparties and candidates and young people’s exten-sive use of social media, it is expected that:

H2: First-time voters are exposed to direct politicalcommunication on social media more often thanexperienced voters.

Mobilization to participate through socialmedia

Social media platforms are a special place of infor-mation exposure in terms of how users can accesspolitical information and the characteristics of thecontent they are exposed to. These differences inaccess and content distinguish platforms likeFacebook and Twitter from traditional offlinemedia or online sources (e.g. news websites, poli-tical blogs, party websites). Research could estab-lish strong mobilizing effects of social media useon political participation in non-election times(Ekström & Shehata, 2016; Kahne et al., 2013;Tang & Lee, 2013; Theocharis & Quintelier, 2016;Vissers & Stolle, 2014; Xenos et al., 2014) and oncampaign participation (Baumgartner & Morris,2010; Holt et al., 2013). However, studies investi-gating mobilizing effects of social media use dur-ing an election campaign are mostly based on

activities that voters performed on these platforms,such as publishing, sharing or discussion content(Holt et al., 2013; Kahne et al., 2013). Therefore,we know little about how the growing exposure tocampaign information on social media shapesespecially young citizens’ news diet and affectstheir engagement with a campaign.

Extant research does not fully agree on whynews exposure on social media may exert relativelystrong mobilizing effects on political participation(Boulianne, 2017). One plausible reason is thatcharacteristics of information selection on algo-rithmic media alter the content citizens areexposed to (Bode, 2016). Prior (2007) describeshow a changing media environment can affectcitizens’ political behavior. Based on considera-tions from the O-M-A framework (Delli Carpini& Keeter, 1996), a change in access to informationcan shift opportunities, motivations and abilities tolearn from media exposure.

The present study argues that social media trans-form political media exposure in a way that affectsthe political content received on such platforms:content may be more relevant, more diverse andmore directed than political content received fromoffline or non-social online channels. First, a higherrelevance results from the pre-selection of sourcesinto a news diet by the user and the algorithmicdecisions based on previous behavior by the indivi-dual and the personal network. Second, a higherdiversity1 results from a great number of differentsources to choose from at no costs and the possi-bility of inadvertent exposure (Bode, 2016; Kim,Chen, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2013; Valeriani & Vaccari,2016). Third, social endorsements (such as recom-mendations, reactions or comments) accompanythe vast majority of news feed items on socialmedia (Messing & Westwood, 2014). Therefore,content appears more directed and may affect theinterpretation by a user (e.g. what to think or doabout a political issue).

All three factors increase the opportunity toreceive political information that is of interest toa citizen. At the same time, content that is directedat the user or is surprising due to its inadvertentnature may decrease the motivation users need toexpose to it. Based on the O-M-A framework,a greater opportunity to receive political informa-tion combined with the fact that users need less

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motivation to process it increases the chances ofengagement with political topics, for example, bypolitical learning (Prior, 2007). Bode (2016), forexample, found that exposure to political informa-tion on social media offers the opportunity forpolitical learning, although users may not learnmore from it than from other media content.Political engagement, which comprises of factorslike political interest or knowledge, in turn, is animportant precondition for political participationin the Civic Voluntarism Model (Verba et al.,1995).

In the case of an election campaign, exposure topolitical information via social media may increasepolitical engagement with campaign topics.Engagement with political information during thecampaign, in turn, may be an important precondi-tion for citizens’ campaign participation. Previousstudies have found mobilizing effects of socialmedia use during election time, for young citizensas well as for the general population (Ha et al.,2013; Holt et al., 2013; Kushin & Yamamoto,2010). One of the few studies that specificallycompare media channels finds that social mediause has a stronger effect on campaign participationin the Swedish population than the use of othernews websites (Dimitrova et al., 2014). Followingour above-mentioned argumentation, all citizensreceiving political information via social mediamay experience higher relevance and greaterdiversity of content. Hence, we expect:

H3: Exposure to political information on socialmedia will have a greater mobilizing effect on cam-paign participation than exposure to political infor-mation from non-social online and offline channels.

“The role of people’s skills in political learningdepends in part on the kinds of skills that theavailable media require” (Prior, 2007, p. 33).Considering that social media offer benefits overother media, namely easy access to relevant infor-mation and more diverse content, citizens’ abilityto take advantage of these different affordances isan important condition for potential effects ofsocial media exposure. Today’s first-time votersare the first digital native voters (Moeller et al.,2014). Their upbringing in a digital media envir-onment makes it easy for them to operate on

especially social media platforms (Palfrey &Gasser, 2010; Thomas, 2011). They are more likelyto benefit from social media than experiencedvoters, who may not be as skilled as digital nativesin administering their social media news feedeffectively. A number of studies have found mobi-lizing effects of social media use especially foryoung citizens (Baumgartner & Morris, 2010;Ekström & Shehata, 2016), but few studies focuson social media use of the youngest cohort ofvoters or compare them with older voters.However, such a comparison allows us to spotdevelopments that may reflect future trends inmobilization through election campaign informa-tion. Since first-time voters ‘get more out of’ theirsocial media use during an election campaign, it islikely that exposure to political information willaffect their engagement with election topics morethan experienced voters’ engagement. Therefore:

H4: Exposure to political social media informationwill have a stronger mobilizing effect on first-timevoters’ campaign participation than on moreexperienced voters.

Lastly, social media use during an election cam-paign increases the chances of being exposed todirect communication from political actors, eitherby following their updates intentionally, beinginadvertently exposed to messages shared by net-work contacts or through targeted advertising(Bimber, 2014; Bodó et al., 2017). When they usedirect communication, political actors bypass jour-nalistic filters. This makes their political informa-tion more directed than information from legacynews media, which tends to be more balanced(Bruns, 2011). During election campaigns, politi-cians specifically target online activities at invol-ving, connecting and mobilizing voters, and it ispossible that such activities engage voters morethan other information on social media (Foot &Schneider, 2006). Higher political engagement asa result of direct political communication may,therefore, mobilize citizens more strongly to parti-cipate in campaign-related activities than otherinformation received via social media. This typeof research is sparse, but Aldrich et al. (2016) findthat that direct online contact to political actorscan have a mobilizing effect on turnout as well as

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS 5

campaign participation of UK and US citizens.Interestingly, they find that also indirect contactto political information online (i.e. receiving mes-sages as endorsements from personal ties) had anespecially mobilizing effect for the youngest voters.Messages directly from key players in an electioncampaign may also include more often direct callsfor action. Such recruitment for actions is an extra‘triggering factor’ to mobilize people (Verba et al.,1995). Hence, there is a reason to expect that:

H5: Direct political communication will havea stronger mobilizing effect on citizens than infor-mation from news media or friends and followers.

H6: Direct political communication will havea stronger mobilizing effect on first-time voters’campaign participation than on experienced voters’campaign participation.

Method

In order to investigate the influence of exposure topolitical information on campaign participation,the study relies on a pre- and post-election onlinepanel survey and an eleven-wave smartphonediary study conducted during the Danish nationalelection campaign in 2015. With high Internetcoverage and a high number of persons usingsmartphones (both at 96%; Danmarks Statistik,2016), Denmark is a well-chosen case to conductan online and smartphone-based survey study.The diary study invited respondents to takea short survey on their smartphone every secondday in the late evening to assess their media expo-sure on that day. The high frequency of measure-ments allows for a realistic estimation of theirpolitical media use during campaign time as wellas a granular assessment of exposure to socialmedia content types.

Sample

The sample consists of 1108 respondents. Of these162 are first-time voters (18–22 years old at thetime of the election) and 946 ‘experienced’ voters(23 years and older). First-time voters are definedas a group of citizens, who had reached legal

voting age during the last election cycle and byself-report had no right to vote in the last nationalelection.2 All respondents took part in the pre- andpost-election survey and at least four mobile diarysurveys. The latter were fielded 11 times duringthe three-week election campaign period. Thisprovides a comprehensive assessment of theirmedia exposure during the election campaign.

Respondents were recruited using a pollster’sdatabase and the use of national register data.Three different groups were included: a generalpopulation sample, a sample of elderly anda youth sample. The general and the elderly sam-ples were recruited from the pollster’s database,which is representative of the Danish population.The sampling strategy relied on a light quota onage and gender. In the general population sample,10,315 were invited to take the online survey ofwhich 45% (n = 4641) did. Similarly, 60% of theelderly agreed to participate (n = 1831). For theyouth sample, 13,700 persons aged 17–21 years oldat wave one were randomly sampled, usingnational register address data3; 19% (n = 2653)did. In total 9125 (4641 + 1831 + 2653)participated.

The pre-election wave, which was the thirdwave of a longitudinal study, included 2946respondents from the national sample (attritionrate from wave 1 (4641): 36%). The elderly sampleincluded 1369 respondents (attrition rate fromwave 1 n = 1831: 23%) and the youth sample1051 (attrition rate from wave 1 (n = 2653):61%). In the post-election wave conductedthe day after the election, 2680 respondents inthe general sample, 1292 respondents in theelderly sample and 769 respondents in youth sam-ple were retained (overall retention rate 88%). Ofthe respondents participating in pre- and post-election wave, 1349 (28%) participated in themobile election diary study. Out of these, 82%participated at least 4 times in the mobile diaryleading to a final sample of 1108.4

Measures

Exposure to political information (EPI). To mea-sure exposure to political information during thecampaign, we asked the respondents everyother day what they had been exposed to, rather

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than let them assess their media use retrospectivelyfor the complete three weeks. We useda smartphone-based diary measure (Ohme etal., 2016) with questions constructed aroundthree modes of reception, i.e. Audio, Page andStream (Engel & Best, 2012), rather than aroundexposure categories from previous studies (e.g. TV,Print or Radio). Here, respondents were askedwhether they were listening to, reading or watch-ing political content on the respective day. Weargue that these modes better account for mediaexposure in a convergent media environmentbecause the actual sources of exposure are differ-entiated, which reduces recall efforts by respon-dents and results in a reliable exposure measure(Authors, 2016; Slater, 2004). Furthermore, themeasurement allows for a comprehensive assess-ment of different content types respondents wereexposed to on social media, rather than using meretime-measurement (see Appendix C). This allowsto explore how many respondents use social mediaas a source of information in an election cam-paign, and it reveals what kind of informationthey actually receive on these platforms (Authors,2016). Respondents received queries on theirsmartphone to take the diary survey on 11 daysthroughout the election campaign; however, notall respondents participated every day. To receivea reliable estimate of their campaign media expo-sure, respondents who participated very few timeswere excluded. Subsequently, the analysis relies onrespondents who were participating at least fourand up to all of the 11 days. To account for thisvariation in participation and to make data com-parable, a relative exposure measurement was cal-culated on an individual data level. The frequencyof exposure to offline, online or social mediasources as well as to different social media contenttypes was divided by the number of days eachrespondent had participated in the survey. Therelative measure ranged from 0 to 1, with 1 indi-cating exposure to the information from the cor-responding media channel or to the specific socialmedia content type on all days the respondent hadparticipated.5

Campaign participation. Respondents were askedin a post-election survey whether they participatedin 12 predefined political activities during the

election campaign (see Appendix B). This buildson approaches from Dimitrova et al. (2014) as wellas Kahne et al. (2013) but is a more comprehensiveway of assessing campaign participation, since itincludes offline activities (e.g. attended publicmeetings, discussions, debates and lectures aboutthe election), online activities (e.g. used a voteadvice application online) and social media activ-ities (e.g. expressed your support for a party orcandidate). Respondents were asked if they parti-cipated in any of these activities over the course ofthe campaign time. An index of campaign partici-pation was subsequently calculated and showedsufficient reliability (Cronbach’s α = .73, Min =0, Max = 12, M = 2.9, SD = 2.2). Intended cam-paign participation was assessed by asking respon-dents before the campaign how likely it is that theywill perform the same 12 activities on an 11-pointscale (0: Not likely at all – 10: Very likely)(Cronbach’s α = .88, Min = 0, Max = 120, M =39, SD = 22).

ControlsAge (M = 48, SD = 19, Min = 18, Max = 80),gender (45% female), formal education, income,political interest (M = 6.8, SD = 2.3, Min = 0,Max = 10; see also Appendix B), and being a first-time voter were added as control variables to themodel.

Analytical strategy. In a first step, media exposurevia traditional offline media, online media (e.g.news websites, political blogs, party websites),and social media platforms are compared betweenthe two groups of the electorate. It is tested if theextent to which first-time and experienced votersare exposed to different content types on socialmedia is significantly different; in particular, forcontent people read (i.e. Page) and watched (i.e.Stream) on these platforms. In the next step, thegeneral mobilizing potential of offline, online andsocial media exposure for campaign participationis examined. An OLS regression model allows forthe inclusion of intention to participate in thecampaign indicated by respondents at the begin-ning of the campaign. By controlling for this proxyof a lagged dependent variable, the model esti-mates the influence of media exposure on theindividual deviations between intended and actual

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS 7

behavior. Thus, changes in participation inducedby media use are examined. With the use of inter-action effects in the regression models, differencesbetween first-time and experienced voters’ mobili-zation effect through media use are assessed.Lastly, to understand in greater detail what contenttypes in a political social media diet can affectparticipation, the effects of content from politicalactors, news media, friends or followers, otherpages or blogs, and political advertising on cam-paign participation are estimated in an OLSregression model for both groups of the electorate.

Results

Hypothesis 1 predicts higher media exposure topolitical information on social media than fromother online and offline sources for first-timevoters, and this was confirmed (see Figure 1). Onaverage they received political information onapproximately six of the 21 campaign days (27%)from offline media sources, on approximatelythree days (10%) from online news media andapproximately seven days (33%) from socialmedia. The first research question (RQ1), whethersocial media platforms have higher relevance forfirst-time voters than for experienced voters, can

be answered affirmatively. First-time voters usedsuch platforms significantly more often (M= .35,SD = .27) than experienced voters (M = .23, SD =.29, t(1106) = −4.6, p ≤ .001), although the differ-ence is rather small. Furthermore, first-time votersused offline sources significantly less (M= .28, SD= .18, t(1106) = 10.6, p ≤ .001) than experiencedvoters (M = .51, SD = .27). No significant differ-ences for online exposure between the two groups(first-time voters: M = .13, SD = .13; experiencedvoters: M = .14, SD = .11, t(1106) = 0.2, p ≤ .849)were detected (see Figure 1).

We also investigated if citizens receive morecontent from political actors than from newsmedia and personal contacts like friends and fol-lowers (RQ2). We looked at content from politicalactors and political advertising separately, andinterestingly, first-time voters were overall signifi-cantly more frequently exposed to posts andvideos by political actors than to content fromnews media, friends or followers and other pages.Experienced voters were almost equally oftenexposed to content from political actors andnews sites on social media (see Table 1). A morenuanced picture emerges for political advertising.While political advertising in the form of postedtext adds is rather rare for first-time voters (M =

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Campaign Information Exposure Across Channels

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Figure 1. Frequency of exposure to political information across channels and age groups.Note: Respondents participating more than three days included in analysis. First-time voters, n = 199; Experienced voters, n = 909.Boxplots present Minimum, Maximum, Quartiles and Median of Relative Media Exposure Measure (Median labeled)asignificantdifference compared to exposure on social media among first-time votersbsignificant difference between exposure of first-timevoters compared to experienced voters.

8 J. OHME

.20, SD= .25) and experienced voters (M= .14, SD= .25), political video adds occur much more fre-quently in both groups’ media diet (first-timevoters: M = .61, SD = .40; experiencedvoters: M = .49, SD = .40). We can, therefore,conclude that voters, if they indicated receivingpolitical content from social media at all, in mostinstances are frequently exposed to informationfrom political actors in relation to content fromnews media, followers and friends, and other socialmedia pages.

Additionally, since political actors potentially putmore effort into targeting first-time voters, evenhigher exposure to content from political actors wasexpected for the youngest voters (H2). This expecta-tion was confirmed by the results shown in Table 1.First-time voters received significantlymore posts andvideos from political actors during the election cam-paign via social media than more experienced voters.The same pattern was found for political advertising,text-based and videos. This finding is especially inter-esting since exposure to content fromnewsmedia andfriends or followers did not differ significantlybetween the two groups. First-time voters do not seepolitical information from news media more fre-quently than experienced voters, but receive moreinformation from political actors on social mediaduring the election campaign.6

To test for the mobilizing effect of exposure topolitical information via social media on voters’campaign participation, several OLS regressions,partly controlling for the variable of intendedcampaign participation, were conducted (Table2). Intention to participate in an election

campaign is different from actual political beha-vior and can therefore not be used as a laggeddependent variable. However, controlling forinitial motivation to participate helps scrutinizeour results. Given the close relation betweenbeing a first-time voter and age as variables inour models, we ran multi-collinearity analyses foreach model. Variance inflating factors (VIF)range between 1.7 and 4.1. A VIF below 4.0 isconsidered as less concerning while serious issueswith multicollinearity can be assumed for valuesof 10 and above (Acock, 2014; Hair, Anderson,Tatham, & Black, 1995). Hence, no adjustmentsto the models were necessary since multi-collinearity was below crucial thresholds.

Looking at the general effects of media exposureon voters’ campaign participation, we find thatexposure to social media and other online mediasignificantly predicts campaign participation, whileoffline media exposure does not (Model 1). Theinteraction effects of exposure and being a first-time voter indeed show that for all three mediachannels, first-time voters are less affected by poli-tical information exposure than experienced voters(Model 2,3,4); hence, H4 needs to be rejected.Looking at the marginal effects of the two groups’media exposure yields additional insights into howstrongly media use can indeed mobilize first-timevoters’ campaign participation. In Figure 2, we seethat a higher offline media use during campaigntime decreases first-time voters’ likelihood tobecome active in campaign-related activities.Online media use contributes to neither a highernor a lower likelihood of first-time voters becoming

Table 1. Exposure to different content types on social media.Types of content received on social media

First-time voters Experienced voters

M SD n95% CI for

Mean Difference M SD n95% CI for

Mean Difference t df

Posts read from political actors .73b .34 130 .67, .79 .58b .39 518 .54, .61 −4.1** 646Posts read news media pages .61ab .37 130 .55, .68 .60 .38 518 .56, .63 −0.5 646Posts read from other pages or blogs .15a .25 130 .10, .19 .13a .25 518 .12, .16 −0.4 646Posts read from friends and followers .53ab .37 130 .46, .59 .54ab .40 518 .51, .58 0.46 646Political advertising read .20a .25 130 .15, .24 .14a .25 518 .11, .16 −2.3** 646Videos from political actors .64 .37 99 .57, .72 .42d .41 384 .38, .46 −4.8*** 481Videos from news media .27cd .35 99 .20, .34 .26cd .35 384 .22, .29 −0.3 481Videos by other pages of profiles .23 cd .31 99 .17, .29 .18cd .29 384 .16, .22 −1.2 481Videos by friends and followers .33cd .35 99 .26, .40 .39d .39 384 .33, .43 1.3 481Political advertising watched .61 .40 99 .54, .69 .49c .40 384 .45, .53 −2.8** 481

*p< .05., **p < .01., ***p < .001.; a = sig. difference compared to posts read from political actors, b = sig. differences compared to politicaladvertising read; c = sig difference compared to videos from political actors; d = sig. differences compared to political advertising watched.

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS 9

politically active. Only for social media, we seea positive relationship for the exposure to politicalinformation on these platforms and first-timevoters’ campaign participation. To test for therobustness of the stronger mobilization effect forexperienced voters, we included the intended cam-paign participation in the model. This helps ensurethat the effects we are looking at are indeed relatedto the exposure on different media channels ratherthan to prior intention. Model 5, 6 and 7 in Table 1shows that the negative interaction effects for first-time voters are robust, yielding the exact samepattern but with reduced effect sizes. Therefore,H3 receives support.

Lastly, the possibility of a stronger mobilizingeffect through direct political communicationcompared to information from news media,friends or followers, or from other pages or blogswas examined. Results from a regression modelthat tested for effects of particular social mediacontent types on campaign participation supportthe strong relation between direct political

communication and campaign participation, asproposed by H5. Table 3 (Model 8) shows thatnon-commercialized content from political actorsis most strongly related to campaign participation,followed by content from other political pagesusers followed and content received via friends orfollowers. For content from news media and poli-tical advertising, no statistically significant effectson campaign participation could be established.Furthermore, Hypothesis 6, expecting greatermobilizing effects of direct political content forfirst-time voters than for experienced voters(Model 9), did not find support. The only differ-ence between the two groups is a weaker influenceof content from friends and followers on first-timevoters. Hence, first-time voters are more stronglymobilized to engage in the campaign by regularposts from political actors (but not from politicaladvertising) than by information from news mediaor friends and followers. Mobilization by directpolitical communication is the same for youngand for experienced voters.

Table 2. Predicting Campaign Participation (OLS).Campaign Participation

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Gender (femalehigh coded)

.013 (.115) .013 (.115) .012 (.115) .008 (.114) −.001 (.096) −.001 (.096) −.003 (.096)

Age −.114** (.004) −.133*** (.004) −.113** (.004) −.115** (.004) −.056+ (.004) −.044 (.004) −.047 (.004)

Education .017 (.032) .014 (.032) .017 (.032) .018 (.032) .017 (.027) .019 (.027) .019 (.027)

Political Interest .239*** (.027) .243*** (.027) .240*** (.027) .245*** (.027) .014 (.025) .012 (.025) .017 (.025)

Exposure to political information (EPI)EPI Offline .023 (.264) .053 (.277) .027 (.264) .032 (.263) .001 (.234) −.015 (.223) −.012 (.222)

EPI Online .178*** (.460) .179*** (.459) .195*** (.477) .180*** (.456) .098*** (.392) .108*** (.408) .099*** (.391)

EPI Social Media .407*** (.209) .413*** (.209) .411*** (.209) .447*** (.218) .239*** (.185) .236*** (.185) .257*** (.195)

First-time voter(FTV = highcoded)

−.030 (.206) .079 (.302) .026 (.258) .109* (.281) .081+ (.251) .052 (.216) .091* (.236)

EPI Offline*FTV −.136** (.807) −.079* (.678)EPI Online*FTV −.078* (1.161) −.046 (.967)EPI SocialMedia*FTV

−.180*** (.535) −.094** (.454)

IntendedCampaignParticipation

.573*** (.003) .574*** (.003) .568*** (.003)

N 967 967 967 967 939 939 939adj. R2 .390 .395 .392 .401 .592 .591 .593

Standardized beta coefficients; Standard errors in parentheses.+p < 0.10, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

10 J. OHME

Discussion

This study took as its starting point the fact thatdigital natives all over the world are approachingvoting age and their first vote (McKinney, 2011;Moeller et al., 2014). It examines how voters in the2015 Danish national election were informed andmobilized by social media use during the electioncampaign. Given a greater ability of digital nativesto make use of social media, the study expectsfirst-time voters to be more strongly affected in

their campaign participation than experiencedvoters (Thomas, 2011). The analysis comparesthe influence of exposure to political informationon social media vis-à-vis exposure to other onlineand offline media and thereby extends previousresearch in this area (Dimitrova et al., 2014;Kushin & Yamamoto, 2010; Moeller et al., 2014).Relying on a national online panel survey withwaves right before and after the election campaignand a smartphone-based diary survey, the studymeasured media exposure on 11 of the 21 days’election campaign.

Results suggest that first-time voters are a specialgroup in the electorate, but not entirely the wayexpected. We find that first-time voters mainlyreceive campaign information from social mediaplatforms. This supports findings from recent stu-dies (Hargittai & Shaw, 2013) but contradicts moredated findings, which found online news and tradi-tional offline media to be the prevalent informationsources compared to social media (Baumgartner &Morris, 2010). Moreover, such platforms appear tobe the place where political actors reach the youngestvoters with their messages. This underlines the rele-vance of recent debates discussing the merits anddangers of politicians making use of social media ina campaign (Kreiss & McGregor, 2017). Our find-ings that political social media exposure affects first-time voters’ campaign participation most positivelyand that non-commercial posts and videos receivedfrom political actors have the highest mobilizingpotential points to the need in the future researchto look more closely into the effects of social mediacampaigning on an individual level. However, thesuggested strong media effects for first-time voters(O’Keefe & Liu, 1980) might be less true for youngcitizens who grew up in a digital media environment.In fact, we see that first-time voters are difficult tomobilize by mere exposure to political informationfrom any kind of media channel.

Our study shows that the youngest generationof voters, rather than being the “least involvedand least politically active segment of the popula-tion” (Kaid, McKinney, & Tedesco, 2007,p. 1094), take advantage of the easy access topolitical information as digital natives – if theyneed it. However, first-time voters’ focus onsocial media means less attention to offlinemedia and other online media. The higher

01

23

4C

ampa

ign

Par

ticip

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n

0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1Political Offline Media Exposure

experienced voters first−time voters

Offline Media Use and being a First−Time Voter

24

68

Cam

paig

n P

artic

ipat

ion

0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1Political Online Media Exposure

experienced voters first−time voters

Online Media Use and being a First−Time Voter

23

45

6C

ampa

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Par

ticip

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0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1Political Social Media Exposure

experienced voters first−time voters

Social Media Use and being a First−Time Voter

Figure 2. Interaction effects of media use and being a first-timevoter on campaign participation.

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS 11

relevance and greater diversity of informationmay explain for the supremacy of social mediahere (Messing & Westwood, 2014; Thorson &Wells, 2015). Furthermore, inconvenient acquisi-tion costs and the pull-information mechanism(Klinger & Svensson, 2015) may seem cumber-some to digital natives who are used to socialmedia pushing information towards their news-feed. As far as traditional news media, their pre-sence on every social media platform does notmake them the preferred source of informationamong first-time voters during an election cam-paign. This supports Mindich’s (2005) observa-tion that young citizens tune out from traditionalnews media. This is partly worrisome since thenews media’s role in society (to provide objectiveinformation and guidance, act as a watchdog, bea forum of diverse views; Christians et al., 2009)is weakened by this development.

In contrast, we find that the high usage of socialmedia provides young voters with other relevantinformation, in addition to news media content,about an upcoming election. Direct political com-munication plays an important role in first-timevoters’ media diet. This indicates that if they wantto be informed about candidates and issues in anelection campaign, they get this information in thesame tailored way that they get all other informa-tion they need: curated into a news diet that fitstheir special needs. It may sound counter-intuitiveat first, but given that digital natives start usingsocial media platforms way earlier than they startusing news media independently of their parents,this finding makes good sense. In a situation liketheir first election, when society expects them toinform themselves about the campaign and makean informed vote decision, they may simply followthe information acquisition models they already

Table 3. Predicting campaign participation by specific social media content types (OLS).Campaign Participation

(8) (9)

Gender (female high coded) .018 (.117) .017 (.117)

Age −.045 (.005) −.035 (.005)

Education −.002 (.032) −.002 (.032)

Political Interest .227*** (.028) .235*** (.028)

Exposure to political information (EPI)EPI Offline .019 (.271) .022 (.270)

EPI Online .164*** (.491) .161*** (.489)

EPI Social Mediaposts/videos from political actors .234*** (.217) .233*** (.241)

posts/videos from news media .053 (.251) .063+ (.274)

posts/videos from friends or followers .114*** (.206) .142*** (.225)

posts/videos from other pages or blogs .119*** (.371) .137*** (.421)

political advertising (text/video) .026 (.271) .034 (.307)

First-time voter (high coded) −.042 (.209) .106* (.318)

posts/videos from political actors*FTV −.019 (.519)posts/videos from news media*FTV −.037 (.628)posts/videos from friends or followers*FTV −.102* (.539)posts/videos from other pages or blogs*FTV −.047 (.883)political advertising (text/video)*FTV −.010 (.641)

N 967 967adj. R2 .376 .385

Standardized beta coefficients; Standard errors in parentheses+p < 0.10, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

12 J. OHME

know best. Certainly, ‘tuning in’ to messages frompolitical actors can quickly result in a de-selectionthe day after the election. But the most importantpoint is that selecting political actors into the newsdiet apparently creates a synergy, and the exposureto this content has actual mobilizing power. Itengages first-time voters in the election by, forexample, inspiring them to visit an electionevent, use a vote advice application or convinceothers on social media to vote.

One question raised by these findings is whycontent from political actors is actually able tostimulate participation among the electorate. Onereason might be that messages from politicalactors contain a clear call for actions, for example,to attend an event or share content on socialmedia. Studies analyzing the content of politicalsocial media posts in regards to their activatingelements are sparse, but research has found thatmobilizing voters is a core goal of social mediacampaigns, rather than branding candidates andparties (Enli & Skogerbø, 2013) or discussing poli-tical issues with voters (van Dalen et al., 2015).These calls for actions may be an especially trig-gering factor for peoples’ participation, asdescribed by Verba et al. (1995). Despite this plau-sible interpretation, future research should inves-tigate the social media content of political actorsmore closely.

It is furthermore noteworthy that traditionalnews media seem to have a limited ability tomobilize campaign activity among the electoratein general. A reason for the minimal effects wefind may be traditional legacy media’s morebalanced coverage of political issues (Bruns,2011), especially in a democratic corporate mediasystem like Denmark (Benson, Blach-Ørsten,Powers, Willig, & Zambrano, 2012). In turn, con-tent from blogs or political social media pages maycontain clearer political undertones; exposure tosuch partisan media content has shown to mobi-lize citizens in election campaigns (e.g. Stroud,2010). In our case, a certain level of partisanshipor a political opinion may have been necessary forpeople to participate in the campaign. An explana-tion for the small mobilizing effects of legacymedia, hence, could be that they publish lesspolarizing and opinionated content than otherdigital information sources.

Limitations

Our findings have to be read against a number oflimitations. First, our study set out to test if first-timevoters are special when it comes to media use and itseffects. However, our data do not allow us to answerwhether the findings of this study resemble a lifecycle or cohort effect (Kaid et al., 2007). We cannotbe certain about whether the examined patterns ofmedia use and effects come about because of voters’very young age or the fact that it is their first electioncampaign as potential voters. It is possible that poli-tical information usage patterns change whentoday’s first-time voters cast their votes later in life.However, this generation of citizens shows the firstfully developed behavior of digital media usage whenthey enter the political system. The decreasing rele-vance of traditional news media, the prominence ofsocial media, and the direct contact between votersand political actors are therefore likely to persist intheir information routines. Of course, we cannot ruleout that parts of our results are attributable to first-time voters’ curiosity about their first election. Itremains to be seen if these patterns continue whenthey vote next time.

Second, our study uses an innovative designwhich attempts to decrease respondents’ memorybias and allows us to ask about a granular distinc-tion of different media sources and contentreceived on social media. Because only 96% ofthe Danish population have Internet access anduse smartphones (Danmarks Statistik, 2016), wecannot generalize from our data to the generalpopulation. Furthermore, using panel data andespecially a smartphone-based diary study thatrelies on frequent participation by the respon-dents, comes at the expense of panel attrition andresults in potential sample deviations. We foundunexpectedly high exposure to content from poli-tical actors in their media diet. This finding has tobe interpreted with caution. It arises during anelection campaign were attention to politics isextraordinarily high in Denmark. It only appliesto respondents who were exposed to political con-tent via social media in the first place and has to beread against the special sample of this study. Wedeal with respondents who were slightly moreinterested in politics, had a higher education, andwere slightly older compared to our main panel’s

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS 13

sample with representative characteristics for theDanish population. Furthermore, they were dedi-cated enough to participate at least four out of 11days in our smartphone-based measurement.However, we do not find sample biases in termsof general social media use, nor does our addi-tional analysis (Appendix A) suggest that ourrespondents are overly politically engaged onsocial media in non-election times. We neverthe-less acknowledge that it is still possible thatrespondents were not fully able to recall theirexposure to different content types correctly. Dueto the strong focus on politicians and parties in themedia, they possibly overreported their exposureto content from political actors as a source of newson social media. However, a recent study con-firmed the high visibility of Danish political actorson social media (Soerensen, 2016) and another oneshows that 61% of the Danes used social mediaduring the election campaign (Hoff, J., LinaaJensen, J., & Klastrup, L., 2016). Nevertheless, oursample is not fully representative of the Danishpopulation and the mentioned deviations and par-ticularities have to be taken into account wheninterpreting the results. In connection, we needto mention that our models control for a numberof variables (i.e. age, education, and political inter-est) that have been shown to be relevant predictorsof political engagement (e.g. Bakker & de Vreese,2011; Dimitrova, Shehata, Strömbäck, Nord, 2014 ;Shehata, Ekström, & Olsson, 2016; Xenos et al.,2014). But since other variables could be relevantpredictors as well, our results are subject toomitted variable bias.

Lastly, the mobilizing media effects we find –especially in regards to content from politicalactors – is subject to potential endogeneity. Itmay well be that more politically active citizensare also more likely to follow politicians on socialmedia in the first place. In this case, direct poli-tical communication would be the outcome ofparticipation and not its predictor. This challengeto a causal argument is addressed by including, asa control in our analytical model, the intention toparticipate people had at the campaign begin.However, due to the lack of a lagged dependentvariable or panel data, no final statement about

the causality of the detected effects can beinferred.

This study finds a low relative importance ofoffline and online news in first-time voters’ cam-paign media diet, a limited exposure to legacynews sources on social media, and few instancesof exposure to content from friends and followers.If we connect indications with the dominant posi-tion of content from political actors, it appearslikely that social media platforms createa polarized picture for first-time voters duringelection campaigns. The most important reasonthat content from political actors is so prominentin their news diet is that they choose to receive thiscontent. This selection may be due to a certainunderstanding of citizenship, i.e. the duty to keepinformed – using election-related content on socialmedia. While their intentions may be good, it isunlikely that first-time voters thereby ‘liked’ orfollowed a broad spectrum of parties or candi-dates, leading to polarized exposure (Prior, 2013).However, the flux in a digital media environmentcreates a rather situational involvement (Kushin &Yamamoto, 2010) with political content, comparedto a more stable, habitual exposure to traditionalmedia (Diddi & LaRose, 2006). So if there is aneasy way into filter bubbles for young voters, theremight also be an easy way out.

This study shows how news media’s supremacyin informing the electorate – both offline but alsoon social media – is challenged by new informa-tion providers. It is noteworthy that the youngestgeneration of voters subscribes equally strongly topolitical actors and news media in their campaignsocial media diet. Our study has shown that newpolitical information sources relate to youngvoters’ campaign participation. Ultimately, thenew information environment they grew up in,may also affect their vote decision and therebythe fundament of a democratic society (Ohme etal., 2018). Future research should examine whetherthe usage patterns found in our and previous stu-dies persist over a longer period and whetherpolitical actors gain ground as important sourcesin voters’ news diet. In any case, the competitionfor who will be informing future voters is likely tobecome more fierce.

14 J. OHME

Notes

1. This does not necessarily address diversity in regardto political leanings (potentially quite the opposite,see the ‘filter bubble’ discussion: Flaxman, Goel, &Rao, 2016), but citizens may receive informationfrom a greater number of sources in general.

2. Of voters 23 years or older, about 1% reported nothaving the right to vote in the last national election.This can be due to their citizenship status, since onlyDanish citizens are allowed to vote in nationalelections.

3. Of the 13,700 people, 12,000 were recruited vianational register data and another 1,700 wererecruited via the pollster’s database.

4. Goodness of fit tests were used to test for sampledifferences between the original sample (N = 9125)and study participants (n = 1108). Significant differ-ences for the study’s sample were found for income(>0.78, p < .001, Min = 1, Max = 18), age (>2.6 years,p < .001), political interest (>0.6, p < .001, Min = 0,Max = 10), mobile Internet use (>5,8%, p < .001) whileno significant differences between the original sampleand the participants of the study exist for gender (n.s.)and the amount of social media use (n.s.)

5. The estimate sets the days of reported exposure inrelation to the days of participation in the diarysurveys. This means that although respondents mayhave reported the same amount of exposure, they willreceive a different estimate depending on the fre-quency of taking the surveys. We believe that usingthis ratio gives a more realistic estimate than usingraw scores. Ultimately, both approaches are not fullysuited to detect the specific differences in mediaexposure between individuals.

6. To test if the high relevance of content from politicalactors was the result of a sample strongly followingpolitical actors on social media in the first place andnot a campaign effect, we compared the news diets ofboth groups during election times with non-electiontime. Appendix A shows that the amount of directpolitical communication strongly increases during theelection campaign while the amount of content fromnews media and friends decreases.

Funding

This work was supported by the Syddansk Universitet.

Notes on contributor

Jakob Ohme is a postdoctoral researcher in the DigitalCommunication Methods Lab at the Amsterdam School ofCommunication Research (ASCoR), University ofAmsterdam. His research interests center around politicalcommunication effects, the impact of the digital media

environment on political behavior and attitudes, and thedevelopment of new methodological approaches in politicalcommunication research. As part of the DigitalCommunication Methods Lab at ASCoR, he focuses oneffects of mobile media exposure by employing mobile meth-ods, such as experience sampling studies, mobile eye-trackingand the use of specific survey apps.

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