Class, Culture, and Participation in the Collegiate Extra-Curriculum

With larger percentages of high school students entering higher education, it becomes increasingly important to look at how processes occurring on college campuses contribute to social stratification. Using in‐depth interviews with 61 students, I ask: How does social class structure students’ participation in the collegiate extra‐curriculum? I argue that the collegiate extra‐curriculum is an important site for stratification because it is there that students gain access to social and cultural resources valued by the privileged classes. I find that upper‐middle‐class students arrive on campus with cultural resources that motivate their participation and social resources that facilitate their involvement. Among working‐class students, limited financial factors constrain their involvement, while social and cultural resources further curtail their interest in such activities. These findings contribute to theories of social and cultural reproduction by showing that those who have more valued social and cultural resources at the outset are in a better position to gain additional such resources throughout their college careers. Moreover, these analyses show that symbolic and cultural hierarchies are sustained by the interdependent relationship between social and cultural capital.     

Education,Civic Patriotism,and Democratic Citizenship: Unpacking the Education Effect on Political Involvement1

Previous research argues that political involvement not only reflects instrumental concern with political outcomes, but also involves normative motivations such as commitment to collective ideals. Consistent with this view, Americans with a strong sense of “patriotism” have been found to exhibit higher rates of participation than those with weaker attachment to their country ( Huddy and Khatib, 2007 ). However, citizens with high levels of formal education seem to be an exception. Despite scoring lower on conventional measures of “patriotism,” well‐educated Americans are among the most politically active segments of the population. In this article, it is hypothesized that formal education fosters an alternative, civic form of patriotism that conventional measures are unlikely to capture. Rather than reflecting attachment to a particular nation, civic patriotism is rooted in values and beliefs associated with democratic citizenship. Using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, it is found that civic patriotism helps mediate the education effect on two types of political engagement: grass‐roots activism and voting in elections.     

Voluntary Association Membership and Political Participation: an Exploration of the Mobilization Hypothesis*

Survey data from 390 respondents was analyzed to determine the relative effects of organizational involvement, socioeconomic status, and political attitudes on political participation. Two theoretical perspectives were investigated: mobilization theory and selection theory. Both the mobilization and selection perspectives were supported by the data; however, organizational involvement was shown to explain more of the variance in political participation than did social status and political attitudes. The mobilization perspective was further examined to determine if it worked equally well in all types of organizations. We found that the relationship between organizational involvement and political participation was stronger for “instrumental” than for “expressive” groups and for organizations characterized by high, as compared to low, levels of political discussion.     

Thirty‐Year Trends in U.S. Adolescents' Civic Engagement: A Story of Changing Participation and Educational Differences

Using annual cross‐sectional data from Monitoring the Future, the present study examined trends in high school seniors' current and anticipated civic participation and beliefs over a 30‐year period. We examined overall trends and patterns based on youths' post‐high school educational plans. Findings point to declines in recent cohorts' involvement in conventional and alternative forms of engagement but greater involvement in community service. Regardless of period, the majority of youth said they intended to vote when eligible, but few expressed trust in the government or elected officials. All civic indicators showed significant differences based on youths' college aspirations: Youth who planned to graduate from a 4‐year college were more civically inclined than their peers with 2‐year or no college plans.     

The Company You Keep: Adolescent Mobility and Peer Behavior*

Residential mobility has been linked to a variety of problematic behaviors during adolescence, but the reasons for this association are not well understood. This analysis examines the relationship between adolescent residential mobility and the academic and deviant behaviors of members of adolescents’ friendship networks. Using data from approximately 12,000 respondents in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we find that residentially mobile adolescents belong to school‐based friendship networks whose members exhibit weaker academic performance and expectations, less school engagement, and higher rates of deviance than do members of the friendship networks of nonmobile adolescents, even after controlling for adolescents’ own academic and deviant behaviors. These differences in the behavioral composition of adolescent friendship networks are not ephemeral, but appear to persist for several years. Moreover, these differences are equally pronounced among older and younger adolescents and among girls and boys. We also find that parental socioeconomic status is positively associated with adolescents’ involvement in high‐achieving and prosocial friendship networks. Directions for future research exploring the impact of residential and school mobility on adolescent development and functioning are discussed.     

Sharing beyond Slacktivism: the effect of socially observable prosocial media sharing on subsequent offline helping behavior

New forms of youth social and political participation have been termed ‘Slacktivism’ – low-cost online forms of social engagement that decrease subsequent offline participation. Previous experimental work has provided support for a ‘Slacktivism effect,’ but it is unclear if this theoretical model applies to youth media sharing on social networking sites. This study uses a novel sharing simulation paradigm to test the effect of publicly vs. anonymously sharing a social cause video on subsequent willingness to engage in offline helping behavior. Results show that publicly (as compared to anonymously) sharing a selected video on one’s own Facebook wall led to a greater willingness to volunteer for an issue-related cause. Participants’ existing use of social media for engagement in social issues/causes moderated the effect, such that only participants low in use of social media for social engagement were susceptible to the sharing manipulation. Implications for reconceptualizing media sharing as a unique form of online participation beyond ‘Slacktivism’ are discussed.     

Sports Involvement as Protection against Depressed Mood

Working within a risk and protection framework, this research brief examines the protective inà uence of team sports involvement on adolescent depressed mood. The objective was to understand whether sports involvement positively contributes to mental health independent of the effects of other known protective factors (parental and peer support); and whether it moderates the depressive effects of family, peer, and school‐based risk factors. Analyses focused on 1,036 high school‐aged youth interviewed at two time points. Regression analysis results indicated a signià cant association between team sports involvement and depressed mood among both males and females, which was reduced to insignià cance after controlling for the other protective factors. One interaction effect was observed: for females, but not males, team sports involvement was shown to protect against depressed mood associated with poor school performance (low grade point average). Thus, the role of sports involvement as a positive instrumental activity for females is discussed.     

A Voice,but not a Vote: A Youth Generation at Risk?

The aim of this paper is to address risks young people in the late 20th and 21st century are exposed to with regard to political participation. Based on qualitative data and ordinary language interviews with 27 Norwegian pupils in upper secondary school, we address how the construction of the political space is understood by young people themselves. By analysing how young people define political interest and engagement, the findings indicate that a gap exists in the perception of ‘own’ and ‘institutionalised’ political participation. This paper concludes that exploring the understanding of politics among the young may reduce vulnerability of this particular group in their democratic participation as well as facilitate their political empowerment.     

Social media use and democratic engagement: a comparative study of Hong Kong,Taiwan, and China

Recent studies in political communication have found a generally positive role of social media in democratic engagement. However, most research on youth’s social media use in relation to their political engagement has been conducted in the context of American and European democracies. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining the effects of the uses and structural features of social media on democratic engagement in three different Asian political systems: Taiwan (young liberal democracy); Hong Kong (partial democracy); and China (one-party state). The findings showed that sharing political information and connections with public actors consistently predicted offline participation (i.e., civic and political participation) and online participation (i.e., online political expression and online activism) in the three political systems. Although social media use for news, network size, and network structure did not consistently predict political outcomes, they played significant roles in influencing different engagement in the three political systems. The comparative approach used in this study helped to demonstrate the role of social media in the democratic engagement of youth in three places with similar cultures but different political contexts.     

‘They’ve Always Been There for Me’: Grandparental Involvement and Child Well‐Being

With diversifying families, increased life expectancy, growing numbers of dual‐worker households and higher rates of family breakdown, grandparents are now playing an increasing role in their grandchildren’s lives. Despite growing importance there has been little empirical research exploring how grandparental involvement impacts on young people’s well‐being. This national study, which includes a survey of 1596 children (aged 11–16) and in‐depth interviews with 40 young people, aimed to address this deficit. Multivariate analyses demonstrate that grandparental involvement is significantly associated with child well‐being – results that are reinforced by qualitative evidence. Findings suggest grandparents may be under‐recognised in the policy agenda.     

Young people as global citizens: negotiation of youth civic participation in adult-managed online spaces

With the proliferation of new media technologies, online spaces for civic engagement are being used as new sites by the young people for enacting global citizenship. Some of these online civic spaces are managed by parent organizations and guide the participants towards accomplishing goals that align with the institutional policies. We use Stuart Hall’s theoretical framework to ground the two methods we used for empirical research- textual analysis of the selected online spaces and in-depth interviews with young bloggers. Our analysis shows how negotiated reading of the encoded messages on the online platforms for youth civic engagement marks a political moment of signification in which there lies a possibility of challenging the dominance of the adult centered notions of civic engagement. Shelat’s online civic culture framework [2014. “Citizens, Global Civic Engagement on Online Platforms: Women as Transcultural Citizens.” Dissertation] helped us examine how these managed platforms encode global citizenship with pre-designed participatory practices that reinforce the hegemonic definition of youth political participation. Interviews of young bloggers on two online global spaces foreground the process of negotiation with the dominant definitions and the use of decoding strategies to create scope for subjective, more local definitions, as well as practices of civic engagement and global citizenship. Though literature suggests that adult-management of online youth spaces perpetuate a gap between the adult-centric notions of participation and the youth oriented ideas of civic engagement, our study reveals that the young participants find ways of articulating their ideas and enter these spaces with plans on how to fulfill their civic goals.     

Weibo use and political participation: the mechanism explaining the positive effect of Weibo use on online political participation among college students in contemporary China

This study examines the various aspects of Weibo use, including the number of people users follow; the number of fans they have; the frequency with which they read friends’, celebrities’, and opinion leaders’ Weibo; and the number of Weibo group memberships on youth online political participation in contemporary China. The study also investigates the underlying mechanisms explaining the positive effects of Weibo use on youth online political participation using survey methods. Chinese users mainly use Weibo to satisfy their needs for information and connectedness. As an alternative source of information, Weibo indeed functions as an ‘online school of political participation’ to foster political interest, a sense of belonging to an online community, and civic virtue among Weibo users. As a new platform for Chinese to form online civic groups, memberships in Weibo groups significantly increases users’ likelihood of being politically mobilized, which is essential for online collective participation. Our study shows that Verba, Schlozman, and Brady’s [(1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press] civic voluntarism model can be extended to the online environment in an authoritarian system.     

WELFARE AND CITIZENSHIP: The Effects of Government Assistance on Young Adults' Civic Participation

Recent scholarship and public discourse highlight an apparent waning of civic engagement in the United States. Although the welfare state is generally thought to support democracy by reducing economic inequality, it may paradoxically contribute to political disempowerment of some groups. We examine the effects of state interventions on civic participation among young adults, hypothesizing that involvement with stigmatizing social programs, such as welfare, reduces political engagement, while receipt of nonstigmatizing government assistance does not dampen civic involvement. Using official voting records and survey data from the Youth Development Study (YDS), a longitudinal community sample of young adults, a series of regression models suggests that welfare recipients are less likely to vote than nonrecipients, whereas recipients of non-means-tested government assistance participate similarly to young adults who do not receive government help. These effects hold even when background factors, self-efficacy, and prior voting behavior are controlled. Welfare receipt is not associated, however, with suppressed participation in nonstate arenas such as volunteer work. Intensive interviews with YDS welfare recipients are used to illustrate and develop the analysis.     

Mediated and moderated effects of political communication on civic participation

Australian scholars and politicians have long been concerned about politically uninformed and inactive young Australians. However, few efforts have been made to explain how the use of traditional and online media may affect youth’s participation in politics. Our research utilises the citizen communication mediation model and extends the expected mediation chain by an additional examination of the possible interactions between news media use and political discussions, as suggested by the differential gains model. Using representative data from Australian 10th graders, we examine whether and how news media usage (newspapers, television, radio, and the Internet) affects expected participation in a range of civic and political activities conditional of discussions about political issues (with family, friends, and online). Path models account for additional mediators (civic knowledge and civic efficacy) and control variables to explain future civic and political participation. The results suggest that news media use stimulates political discussions, although different media exert differential effects. Yet, news exposure hardly influences the second mediators (civic knowledge and civic efficacy) in a direct manner. In fact, civic knowledge and efficacy mediate the relationships between political communication and participation, both directly and sequentially. Moderation analyses clarify that despite the mediating role of political discussions, news media exposure also influences (future) civic participation contingent of students’ engagement in (primarily Internet-based) discussions about political and social issues. We emphasise the significance of these results with reference to previous research, discuss potential directions for future research, and draw conclusions for civics and citizenship education.     

Predicting Adolescents' Organized Activity Involvement: The Role of Maternal Depression History,Family Relationship Quality,and Adolescent Cognitions

Although the potential benefits of organized activity involvement during high school have been documented, little is known about what familial and individual characteristics are associated with higher levels of participation. Using structural equation modeling, this longitudinal study examined the extent to which maternal depression history (i.e., risk), family relationship quality, and adolescents' cognitions (i.e., self‐worth and attributional style), predicted organized activity involvement during high school among 145 adolescents, controlling for socioeconomic status and adolescent depressive symptoms. Results showed that risk predicted less adolescent high school activity involvement, and this relation was mediated by family relationship quality. Family relationship quality indirectly affected activity involvement through adolescent cognitions. The overall predictive model generally supported the importance of the interplay between family and individual factors in predicting activity involvement during high school.     

In School for After School: The Relationship Between Extracurricular Participation and School Engagement

School engagement predicts academic achievement and attainment, yet remains under‐theorized in the sociological literature. While psychologists describe three distinct yet mutually reinforcing categories of school engagement (behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement), sociologists have largely neglected to analyze cognitive engagement. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews with members of two debate teams in Chicago Public Schools, I demonstrate that behavioral engagement in the form of debate team participation helped foster debaters' cognitive and emotional engagement in school. Through the activity, debaters developed strong relationships with peers and their adult coaches, and strengthened their appreciation for challenging aspects of the learning process. Although many debaters felt that the learning environment of the debate context was more stimulating than the learning environments of their classes, they nevertheless applied the skills and attitudes they acquired in the activity to the “core” curriculum of the school. These factors help explain why debaters have been shown to outperform comparable peers in terms of academic achievement and attainment. These findings suggest that cognitive engagement is one mechanism driving the positive impact of certain extracurricular activities on students' school performance.     

Effect of Trajectories of Friends' and Parents' School Involvement on Adolescents' Engagement and Achievement

In a sample of 527 academically at‐risk youth, we investigated trajectories of friends' and parents' school involvement across ages 12–14 and the joint contributions of these trajectories to adolescents' age 15 school engagement and academic achievement. Girls reported higher levels of friends' and parents' school involvement than boys. Both parents' and friends' school involvement declined across ages 12–14. Combined latent growth models and structural equation models showed effects of the trajectories of friends' and parents' school involvement on adolescents' age 15 school engagement and academic achievement, over and above adolescents' prior performance. These effects were additive rather than interactive. Strategies for enhancing parent involvement in school and students' affiliation with peers who are positively engaged in school are discussed.     

Internet literacy and digital natives’ civic engagement: Internet skill literacy or Internet information literacy?

This study aims to show the role of Internet literacy in empowering digital natives’ civic engagement. Using a survey of 10th graders, we analyzed the effects of digital media use and Internet literacy on adolescents’ political and social interest, participation, and efficacy, controlling for their home and school environments. In doing so, we try to highlight the following points. First, we emphasize that there are two separate dimensions of Internet literacy: Internet skill literacy and Internet information literacy. Second, we adopt a broader concept of civic engagement reflecting the changing youth practices observed in the contemporary media environment. The study empirically found that Internet information literacy, not Internet skill literacy, is intricately related to adolescents’ civic engagement. It was also shown that adolescents’ Internet use contributed only to new and alternative forms of participation. Overall, the findings show that an adolescent who can critically understand and effectively evaluate online information is more likely to become an active civic participant than one who lacks such skills. The study concludes with a few policy suggestions.     

How responsiveness works in mainland China: Effects on institutional trust and political participation

This study investigated whether and how institutional responsiveness, a constitutive element of dialogic communication, influences institutional trust and political participation among members of the public in mainland China. A total of 4068 respondents from mainland China completed questionnaires. Results demonstrated that institutional responsiveness indirectly reduced publics’ destructive non-institutional political participation by building institutional trust. Extending the public relations literature on dialogue, we found that this indirect relationship is conditional on online political information seeking rather than online political expression among members of the public. For people who frequently use the Internet to seek political information, institutional responsiveness is more likely to boost institutional trust, which decreases the likelihood of participation in offline political activities.     

The political transnationalism of Ecuadorians in Barcelona,Madrid and Milan: the role of individual resources,organizational engagement and the political context

In this article, we examine the transnational political engagement of Ecuadorians in three European cities – Barcelona, Madrid and Milan. Drawing on previous studies that emphasize the role of organizational and institutional resources for political mobilization (as well as those that take into consideration respondents’ resources and the migration process), we analyse the results of a survey conducted between 2006 and 2008 on approximately 300 Ecuadorian individuals in each of these three cities. We examine two different dimensions of Ecuadorian political transnationalism at the individual level, namely attitudinal and participatory. Contrary to previous findings, our results show that recently arrived Ecuadorians and those with less stable household conditions are more involved in transnational politics. Associational involvement shows multiple effects. Engagement in Ecuadorian associations fosters political interest in and information about Ecuador, whereas involvement in any organization promotes electoral transnational politics. The political context is only relevant when accounting for participation in Ecuadorian elections.