Politics Undercover: Understanding the Role of Social Media in Adolescents’ Political Socialization

The political socialization of today’s youth takes place in a hybrid media environment. Social media platforms are part of this multi-faceted media landscape and play an important role in boosting youth’s political engagement and learning. The current PhD project proposes to tackle the gaps on political socialization in the new and hybrid media environment by unravelling the multi-layered role of social media in adolescents’ political socialization. To establish the framework guiding the project, an in-depth integration of insights from social media literature, political sciences, psychology and sociology will be done. Through content analytical research on influencers’ and adolescents’ social media content, a well-detailed structure on how to understand the explicit and implicit political cues presented in adolescents’ favourite social media spaces will be developed. These insights will fuel a longitudinal study among adolescents that examines how and when adolescents are directly and indirectly politically socialized when using social media.