Pathways to Youth Political Participation: Media Literacy, Parental Intervention, and Cognitive Mediation

The present study aims to investigate pathways to political participation among children and youth. From the perspective of the cognitive mediation model, we attempt to analyze youth participation by considering two socializing factors (i.e., school education for media literacy and family intervention for technology use) as external antecedents to the intrinsic process of cognitive mediation involving surveillance motivation, elaboration/reflection, and engagement. Our extended cognitive mediation model on youth participation is tested with national survey data collected in South Korea with the use of a multistage random sampling technique. Results show that media literacy education and parental mediation nurture surveillance motivation, and indirectly increase youth participation through motivation, reflection, and online news engagement. Implications for the cognitive mediation model and youth participation are discussed.