This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (In the last three decades, an increasing number of researchers have debated whether Western societies are experiencing an erosion of civic life indicated by increasing political apathy and declining levels of social trust (Paxton, 1999, 2002; Putnam, 1995; Quintelier, 2007; van Oorschot, Arts, & Gelissen, 2006). Media consumption is offered as an important predictor of changes in civic engagement levels. In this view, civic engagement is on the decline because time spent on civic activities is being replaced by time spent using media, such as watching television (Brehm & Rahn, 1997; Kraut et al., 1998; Nie & Erbring, 2002; Putnam, 1995, 2000). However, this is not a unified view; other researchers argue that media technologies do not impede civic participation (Katz, Rice, & Aspden, 2001; Moy & Scheufele, 2000; Shah, Cho, Eveland, & Kwak, 2005; Shah, McLeod, & Yoon, 2001; Shah, Schmierbach, Hawkins, Espino, & Donavan, 2002), and that newer mediums like the Internet even have a positive impact on civic life (Dutta-Bergman, 2006; Hampton & Wellman, 2003; Shah et al., 2001; Wellman et al., 2003; Wellman, Quan-Haase, Witte, & Hampton, 2001). This study suggests that part of the reason why these contradictory findings prevail is because literature largely omits the social psychological mechanisms through which media impacts social and civic engagement. This paper hopes to fill this gap by focusing on how different types of media usage influence civic engagement directly and indirectly via value orientations, offering a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms through which media cultivates worldviews, perhaps explaining some of the differences between previous findings.
Values are cognitive structures related to desirable states and behavior that are more abstract than attitudes (Howard, 1995; Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1992, 1994). Values are shaped by social structural conditions (like social class and occupational positions; e.g., Kohn, 1969; Kohn & Schooler, 1983) and cultural worldviews (e.g., individual or collateral cultural orientations in human relations; Carter, 1990; Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961; Ortuño, 1991), they are core to the self (Gecas, 2000; Hitlin, 2003) and they are strong motivators of action (Feather, 1992, 1995). Values are shaped by structural and cultural forces, but also influence individual judgment and behavior. As such, they are plausible mediators of the relationship between media usage and civic life. Previous research also demonstrates that media use is an important predictor of values (Gerbner, 1969, 1972; Morgan, Shanahan, & Signorielli, 2008; Swigger, 2013), and thus likely cultivates worldviews key for civic and social behavior.
One of the major shortcomings of the literature concerned with declining civicness is that while social trust and voting have been considered among the key aspects of civic life, non-traditional forms of participation like boycotting have been much less studied, potentially leading to overgeneralizations on the nature of or the trends in civic life (Quintelier, 2007). Traditional political participation refers to the political actions within the realm of electoral politics, like voting. Non-traditional political participation, on the other hand, revolves around actions that attempt to influence policies outside the boundaries of the electoral system, like attending demonstrations. It is important to include non-traditional forms of participation in investigations because they map out different cognitive resources and attitudes (see Dalton, 2006; Opp, Burow-Auffarth, & Heinrichs, 1981; Roets, Cornelis, & Van Hiel, 2014; Sabucedo & Arce, 1991; van der Meer & van Ingen, 2009) and have different patterns of relationships with values and media than traditional forms of participation. Therefore, this paper focuses on non-traditional forms of political participation in addition to social trusti and voting.
Previous literature has mainly focused on the time replacement argument (e.g., Kraut et al., 1998; Nie & Erbring, 2002; Putnam, 2000) that suggests time spent using new media technologies replaces time spent on civic behaviors like voting or volunteering in charity organizations. This paper, on the other hand, concentrates on a cognitive displacement argument (e.g., Besley 2006, 2008), proposing that media also potentially shapes civic behavior through cultivating ideological discourses and worldviews. By examining the relationship between distinct types of civic engagement and media use incorporating two bipolar value dimensions – openness to change vs. conservation and self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement – as core mechanisms, this paper brings forth a more refined explanation for why media usage is related to civic behavior and attitudes.
Media Usage and Civic Life: Time Replacement
A central argument brought forward by researchers focusing on the decline of civic life in the West is that media usage has been one of the most important driving forces in the decay of civic engagement. The majority of the studies investigating the relationship between media usage and civic life have focused on the time replacement argument. In this view, exposure to TV has led to decreasing levels of social capital by keeping people from all ages in their living rooms, especially in younger generations who have grown up with this technology (Putnam, 1995, 2000; Gamm & Putnam, 1999). With new technologies, lives have become more isolated, self-focused, and lonelier. People only connect with the world through the screens of televisions or computers, hardly vote, and rarely participate in local politics or traditional institutions (Pappano, 2001). Some scholars have even argued that urban life has become highly decentralized and produced a privatized, air-conditioned, automobile and media based style of life, which does not constitute adequate bases for democracy (Calhoun, 1988) and people living in mass democracies are apolitical, detached from the community, and passing their time comfortably enjoying pseudo-publics of TV and other media (Reichenbach, 1998). These claims regarding the negative effects of media however, have not been entirely supported by the empirical studies. For example, researchers have shown that television watching does not have uniform detrimental effects on civic engagement (e.g., Holtz-Bacha & Norris, 2001; Norris, 1996; Scheufele & Shah, 2000; Shah, 1998; Uslaner, 1998), and using the Internet is related to greater civic engagement and tighter social ties (Dutta-Bergman, 2006; Hampton & Wellman, 2003; Kavanaugh, Reese, Carroll, & Rosson, 2005; Kobayashi, Ikeda, & Miyata, 2006; Shah et al., 2001; Skoric, Ying, & Ng, 2009; Wellman et al., 2001, 2003; Zhang & Chia, 2006).
When we turn our attention to the Internet, we see that while some research has suggested that there is no relationship between the Internet and civicness (Uslaner, 2004), most other research has supported the notion that the Internet has strong implications on civic life. Initial research regarded the Internet as damaging civic engagement and social relationships (Kraut et al., 1998; Stoll, 1995; Turkle, 1996). For example, studies have found that time spent on the Internet leads to losing contact with the social environment (by spending less time with friends and family) (Kraut et al., 1998; Nie & Erbring, 2002), declining time spent shopping in stores and commuting traffic as well as declining usage of traditional media (TV watching) (Nie & Erbring, 2002) and increasing loneliness and depression (Kraut et al., 1998). More recent research, on the other hand, has argued that Internet usage is related to greater civic engagement and tighter social ties (Dutta-Bergman, 2006; Hampton & Wellman, 2003; Kavanaugh et al., 2005; Kobayashi et al., 2006; Kraut et al., 2002; Shah et al., 2001; Skoric et al., 2009; Wellman et al., 2001, 2003; Zhang & Chia, 2006). For instance, Internet users are more likely than non-users to engage in traditional political activities, including voting, and they interact with other people more often in general (meeting friends and talking to them by telephone) (Katz et al., 2001). They have more active social lives than non-users (Robinson, Kestnbaum, Neustadtl, & Alvarez, 2000) and are more likely to be involved in civic and social activities like going to a museum or a concert (Shah et al., 2002, 2005). Therefore, it can be argued that Internet use is more similar to time-enhancing technologies such as telephone than time-displacing technologies like television (Robinson et al., 2000). Therefore, there is little reason to be concerned that the Internet will erode social capital by isolating individuals from their communities (Shah et al., 2002).
Media Usage and Civic Life: Cognitive Displacement
While seemingly important in explaining the media-civic life relationship, the time-replacement argument alone is insufficient to explain why effects of media usage are not uniform. If the only reason media has an impact on civic life was because it reduces the amount of time spent on civic activities, this would happen regardless of the type and content of media being used. A second line of argument, on the other hand, which can also be referred to as “cognitive displacement” (Besley, 2006, p. 58), can potentially provide a more nuanced understanding of how media usage might be influencing civic outcomes in Western countries through its effects on people’s world views and values. This paper builds on this second line of thought that emphasizes the intermediary role of values in the media-civic life relationship.
Values are an important source of civic engagement as people use values as a standard to organize their political views and actions (Flanagan & Tucker, 1999; Jennings, 1991). Various studies have linked value orientations to democratic principles, political and social engagement and attitudes (Katz & Hass, 1988; Rahn & Transue, 1998). The ways that media consumption shapes people’s values is also a long-established area of inquiry in communications research. Accordingly, media, especially television, shapes people’s perceptions and worldviews through cultivation processes (Gerbner, 1969, 1972). The basic premise of this view is that the more television people watch the more they view the world through the messages, images, values and ideologies portrayed by television (Gerbner, 1969, 1972; see Morgan et al., 2008, for a review). Television homogenizes or mainstreams worldviews and values by trampling differences in attitudes and behavior. For example, research has shown that heavy television watchers are more likely to consider themselves as “moderate” than “liberal” or “conservative” (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1982, 1984). However, these seemingly mainstream or moderate attitudes are in fact far from being the “middle-of-the- road;” heavy television watchers lean towards the right on various socio-political issues like racial segregation, homosexuality, and abortion (Gerbner et al., 1982). Moreover, heavy television watchers tend to have lower levels of generalized social trust and view the world as a mean and dangerous place – what researchers call the “mean world” syndrome (Gerbner et al., 1980; Signorielli, 1990). While important in emphasizing the role of values, research on cultivation processes mostly fails to capture the complex nature of the media-values-civic engagement relationship. Homogenization and an increase in leaning towards the right in media users do not explain how media influences civic activities like voting, or attending protests.
There is a large body of literature looking at the value-television-watching relationship. However, research focusing on the dynamics between values and new mediums of communication like the Internet is scarce. The Internet provides its users a bigger role in the creation, distribution and reception of information than other communication types (Lin, 2008); thus, its effects on values and civic life are likely quite different from those of television use. The Internet has advantages over other media types due to its technological fluidity, which allows users to multitask in a multimodal environment and thus sustain a greater social presence (DiMaggio et al., 2001; Lin, 2003, 2008). Unlike television, which is controlled mainly by private companies or the state, the Internet provides people with the opportunity to control the production, storage and distribution of information. These aspects of the Internet have led some to argue that in contrast to television usage, the Internet usage is a horizontal process that facilitates a dynamic construction of the self via collective and cooperative action (Tubella, 2006) and is related to values like freedom of expression (Swigger, 2013), while others regard the Internet with greater pessimism by suggesting that the Internet does not endorse new forms of identities or values, but rather reinforces already existing worldviews (Uslaner, 2004). However, there is not much research showing specifically what types of values Internet usage is associated with. This study attempts to bridge these gaps by offering a model that can explain how cultivation processes might be operationalized via specific value orientations and distinct media types.
Toward a Model of Values and Media
Drawing on a widely used cross-cultural conception of values, namely Schwartz’s value orientations theory (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987), as well as building on previous research linking Schwartz’s values with media use and civic life, this paper proposes a model to better account for the nuanced nature of the media-values-civic life relationship. Schwartz defines values as desirable, trans-situational goals, varying in importance, to serve as guiding principles in people’s lives (Bardi & Schwartz, 2003; Schwartz & Bardi, 2001). In this view, values are mental representations of three universal necessities for human existence: “[a] needs of individuals as biological organisms, [b] requisites of coordinated social interaction, [c] and survival and welfare needs of groups” (Schwartz, 1992, p. 4). Derived from these basic necessities, the theory distinguishes among, and cross-culturally validates across more than sixty nations, ten universal values depending on their motivational goals.
These ten values can be categorized under four value domains: openness to change (stimulation, self-direction and hedonism), self-transcendence (universalism and benevolence), self-enhancement (power, and achievement), and conservation (security, traditionalism and conformity) (Bardi & Schwartz, 2003; Schwartz & Bardi, 2001; Schwartz & Boehnke, 2004). These four value domains can further be grouped under two, bipolar dimensions: openness to change vs. conservation and self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement. The central argument in this paper is that entertainment television watching, political television watching and using the Internet influence these bipolar value dimensions, and that the association between media usage and civic life outcomes is mediated by these values. Below, the predicted patterns of relationship in the value domains with media types and civic behavior are outlined.
Openness to Change vs. Conservation
The openness to change value domain comprises independent action, thought and eagerness for new experiences (Schwartz, 2009). As a liberal value orientation, openness to change is likely related to behavior opposing the system or more progressiveness as well as new media technologies like the Internet. While both entertainment and political TV watching are negatively related to openness to change, Internet use is positively related (Besley, 2008). Other research has also shown that values that are closely associated with openness to change like excitement, self-fulfillment, fun and enjoyment in life are also related to Internet use (Schiffman, Sherman, & Long, 2003). While promoting system-challenging activities, the Internet also offers new networking possibilities that might be bolstering communal integration and social trust. This point is also echoed by Castells (2005) who argues that new forms of digital media create a new network society in which individuals are highly connected (networked).
The conservation value domain, on the other hand, revolves around self-preservation as well as preservation of social norms and constraints (Schwartz, 2009). Political attitudes regarding traditional morality, blind patriotism, law and order, military intervention, free enterprise, right-wing political views as well as trust in institutions (such as the educational system, the judicial system, the police, the political system and religious institutions) correlate positively with conservation (Caprara, Schwartz, Capanna, Vecchione, & Barbaranelli, 2006; Devos, Spini, & Schwartz, 2002; Schwartz, Caprara, & Vecchione, 2010). Conservation is negatively related to liberal attitudes regarding equality, such as accepting immigrants (Schwartz et al., 2010). As has been suggested by cultivation theorists, television watching is also related to higher levels of conservation (Besley, 2008), and thus likely have mainstreaming effects through cultivating conservation values in heavy television watchers.
Therefore, giving more importance to the openness value dimension is expected to be related to increased Internet use as well as non-traditional political participation and social trust, while giving more importance to the conservation end will be related to entertainment and political TV watching as well as traditional forms of political participation like voting.
Self-Transcendence vs. Self-Enhancement
Self-transcendence is a pro-social value domain that involves concern about the welfare and interests of others. For example, people with a self-transcendence orientation ranked higher in social trust and political participation (Vyrost, Kentos, & Fedakova, 2007). Moreover, while self-transcendence is positively related to liberal attitudes towards equality and civil liberties, it is negatively related to more traditional civic attitudes including institutional trust (Devos et al., 2002). Similarly, left-wing voters rank higher than right-wing voters in self-transcendence (Caprara et al., 2006). Media research has also found a negative relationship between self-transcendence and entertainment TV (Besley, 2008). This negative relationship suggests that media outlets that cultivate mainstream ideologies and individualism (e.g., TV) might impede pro-social attitudes and political action like social trust by hindering self-transcendence.
Self-enhancement is the value domain emphasizing self-interest and competitive advantage. It revolves around notions of power, achievement and self-interest. Empirical investigations have shown that the self-enhancement value domain is not only related to higher levels of entertainment TV watching and Internet use (Besley, 2008), but also, those with self-enhancement-like values such as self-interest, materialism and entrepreneurism have lower levels of generalized social trust and are more likely to be xenophobic, disapprove of government support for the poor and stereotype African Americans as lacking motivation. On the other hand, those holding egalitarian and humanistic values are more likely to have altruistic goals and use structural explanations for African Americans’ underprivileged social position (Boehnke, Hagan, & Hefler, 1998; Flanagan & Tucker, 1999; Katz & Hass, 1988; Rahn & Transue, 1998).
Therefore, self-enhancement is expected to be a positive predictor of system-preserving, traditional forms of political attitudes and behavior like voting, a negative predictor of system-challenging types of activities like non-traditional political participation (e.g., attending protests), and also a mediator between participation and media types promoting mainstream ideologies that mainly fit with right-leaning socio-political views such as entertainment television (Gerbner et al., 1982).
The Present Research
This article focuses on two bipolar value dimensions – openness to change vs. conservation and self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement (Bardi & Schwartz, 2003; Schwartz, 1992; Schwartz & Bardi, 2001; Schwartz & Boehnke, 2004) – as potential explanations for why media usage is related to civic behavior and attitudes in European societies. By analyzing cross-cultural data from 24 countries provided by the European Social Survey Round 5 (2010) and employing multi-level modeling, this study examines whether entertainment TV watching, political TV watching and Internet-use influence voting, non-traditional political participation and social trust through shaping individual-level value orientations.
The hypothesized relationships tested in this paper are summarized in Table 1. Accordingly, each value dimension has a different type of relationship with media and civic and political life. This view presents a more thorough understanding of how media might be reinforcing and obstructing certain socio-political behavior and attitudes at the same time through a cultivation of different values. Media use might be cultivating competing values at the same time and thus have both a positive and negative impact on civic life. For example, the proposed model suggests cultivation processes in which entertainment TV-use impedes civic life including social trust, voting and non-traditional political participation directly and indirectly by weakening values of self-transcendence and openness to change. However, entertainment TV use is also expected to be an indirect positive predictor of voting by strengthening conservation and self-enhancement values. In this model, value orientations are important intermediary social psychological mechanisms that mediate the media-civic life relationship.
Table 1
Hypothesized Direct and Total Relationships Between Media Use, Values and Civic Life Outcomes.
| Direct (and Total) Effects
|
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Openness (vs. Conservation) | Self-transcendence (vs. Self-enhancement) | Social Trust | Voting | Non-traditional Political Participation | |
| Entertainment TV | - | - | - (-) | - (-) | - (-) |
| Political TV | - | - | - (-) | + (+) | - (-) |
| Internet | + | - | + (+) | + (+) | + (+) |
| Openness | NA | NA | + | - | + |
| Self-transcendence | NA | NA | + | - | + |
Note. “-” represents a negative and “+” represents a positive predicted relationship between variables. “NA”= not applicable. Signs in parentheses represent predicted total effects.
Method
Data Set and Sample
The data came from the European Social Survey (ESS), Round 5, which was conducted in 2010. The ESS is a repeat cross-sectional survey of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors in Europe, similar to the American General Social Survey in its content and style. Twenty-four countries were included in the analyses (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and United Kingdom). These countries ranged in total sample size from 905 (Cyprus) to 2,537 (Germany). However, it should be noted that the goal of the analyses in this paper was not to make cross-national comparisons, but rather to examine the role of values in the media-civic life relationship.
Data from all the respondents under the age of 18 (1,315 people) in the year the interview was conducted were deleted to avoid including people under legal voting age in the last national elections of their country. Responses from the respondents who were not eligible to vote (2,172 people) were also eliminated. As suggested by the ESS documentation, respondents who were missing on more than five items on Portrait Values Questionnaire were also excluded from the analyses (1,106 people). Other missing cases on 23 variables have also been deleted after an examination of distribution among outcome variables proved those cases to be random. Additionally, 27 outliers on education (with years spent in education greater than 30) were removed from the analyses. The final sample size was 37,704.
Measures
Civic Life Outcomes
Social trust, voting and non-traditional political participation were used to operationalize civic life. Social trust was measured as a latent variable with three indicators (alpha = .80), which were first formed by Rosenberg (1956) and have been commonly used by many researchers (Glanville & Paxton, 2007; Paxton, 1999, 2002; Putnam, 1995; Uslaner, 1999). Respondents were asked to rate their answers to the following questions, on a scale ranging from 0 to 10: “Would you say that most people can be trusted or you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?,” “Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance, or would they try to be fair?,” “Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or that they are mostly looking out for themselves.” Even though only one of these indicators directly asks about trust in other people, they all reflect feelings of moral obligation and integrity that have been theorized as components of trust by Barber (1983). These three indicators were recoded to range from 0 to 1.ii
Voting was coded as a dummy variable by using the following question: “Did you vote in the last national election?” (1 = yes, 0 = no). Non-traditional political participation was measured as a latent variable with four indicators that ask whether during the last 12 months the respondents have: a) boycotted certain products, b) worn or displayed a campaign badge/sticker, c) signed a petition, and d) taken part in a lawful public demonstration (alpha = .55). Voting and non-traditional political participation were conceptually distinguished because previous research (e.g., de Rooij, 2012; Quintelier, 2007; Roets et al., 2014) as well as the ESS documentation (Curtice et al., 2003) emphasize that they likely have distinct underlying motivations with voting being a more system-affirming type of behavior and non-traditional political participation being more system-challenging. Descriptive statistics for all of the variables in the analysis are summarized in Table 2.
Table 2
Descriptive Statistics (N = 37,704)
| Mean | Std. Dev. | Min. | Max. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social trust | ||||
| Trust in people | .48 | .24 | 0 | 1 |
| People are helpful | .48 | .23 | 0 | 1 |
| People are fair | .55 | .22 | 0 | 1 |
| Vote | .78 | .41 | 0 | 1 |
| Non-traditional political participation | ||||
| Wearing a badge | .06 | .25 | 0 | 1 |
| Attending public demonstration | .08 | .26 | 0 | 1 |
| Boycotting a product | .18 | .38 | 0 | 1 |
| Signing a petition | .23 | .42 | 0 | 1 |
| Values | ||||
| Openness to change vs. conservation | .46 | .12 | 0 | 1 |
| Self transcendence vs. self enhancement | .64 | .11 | 0 | 1 |
| Media use | ||||
| Entertainment TV | .37 | .26 | 0 | 1 |
| Political TV | .27 | .18 | 0 | 1 |
| Internet use | .58 | .45 | 0 | 1 |
| Control variables | ||||
| Sociability | .64 | .26 | 0 | 1 |
| Age (years) | 49.52 | 17.11 | 18 | 101 |
| Education (years) | 12.68 | 3.98 | 0 | 30 |
| Political interest | .47 | .30 | 0 | 1 |
| Religious attendance | .25 | .25 | 0 | 1 |
| Male | .47 | .50 | 0 | 1 |
| Urban | .31 | .46 | 0 | 1 |
Note. For information on response categories please see the text. Data were weighted with a combined weight that adjusts for both unequal probability of selection (design weight) and the differences in population size (population size weight). Age and education were recoded to range from 0 to 1 like all other variables before the analyses to keep the metrics directly comparable.
Value Orientations
The ESS includes the human values scale, which is derived from the earlier 40-item Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ; Schwartz et al., 2001). The ESS PVQ includes verbal portraits of 21 different people, gender-matched with the respondent. Each portrait describes a person’s goals, aspirations, or wishes that point implicitly to the importance of a value (Schwartz et al., 2001). Respondents were asked to answer how much that person is like them on a 6-item scale ranging from “very much like me” to “not like me at all.”
Following the guidelines from the ESS Education Net (Schwartz, 2013) and previous research (e.g., Hrubes et al., 2001), two bipolar value dimensions underlying ten basic values were constructed. First, the variables were reverse coded so that higher scores indicate giving higher importance to those values. Then four higher-order value dimensions were constructed by averaging the specific items that fall under each value (alphas: openness = .77, conservation = .74, self-transcendence = .74, and self-enhancement = .72). Values and the specific items that construct each value indicator are listed in Table A1 of Appendix. Then, by subtracting the conservation importance score from the openness to change, a score for openness vs. conservation was obtained. Similarly, self-enhancement was subtracted from the self-transcendence to create the self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement dimension. The resulting value variables were coded to range from 0 to 1 (values closer to one indicate greater openness while those approaching zero mean greater conservation, similarly values greater to one indicate higher levels of self-transcendence and closer to zero increased self-enhancement).
Media Usage
The political TV watching variable was measured by asking how much time the respondents spent watching news or programs about politics and current affairs. The respondents were asked to choose among seven categories (ranging from “no time at all” to “more than 3 hours”). Entertainment television watching variable was created with a technique also used by Besley (2006, 2008) by subtracting respondents’ answer to the item political TV watching (the time the respondents spend watching news or programs about politics and current affairs) from their answer to the total hours of TV watched on an average weekday. This variable has seven categories (ranging from 0 “no time at all” to 7 “more than 3 hours”). Internet use was measured by asking the respondents how often they use the Internet, the World Wide Web, or e-mail – whether at home or at work – for their personal use. The original coding for the variable is as follows: 0 = no access at home or work, 1 = never use, 2 = less than once a month, 3 = once a month, 4 = several times a month, 5 = once a week, 6 = several times a week, and 7 = every day. This variable was coded to combine “no access” and “never use” categories. All media usage variables were recoded to range from 0 to 1.
Control Variables
To refrain from inferring inflated effects of media usage, the analysis controlled for several variables. For example, the size of the town one is living in typically negatively affected social trust (Kaasa & Parts, 2008), and this was controlled in the model with a dummy variable for people living in urban areas (the respondents who reported living in a big city or suburbs or outskirts of a big city). Demographic characteristics like gender and age were also controlled for in all models as previous studies have found them to be related to values and civic life. For example, studies have shown that men gave less importance to the self-transcendence value domain than women (Hitlin, 2006; Schwartz & Rubel, 2005) and ranked slightly higher than women in their generalized trust levels (Kaasa & Parts, 2008; van Oorschot et al., 2006). Age seems to be positively related to social trust and overall political participation (Glaeser, Laibson, & Sacerdote, 2002; Goerres, 2007; Kaasa & Parts, 2008; McDonald & Mair, 2010; Putnam, 1995; van Oorschot, Arts, & Gelissen, 2006) and negatively related to non-traditional political participation (Quintelier, 2007). Gender was included as a dummy variable (female is the reference category), and age as a continuous variable in the models.
The relationship between media, values, and civic life are likely reciprocal and selection of individuals into different civic life outcomes (e.g., non-traditional political participation), or value orientations might have a causal impact opposite to the ones specified by the models in this paper (e.g., Garrett, Carnahan, & Lynch, 2013; Stroud, 2008). Therefore, in order to capture the selection process and more clearly investigate the role of media and values on civic life outcomes, several other variables that have been demonstrated to be related to both civicness and value orientations were controlled for (Kaasa & Parts, 2008; Gamm & Putnam, 1999; van Oorschot et al., 2006). These controls included education (measured in years as a continuous variable), sociability (respondents were asked to report how often they meet socially with friends, relatives or colleagues on a 7-point scale ranging from “never” to “every day”), religious degree (respondents were asked to report how religious they are on a 10 point scale ranging from “not at all religious” to “very religious”), and political interest (measured by the single item of the survey asking “How interested would you say are you in politics?,” with a 4-item scale ranging from “very interested” to “not at all interested,” reverse coded so that higher scores reflect greater political interest). All continuous control variables were recoded so that they vary from 0 to 1.
Analytical Strategy
Cross-national European Social Survey data have a nested structure in which individuals (within-level) are nested in countries (between-level). Moreover, analyzing the mediating roles of values requires estimating multiple equations at once, and because social trust and non-traditional political participation are measured by multiple indicators, structural equations were used to estimate the models (Bollen, 1989). Data were modeled as hierarchical and were estimated with the two-level weighted least squares (WLSMV) estimator in Mplus 6.12 (Asparouhov & Muthén, 2007). WLSMV is an analysis technique for categorical and continuous variables that is robust to non-normality (Muthén, 1993; Muthén & Muthén, 2004). First, a random-intercept only model with no predictors to assess the variances and intraclass correlations of the outcome variables was examined, followed by a full model including all within-level fixed effects as well as indirect (mediating) effects. For all models, the within-level intercepts for social trust, voting and non-traditional political participation were modeled as random. The indirect effects in the within-level models were estimated with the delta method (see Bollen, 1989, for details on the delta method). The ESS’s design weight was applied to all models.iii
The proposed model suggests a causal relationship leading from media use to values to civic life. However, the relationship among many of the variables (e.g., media and values) may be reciprocal or the causal order might be in the opposite direction (selection effects). Therefore, as explained in the “Control Variables” section, I included various controls to account for reciprocity or selection effects.
Results
First, looking at the random-intercept only model, we see that the intraclass correlations (the proportion of the variance explained by the grouping structure) of the factor indicators and observed variables were all larger than five percent and all of the residual variances of the level-2 intercepts were significant suggesting a multilevel model was appropriate for the data (see Table A2 of the Appendix).
Turning to the full model, the fit indices indicated that the model fit the data very well (RMSEA = .005, NNFI = .973, CFI = .984). Chi-square statistics might detect even minor deviations and become inflated in large samples (Bollen, 1989); therefore, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (Steiger & Lind, 1980), the non-normed fit index (NNFI) (Tucker & Lewis, 1973), and the comparative fit index (CFI) (Bentler, 1990) are reported. CFI and NNFI values above .90 indicate an acceptable (Bentler, 1990) and above .95 a very good fit of the model to the data (Hu & Bentler, 1999), while and RMSEA at or below .06 suggest a good fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999). The substantial fit of the model was also good as the coefficients of the latent variables were all significant and moderate to high in magnitude (see Table A3 of the Appendix). The following sections summarize first the relationships between media use and values, then the estimated effects of values in within-level civic engagement equations and finally present total, direct and indirect effects of media usage on civic engagement.
Media Usage and Values
As Table A4 of the Appendix reveals, media usage was related to value orientations in several ways that shape civic engagement. All of the estimated effects of media on values were statistically significant, and all but one of these significant coefficients were in the expected direction. First, regarding the relationship between entertainment television watching and value orientations, entertainment TV was significantly related to both openness-conservation and transcendence-enhancement dimensions and the directions of the estimated effects were as predicted. A one-unit increase in entertainment TV watching was estimated to decrease openness to change by .020 (thus increasing conservation) and self-transcendence by .027 units (increasing self-enhancement), net of all control variables (p < .001). The positive relationship between entertainment TV watching and conservation and self-enhancement values is similar to the previous research showing heavy television watchers were more likely to hold traditional worldviews and attitudes and see the world as a mean and dangerous place (Gerbner et al., 1980, 1982; Signorielli, 1990).
In line with the predictions, political TV watching had a negative association with both openness to change and self-transcendence (p < .001). There was also evidence that Internet use was associated with value orientations. As predicted, Internet use was positively related to openness to change, but in contrast to the predictions it was also positively related to self-transcendence (p < .001) value orientations. A one-unit increase in Internet use was related to .042 units increase in openness and .016 units increase in self-transcendence, holding all other variables constant.
In sum, media usage was related to value orientations. Overall, watching and Internet use had opposite effects on both openness vs. conservation and transcendence vs. enhancement values. While both entertainment and political TV watching were negatively related to the values, Internet use was positively related. Additionally, in some cases these estimated effects of media variables were comparable to or stronger than some important predictors of values like education, religiosity and gender (Hitlin, 2006; Kohn & Schooler, 1983; Schwartz & Rubel, 2005; Schwartz & Huismans, 1995). For example, the coefficient for Internet use in the openness to change equation (B = .042, p < .001) was comparable to the coefficient of education (B = .057, p < .001) and larger than that of being male (B = .018, p < .001).
Values and Civic Engagement
The relationship between values and civic engagement variables are summarized in Table A5 of the Appendix. In line with predictions, openness to change had a significant, positive relationship with social trust (B = .041, p < .001) and non-traditional political participation (B = 1.734, p < .001), but was not significantly related to voting. Holding all other variables constant, the self-transcendence value dimension was positively related to both social trust and non-traditional political participation, and not related to voting. A one-unit increase in self-transcendence value orientation was associated with a .100 unit increase in social trust and a .994 unit increase in non-traditional political participation (p < .001) net of all other variables.
Results here suggested that openness to change and self-transcendence values have similar relations to social trust. Different from the predictions, value dimensions were not significant predictors of voting behavior. These findings are in line with previous research (Devos et al., 2002; Schwartz et al., 2010; Vyrost et al., 2007) and support the view that both pro-social value domains like self-transcendence and more liberal and progressive value domains like openness to change provide a motivational base for cooperation and positive social interaction, as well as collective welfare, by promoting communal forms of civic engagement and facilitate a general trust in others. These predicted effects were net of respondents’ political interest, sociability, religious attendance and education suggesting that these relationships were likely not entirely accounted for by selection.
Media Usage and Civic Engagement
The direct, indirect and total effects of media usage variables on civic engagement outcomes are summarized in Table 3. Entertainment TV watching and Internet use had significant total effects on all civic engagement variables, and a small portion of these effects were mediated by value orientations in the social trust and non-traditional political participation equations. The only significant total effect of political TV watching was in the social trust equation, but it had significant but very small indirect effects on both social trust and non-traditional political participation.
The patterns for the total effects of media usage on civic engagement were fairly similar across models. Accordingly, as predicted, entertainment TV watching was negatively related to all forms of civic engagement. For example, a one-unit increase in entertainment TV watching was associated with .014, .123 and .425 units decreases in social trust, voting and non-traditional political participation, respectively. In all equations, the total effects of political TV watching were negative, but only the effect for social trust was significant and negative. The estimated effects of Internet use on civic engagement were significant and in a positive direction in all equations. A one-unit increase in Internet use was related to an increase in social trust, voting and non-traditional political participation of .023, .116 and .407 units, respectively.
Table 3
Direct, Indirect, and Total Effects of Media Usage (N = 37,704)
| Social Trust
|
Voting
|
Non-traditional Political Participation
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unst. B | SE | Unst. B | SE | Unst. B | SE | |
| Entertainment TV | ||||||
| Total | -.014** | .005 | -.123*** | .022 | -.425*** | .048 |
| Indirect via Openness-Conservation | -.001*** | .000 | .004 | .005 | -.034*** | .004 |
| Indirect via Transcendence-Enhancement | -.003*** | .000 | .001 | .007 | -.027** | .011 |
| Direct | -.010* | .005 | -.131*** | .030 | -.363*** | .051 |
| Political TV | ||||||
| Total | -.034*** | .008 | -.027 | .059 | -.024 | .065 |
| Indirect via Openness-Conservation | .000*** | .000 | .007 | .008 | -.020*** | .004 |
| Indirect via Transcendence-Enhancement | -.001*** | .000 | .000 | .002 | -.007* | .003 |
| Direct | -.033*** | .008 | -.031 | .061 | .003 | .067 |
| Internet | ||||||
| Total | .023*** | .004 | .116*** | .015 | .407*** | .040 |
| Indirect via Openness-Conservation | .002*** | .000 | -.015 | .018 | .073*** | .007 |
| Indirect via Transcendence-Enhancement | .002*** | .000 | -.001 | .004 | .016* | .006 |
| Direct | .019*** | .004 | .132*** | .026 | .318*** | .045 |
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, two-tailed tests.
Turning now to the mediating effects of value orientations, as shown in Table 3, we see that values mediated a small part of the effects of media usage on social trust and non-traditional political participation, but not on voting. In line with their negative total effects, the indirect effects of both entertainment and political TV watching on social trust were negative, while those of Internet use were positive. For example, openness mediated -.001 and transcendence mediated -.003 of the -.014 total effect of entertainment TV watching on social trust. So, in total, values mediated almost one third of the total effects of entertainment TV on social trust. They also mediated about one sixth of the total effects of Internet use on social trust. As is the case in the models predicting civic engagement, entertainment and political TV watching seemed to impede social trust and non-traditional political participation via decreasing openness to change and self-transcendence value orientations, while Internet use mostly facilitated civic life by promoting them.
Values also mediated a small portion of the total effects of media usage on non-traditional political participation. Similar to their effects on social trust, the indirect effects of entertainment and political TV watching on non-traditional political participation were negative and those of Internet use were positive. Openness mediated -.034 and transcendence mediated -.027 of the -.425 total effect of entertainment TV watching on non-traditional political participation; so, the indirect effects were about one seventh of the total effects on non-traditional political participation. Interestingly, while political TV watching had no significant total or direct effects, it had a significant and negative indirect relationship with non-traditional political participation through both openness and transcendence values. Values also mediated about one fifth of the total effects of the Internet on non-traditional political participation.
In sum, predictions were partially supported; value orientations mediated some of the effects of media usage on civic life and in some cases these mediated effects were as big as one third of the total effects.
Discussion and Conclusions
Concerns regarding declining levels of social capital and civicness in Western nations have spurred a vast amount of research investigating the potential role of media usage in such an erosion of civic life. However, empirical research for the most part has focused on the time-replacement argument with little attention to the impact of media on social psychological mechanisms like values or attitudes. This study sought to fill this gap by including individual value orientations, offering one social psychological factor that deserves further exploration. Values are evaluative standards that organize and motivate behavior including political and civic behavior (Bardi & Schwartz, 2003; Flanagan & Tucker, 1999; Jennings, 1991). As evidenced by previous literature, media and particularly television are important sources of values, ideologies and worldviews (Morgan et al., 2008).
This article presents evidence that media use is influencing the values important to people, which in turn is shaping the civic activities in which people are involved. While previous research argued that independent of the types of genres or programs, television conveys similar and matching accounts of images and ideologies, and thus cultivates “shared conceptions of reality” in diverse sets of viewers (Morgan et al., 2008, p. 35), findings from the analyses suggested a more nuanced relationship between media and values. Results indicated that television watching and Internet use had opposite patterns of relationship with values. Both entertainment and political TV watching were negatively related, but Internet use positively related, to openness (vs. conservation) and self-transcendence (vs. self-enhancement). So, independent of its content, the type of shared worldview TV inflicts seems to be conservative and impeding communal and cooperative self-transcending values. It is possible that while television watching cultivates a perspective that views the world as a dangerous place, it also inflates one’s sense of self-enhancement in an attempt to exert power and control over this ‘dangerous’ world and depreciates concern and care feelings for others.
Newer forms of media technologies like the Internet, on the other hand, are less hierarchical and more fluid and thus might have a more positive role on being open to new ideas than TV. This view also fits with Inglehart’s value theory suggesting that older cohorts with materialist values focusing on economic security are replaced by younger generations with postmaterialist values emphasizing self-expression and quality of life (Inglehart, 1990). This cohort replacement has been shifting modes of political mobilization from traditional forms like unions, political party organizations or elite directed, top-down movements to newer bottom-up forms of civic engagement (Inglehart, 1977, 1990; Inglehart & Baker, 2000). While the uniform, positive direct, and indirect effects of the Internet on both civic life and openness and transcendence values were in contrast to the predictions as well as some earlier research, these results are still aligned with some scholarship in the communications literature. Internet networks might lead to new and increased forms of sociability and create a network society that “is a hypersocial society, not a society of isolation” (Castells, 2005, p. 11). However, an important limitation of the current study is that it was unable to distinguish between the different uses of the Internet due to the limitations of the dataset. Previous research, on the other hand, have found that Internet use for social recreational purposes have negative effects on civic life while using the Internet for informational purposes is positively related to social capital and civic outcomes (Shah et al., 2001, 2005). Therefore, future research should investigate whether or not using the Internet for different purposes would have similar patterns of relationships with both values and civic life.
In line with previous research (Devos et al., 2002; Schwartz et al., 2010; Vyrost et al., 2007), the results also suggest that values motivate civic attitudes and behavior. Previous empirical studies have demonstrated that self-transcendence (the pro-social value domain) have an overall positive impact on general communal behavior (Devos et al., 2002; Vyrost et al., 2007). Meanwhile self-enhancement value orientation is related to more traditional and conformist forms of civic attitudes and behavior and less liberal and egalitarian attitudes (Devos et al., 2002; Schwartz et al., 2010). The results presented here also similarly revealed that self-transcendence and openness values could promote both social trust and non-traditional political participation. These results indicate that both caring about the welfare of others and being open to new ideas and experiences might facilitate an overall sense of community and trust in others and grassroots activities that potentially challenge existing power structures. While the relationship between values and voting were in the predicted direction, none of these effects were significant. This might be because voting is the most established form of political action in democracies and independent of the type of value held, it is practiced by the majority of the public. Moreover, the type of values one prioritizes as a life principle might be more likely to influence making choices from ideologically different political parties or candidates than the act of voting per se (see, e.g., Barnea & Schwartz, 1998; Caprara et al., 2006).
Additionally, entertainment and political TV watching impeded civic engagement, while Internet use was positively related to civic outcomes. The empirical evidence on the positive impact of Internet use on certain aspects of civic life also fits well with the critiques of Putnam (and declining social capital thesis) that rather argue that civic engagement is not declining but changing its form. In this view, involvement in older, formal types of organizations (such as fraternal organizations, like Lions or bowling alleys) has been replaced with involvement in newer, more informal types like environmental groups, health clubs, or grassroots community organizations (Bennett, 1998; Ladd, 1996; Wilson, 2000).
A small portion of the effects of media usage on civic engagement was mediated by value orientations. While small, these effects still point to the possibility of a cognitive displacement argument in place or alongside of a time displacement argument as also suggested by Besley (2006). Accordingly, the negative impact of TV watching on civic life might be partly explained by the types of values it is influencing. It is possible that TV consumption is especially linked to consumerism and individualism as the broadcasting industry relies heavily on advertising and thus messages disseminated through television might promote value orientations like self-enhancement that prioritize individual self-interest over communal and societal interest. Moreover, in line with the research that has shown the mainstreaming impact of TV (Gerbner et al., 1982, 1984), results suggest that through facilitating conservation, TV watching may also be negatively influencing civic outcomes that are related to communal welfare like social trust.
Internet use also had positive direct and indirect relationships with both social trust and non-traditional political participation. As discussed in previous sections, these positive effects might be due to the distinct nature of the Internet. The Internet gives higher control to the user and promotes the diversity of the messages received by the users. Although it has had a much less oligarchic structure than TV broadcasting, the social structuring of the Internet is changing rapidly, and becoming more similar to TV broadcasting through corporate mergers, acquisitions and partnerships (e.g., in 2006, Google Inc., one of the largest Internet corporations, bought YouTube, a very popular video sharing website). It is very important to follow how the relationship between the Internet and individual values and civic behavior will change in the long run.
Limitations and Further Research
The analyses conducted here revealed some important findings and patterns regarding the role of values in media-civic life relationship. However, more research is needed to demonstrate exactly why these patterns occur. Exactly how does media usage inflict value change? What are the reasons for the opposite effects of television and the Internet? These questions cannot be answered in this paper because the European Social Survey does not include more detailed items on media usage styles.
Additionally, the ESS is a cross-sectional data set and thus cannot shed light on strong claims of causality. The model in this paper examines the causal effects of media on values and civic life. However, value change could also be affecting media usage patterns of individuals or social trust and political participation of an individual might be affecting value orientations or media usage over time. All of these considerations suggest that future research should analyze longitudinal datasets to grasp changes over time, tease out period, cohort, and aging effects, and understand reciprocal relationships between variables at different time points. Moreover, the cultural boundaries of the arguments proposed in this paper as well as the majority of previous research are confined to the Western world. A more thorough examination should go beyond the “West” and compare the relationship between media usage and value mechanisms and their impact on civic life across a wider range of societies.
Another limitation of this study is the measurement of civic engagement. First, better measures for non-traditional political participation are necessary. The items that have been suggested to be non-conventional by the ESS documentation, and used in this analysis, are not far from being mainstream. Newer, non-traditional forms of political participation such as usage of the Internet for political purposes, music, or dance produced as a counter-cultural political act, and using graffiti for political or social protest, are not included. Future research should operationalize non-traditional political participation with better measures and conduct qualitative investigations regarding the meanings and usage of these non-traditional forms of political participation as well as their effects on society.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the results presented in this paper suggest that values constitute potentially important mechanisms through which media cultivates ideological discourses that shape civic behavior beyond political ideologies on the left-right political spectrum. This view fits with previous research on values that has long shown that individual value orientations are closely linked to social structure, culture and social behavior (Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Kohn, Naoi, Schoenbach, Schooler, & Slomczynski, 1990; Schwartz, 1992). Value orientations are a promising area of research for understanding how people’s conceptions of their personhood are related to the kinds of attitudes and activities they endorse as a part of a civic community.