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Television in children's political socializationAlan M. Rubin aa Assistant professor of speech and drama , Georgia Southern CollegePublished online: 18 May 2009.

To cite this article: Alan M. Rubin (1976) Television in children's political socialization, Journal of Broadcasting, 20:1, 51-60,DOI: 10.1080/08838157609386374

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ALAN M. RUBIN

Television in Children'sPolitical Socialization

The author is an assistant professor of speech and drama atGeorgia Southern College, Statesboro. His research is based on a1974 paper delivered before the Speech Communication Associationannual convention.

POLITICAL socialization is a formative process by which achild acquires information and forms attitudes which help

him to make sense out of the political objects and institutionsin his surrounding environment, and which ultimately influencehis political behavior. Considerable research has investigated therole of several agencies of political socialization in this society,but until the past decade mass media sources have been virtuallyignored, while attention was focused on the family and theschool.1 Nearly 15 years ago, however, Schramm, Lyle, andParker discovered that a child in this society spends about one-fifth of his waking hours watching television.2 More recently,Kraus has argued that the mass media, especially television, playdecisive roles in the political socialization of children for severalreasons including, "the growth and dominance of television inour daily lives and the increased technology in transmittinginformation."3

Recent studies have also indicated an increasingly importantrole performed by the various media sources, in particular tele-vision, in the socialization process. For example, in their studyof Wisconsin junior and senior high school students, Chaffee,Ward, and Tipton concluded that these young people rate therole of the media "as more influential than parents, teachers orpeers."4 In addition, Dominick analyzed the role of televisionin the socialization of sixth and seventh graders in New York

©Journal of Broadcasting, 20:1 (Winter 1976)

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City and found that, "the mass media are the chief sources ofpolitical information for youngsters in this age group."5 Thepresent study considers the role of the media, in particulartelevision, in the political acculturation process.

Earlier studies have demonstrated that the political con-sciousness of youngsters grows out of their interaction withreference groups, especially their parents.6 Yet, this informa-tion gathering process does not occur in an isolated environ-ment. The question remains as to how much and what kinds ofpolitical information the child receives from viewing televisionprograms? The kind and amount of political information whicha child receives from mass media may be negligible or fragmen-tary, and possibly not comprehendable without the interpreta-tion of other interpersonal agents. Political information on atelevision newscast, for example, generally consists of brief,often unsystematic mentions of several topics which may not fitneatly together in the child's rather naive conceptions of thepolitical world. Since such a presentation of information via themass media would not enable the youngster to develop asystematic and coherent body of political knowledge, it washypothesized that: (1) those children whose principal sourcesof political information are the mass media, will exhibit lowerlevels of political information, and more specifically, (2) thosechildren who indicate higher levels of television viewing willexhibit lower levels of political information. The type of pro-grams viewed by the child may also bring about variations inawareness and recognition of political objects. Possibly thosechildren who do view a fair number of public affairs types ofprograms would exhibit higher levels of political knowledgethan those children whose only television fare is cartoons, situa-tion comedies, detective shows, and the like. From this, it wasfurther hypothesized that: (3) those children who indicatehigher levels of public affairs types of television programsviewed will exhibit higher levels of political information.

In addition, pertinent research has also demonstrated the roleof interpersonal and reference group impact on the formationof political attitudes in children.7 For example, it has beendiscovered that parents offer the child a rather stable, consis-tent, over-idealized view of the society and a positive, uncriticalconception of political authority.8 The mass media, on theother hand, do not avoid presentation of a less idealized con-ception of the workings of power, influence, competing inter-ests within the society, and, in general, the very fact that con-flict is endemic to the political system. In line with this, it wasfinally hypothesized that: (4) those children whose principal

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TV and Political Socialization (Rubin) 53

source of information is the mass media, will display morenegative attitudes toward political objects and institutions, and(5) those children who indicate higher levels of televisionexposure will display more negative attitudes toward politicalobjects and institutions.

Method

Questionnaires designed to determine the role and use ofprincipal agencies in each child's acquisition of informationabout and attitudes toward persons, objects, and institutions inher/his political environment were administered to 196 seventhgraders in all three junior high schools of Champaign, Illinoisduring March 1974.9

The three variables under investigation were the youngster'sprincipal source of political information, amount of overalltelevision exposure, and type of television exposure. In order toascertain his principal source of political information eachyoungster was asked three questions to locate from where heacquired most of his information about the president, the feder-al government, and politics in general. Respondents were thenassigned to one of three groups: low mass media, moderate massmedia, or high mass media according to their principal sourcesof political information.10

To determine his amount of television exposure each childresponded to two questions asking for the number of hours heor she viewed television yesterday, as well as the number ofhours he usually watches television each day. The mean re-sponse to the sum of these two exposure indices was ob-tained, 1 1 and each respondent was then assigned to one ofthree groups: low level, moderate level, or high level of tele-vision exposure.

To ascertain his type of television viewing the number oftimes a child checked a public affairs type of program (gener-ally, news, interview, and local cultural and informative pro-grams) from a list of 30 television shows was tabulated, andeach respondent was then placed in one of four groups: nopublic affairs, low public affairs, moderate public affairs, orhigh public affairs type of television viewing.

Three separate scales were constructed in order to determinethe role of the three antecedent variables in the youngster'sknowledge about and attitudes toward the surrounding politicalworld. The child's level of political information was measured

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by a series of ten fill-in questions dealing with the identities ofgovernment institutions and government leaders. Each respon-dent's level of political knowledge was tabulated by summingcodes of " 1 " for each correct answer and "0" for each incorrectanswer. n This provided a possible range of zero to ten-Hhehigher the score, the higher was the level of each child's politicalinformation.

In addition, two independent scales were constructed togauge the youngsters' attitudes toward political objects andinstitutions, specifically, toward the president and the federalgovernment. Each of these scales consisted of five declarativestatements each with five response options ranging from"strongly agree" to "strongly disagree" (e.g., "The Americangovernment is the best in the world"; "The President doeswhat's good for the country"). Responses were coded so that ascore of five on any item indicated an extremely positive atti-tude and a score of one revealed an extremely negative one;"not sure" responses were coded as three. Scores were thenadded across all five items for each scale,14 providing a possiblerange of five to twenty-five for each scale—the higher the score,the more positive was the child's attitude.

Results

The mass media were found to be the primary sources ofpolitical information for youngsters in the sample. Televisionwas the predominant source of political information about allthree objects in the young person's political environment; in thetotal sample, 58% received most of their information aboutpolitics from television, while 78% and 79% also named tele-vision as their principal source of information about the federalgovernment and the president, respectively.

It is due, perhaps, to the more abstract nature of the conceptof politics, in comparison to the other two sets of politicalobjects (the president and the federal government) which waschiefly responsible for the more frequent citing of parents andteachers as sources of most information for that particularquestion; 15% named their parents and 10% listed teachers assources of most information about politics.1S

While the trend for listing mass media sources, particularlytelevision, was clear for the previous question of the principalsource of political information, no such dominant trend can beobserved when the children were asked various questions per-taining to their reliance upon these various sources of informa-

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TV and Political Socialization (Rubin) 55

tion. Perhaps due to the lack of interactive capacity of themedia sources, parents were named by 49% of the children asthe best source to turn to for an answer to a question aboutpolitics. In fact, newspapers were cited by the children moreoften (19%) than television (13%) as the best place to get ananswer. Parents and television were the two sources cited mostfrequently with regard to the two other questions of reliance.An almost equal amount of children named parents (35%) andtelevision (33%) as the sources they would most believe if theywere to get conflicting stories from various sources. On theother hand, twice as many children listed television (44%) ascompared to parents (22%) as the source which is most rightabout politics.

Table I summarizes the results of the first three hypotheseswhich predicted relationships between specific uses of agentsand agencies of socialization—source of information, amount oftelevision exposure, and type of television viewing—and thechildren's levels of political information.

TABLE IPolitical Information and Uses of Socialization Agencies

PoliticalUse of Socialization Information

Agencies Mean Scores F-test W2

SOURCE OF INFORMATION n.s.

Low mass media (N=20) 2.80Moderate mass media (N=54) 2.56High mass media (N=124) 3.00

AMOUNT OF TV EXPOSURE p < .001 .06

Low level (N=55) 3.58a>c

Moderate level (N=76) 2.86a

High level (N=65) 2.26C

TYPE OF TV VIEWING p < .01 .04

No public affairs (N=72) 2.42b

Low public affairs (N=52) 2.7 3 a

Moderate public affairs (N=38) 3.11High public affairs (N=34) 3.74a>b

a significant at the .05 level,b significant at the .005 level.c significant at the .001 level.

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The first hypothesis received no support. None of the politi-cal information scores of the three source-of-information groupsdiffered significantly. This seems to indicate that the source ofthe youngsters' political information was probably not a factorin achieving their levels of political knowledge. In other words,while most respondents indicated that television was their chiefsource of political information, it seemed to make no differenceas to whether television, parents, or any of the other possibleagencies served as principal sources of information with regardto the children's levels of awareness and recognition of politicalobjects.

The second hypothesis received fairly strong support(p<.001).16 It would seem that the more television viewed bythe child, the lower the level of recognition and awareness ofpolitical objects. A posterior tests on the means reveal two sig-nificant differences, between the low and moderate exposuregroups and between the low and high television exposuregroups.17

The reverse of this trend seemed to hold true for the thirdhypothesis which also received support (p<.01). This apparent-ly indicates that those children who viewed more public affairstypes of programs were politically more informed than thoseyoungsters whose viewing habits included only situation come-dies, sport programs, and the like. Two significant differencesbetween the means were also found in this relationship: be-tween the no public affairs and the high public affairs groupsand between the low public affairs and the high public affairsviewing groups.

It should be noted that there is no apparent relationshipbetween the amount and type of television exposure vari-ables. 18 In other words, those children who watched higheramounts of television were not necessarily the same childrenwho viewed greater amounts of public affairs types of programs.It seems that those children who viewed higher levels of publicaffairs programs were more selective in their television viewingbehavior. For example, among the high public affairs viewers,23% watched low amounts, 65% viewed moderate amounts, andonly 13% watched high amounts of television.

Table II summarizes the results of the last two hypotheseswhich predicted relationships between specific uses of agentsand agencies of socialization—source of information andamount of television exposure—and the children's attitudestoward political objects and institutions.

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TV and Political Socialization (Rubin) 57

TABLE II

Political Attitudes and Uses of Socialization Agencies

Use ofSocializationAgencies

Political Attitude Mean ScoresTowardGovern-

ment

SOURCE OF INFORMATION

Low mass media(N=20)

Moderate mass media(N=54)

High mass media(N=124)

AMOUNT OF TV VIEWING

Low level (N=55)Moderate level (N=76)High level (N=65)

16.20

16.60

17.01

17.89C

16.7615.97C

F-test

n.s.

p<05

TowardPresi-

W2 dent F-test W2

n.s.

13.55

14.21

14.09

.03 p<.05 .03

14.93b

14.74a

12.63a>b

a significant at the .05 level.b significant at the .02 level.c significant at the .005 level.

The first of these hypotheses received no support. In analyz-ing both attitude scales (attitudes toward the president andtoward the federal government) it seems apparent that no signif-icant differences exist between the groups on both scales. Infact, the ordering of relationship, which is slight, is in theopposite direction of prediction; in other words, although thedifferences are quite small and certainly not statistically signifi-cant, the trend for children whose principal sources of informa-tion were the media was to display slightly more positive atti-tudes toward political objects and institutions than those chil-dren whose principal sources of information were their variousreference groups.

The final hypothesis received support across both attitudescales. First, pertaining to the attitudes children held toward thefederal government, the relationship between the three levels oftelevision exposure groups was significant (p<.05). Second,with regard to the attitudes of the children toward the presi-dent, the relationship was also significant (p<.05). Thus, itwould seem that the higher the amount of television viewed, the

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more negative were the political attitudes displayed by thechildren. A posteriori tests revealed several significant differ-ences between the means with regard to both scales; on theattitude toward the government scale significant differenceswere found between the mean scores of the low level and highlevel of television exposure groups, while on the attitude towardthe president scale significant differences were found betweenthe means of the low and high level groups and between themoderate and high level of television exposure groups.

Discussion

It would seem apparent from the findings of this study thatthe mass media, particularly television, serve as the principalsource of political information for the children in the sample.However, while the media serve as predominant sources ofinformation, the children appeared to be somewhat skeptical asto how much they could rely on the information which theyreceived from the media. Significant relationships were foundbetween the amount of television exposure and both the chil-dren's levels of political information and their attitudes towardpolitical objects and institutions, as well as between the type oftelevision viewed and the youngsters' levels of political informa-tion. From these findings, it would seem that the use of tele-vision has an impact on the political socialization process.

However, while these relationships were statistically signifi-cant, they do not seem to be very strong. A posteriori tests forthe significant F values utilizing Duncan's multiple-range proce-dures revealed that the significant differences between themeans within all three of these relationships were found princi-pally between the low and high amounts of exposure groupsand between the no or low and high types of viewing groups.Furthermore, while these actual obtained differences betweenthe means in all three of these relationships were statisticallysignificant, the relatively small differences discovered suggestthat the findings may be somewhat misleading. In fact, utilizingomega2 tests to discover the strength of association between thevariables revealed that the proportion of variance in the depen-dent variable which was actually accounted for by the inde-pendent variable in each of the three cases was quite small.19

Thus, a closer examination of the magnitude of the differencessuggests that, at best, these three hypotheses concerning theimpact of television in the political socialization process arerather weakly supported. Therefore, it remains questionable asto the amount of influence which the media have on the acqui-

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TV and Political Socialization (Rubin) 59

sition of information and on the active formation of the atti-tudes of seventh grade youngsters.

What may be most interesting to note with regard to thechildren's attitudes displayed toward the president and thefederal government is a reversal from previous research findingsin this area which discovered a more positive conception offigures of authority, especially the president.20 The attitudesrevealed by the children were consistently lower in all groupsfor the president than for the federal government. This may bea significant, and certainly an argumentative trend for theAmerican political system. On the one hand, it may be consid-ered as a healthy trend to have youngsters end adulation of thepresidency. However, this can also be seen as a pessimistic trendto have youngsters learn to distrust the highest office in thecountry. This finding should be qualified by the very real possi-bility that the children's comparatively negative attitudestoward the president may have been directed at the occupant ofthe office at a time when Watergate dominated media journal-ism.

Notes1 See, for example, F. I. Greenstein, Children in Politics, (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1965), who emphasized the importance of the fam-ily to the child's acquisition of political attitudes, beliefs and values; andR. D. Hess and J. V. Torney, The Development of Political Attitudes inChildren, (Chicago: Aldine, 1967), who stressed the role of the school inthe political socialization process.

2W. Schramm, J. Lyle, and E. Parker, Television in the Lives of OurChildren, (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961).

3 S . Kraus, "Mass Communication and Political Socialization: A Re-Assessment of Two Decades of Research," The Quarterly Journal ofSpeech 59:391 (1973).

4 S . H. Chaffee, L. S. Ward and L. P. Tipton, "Mass Communicationand Political Socialization," Journalism Quarterly 47:659 (1970).

5 J. R. Dominick, "Television and Political Socialization," EducationalBroadcasting Review 6:55 (1972).

6See, for example, D. Easton and R. D. Hess, "The Child's PoliticalWorld," Midwest Journal of Political Science 6:229-246 (1962); Hess andTorney, op. cit.; and Greenstein, op. cit.

7See, for example, D. Easton and J. Dennis, Children in the PoliticalSystem, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969); and Greenstein, op. cit.

8See, for example, Easton and Hess, op. cit.; and Easton and Dennis,op. cit.

9 The instrument was pre-tested with seventh graders in Danville,Illinois, and necessary revisions were made.

1 0The internal consistency of this index was checked by computingphi-coefficients for the interrelationships among its three scales and theoverall source-of-information index. The mean phi-coefficient was signifi-cant, but not extremely strong (Φ=.55; p<.001).

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11 It was felt that an average of these two questions would give a moreaccurate index of the amount of television the child actually views eachday. The mean number of hours per day of television viewed by thechildren in this sample was 4.13 hour. In contrast to Schramm, Lyle, andParker's findings in 1961, the children in this sample spend one-quarter(rather than one-fifth) of their waking hours viewing television.

12 A Kuder-Richardson coefficient was computed to determine thereliability of the 10 item fill-in index. The Kuder-Richardson reliabilitycoefficient for this political information scale was .73, indicating that theitems were homogeneous and, therefore, valid.

13Similar scales were utilized by Greenstein, op. cit, and by Hess andTorney, op. cit. The scales in the present study were adapted from thoseused by Dominick, op. cit., with response options expanded from a3-point to a 5-point scale to provide for greater variability of responses.

14 Pearson product-moment coefficients were computed to determinethe inter-item correlations of the 5 items in each of the two politicalattitude scales. Significant correlations between the items of both theattitude toward the federal government scale (r=.65; p<.001), and theattitude toward the president scale (r=.82; p<.001) indicated that the 5items of each scale were sufficiently linearly related to treat each scale as auni-dimensional index of the attitude variable.

15It should be noted that a civics curriculum is not taught in theChampaign junior high schools until the ninth grade, which may partiallyexplain the restricted listing of teachers as principal sources of politicalinformation.

16Probability estimates reported in this section were obtained by usingF-tests.

17A posteriori testing utilized in this section were Duncan's multiple-range procedures.

18This relationship between amount of television exposure and type oftelevision viewing was tested by using chi-square procedures (x2 =7.20;df=6; n.s.).

19 For a description of the omega2 procedures utilized see, W. L. Hays,Statistics for Psychologists, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,1963), pp. 325-327, 381-385.

20See, for example, Easton and Hess, op. cit.; and Easton and Dennis,op. cit.

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