In order to fully explicate the role of news media in individuals’ political participation, this dissertation aims at establishing an integrative structural model that specifies relationships among news media use, its antecedents and mediators of its influence on political participation. The proposed model is comprised of key factors of political participation that previous research has identified. The relational structure is based on models and theories relevant to prediction of political behaviors. Specifically, the model integrates (a) communication mediation model, which posits that communication behaviors (i.e., news media use and interpersonal discussion) mediate the effects of socio-demographic variables (i.e., income, education, age, gender, and race) and political dispositions (i.e., political interest, partisanship and ideology) on political outcomes; (b) agenda-setting theory, which posits that frequent exposure to news media increases the salience of news objects in audiences’ minds; (c) cognitive mediation model, which posits that elaborative and collective thinking is a prerequisite to produce political outcomes of news exposure; (d) theory of planned behavior, which posits that human behavior can be best predicted by three proximal variables (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control); (e) O-S-R-O-R (orientations-stimulus-reasoning-orientations-response) model of communication effects, which provides a parsimonious framework of effect process. Using the structural equation modeling (SEM) method, this dissertation analyzes the 2008 American National Election Studies data set to test the validity of the proposed structural model. Results indicate that frequent exposure to news media stimulates attentive news use as well as intra- and interpersonal reasoning, which produce a wide range of political outcomes. Two reasoning behaviors (i.e., self-reflection and interpersonal political discussion) are critical mechanisms that linked news media use to various political outcomes including political participation. Personal-psychological mediators, such as strength in affects, personal traits, opinions about political issues, campaign interest, political knowledge, attitude strength, perceived ability of political parties and political efficacy all significantly mediate the influence of news media use on political participation. News media use mediates significant portion of effects that a set of preexisting variables have on political participation as well as various types of political orientations. / text

This dissertation seeks to improve our understanding of the process by which emotions enable citizens to learn about public affairs and engage in political activities during electoral campaigns. It advances a theoretical model that incorporates the dynamics of emotions, various forms of media use, interpersonal communication and political involvement. This affective citizen communication model integrates into a single framework the insights of affective intelligence theory (Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000) and the work on communication mediation (McLeod et al., 1999, 2001) and its two iterations, cognitive mediation (Eveland, 2001) and citizen communication mediation (Cho et al., 2009; Shah et al., 2005, 2007). More specifically, it suggests that the effects of emotions triggered by political candidates (e.g., enthusiasm, anxiety, anger) on knowledge of the candidates’ stands on issues and on political participation are largely mediated by communication variables, including news media use, political discussion and debate viewing. By positing emotions as an antecedent of both mediated and interpersonal communication, the study extends current research based on affective intelligence theory. At the same time, the study adds emotions to communication mediation processes, which to date have been studied from a mostly cognitive perspective. To test the relationships between the variables identified in the affective citizen communication model, I rely on panel survey data collected for the 2008 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections by the American National Election Studies (ANES) and the National Annenberg Election Surveys (NAES), respectively. Two types of structural equation models are tested, cross sectional (to relate individual differences) and auto-regressive (to relate aggregate change across waves). Results suggest that positive emotions spark media use, whereas negative emotions spark political discussions, and both types of communication behavior influence issue knowledge and participation in campaign activities. Furthermore, the theorized structure is found to perform better than an alternative structure where communication variables cause positive and negative emotions. Thus, results provide strong support for the proposed affective citizen communication model. Refinements to the proposed model, connections with existing theories of political communication, such as agenda setting and partisan selective exposure, and directions for future research are also discussed. / text

本研究意圖了解台灣選民媒介使用與政治知識間長期的關聯與其變遷，以及嘗試將政治知識區分為政治結構知識與非政治結構知識兩類個別檢視，以期能深入瞭解媒介使用與政治知識類別的關係。本研究採用二手資料分析，將國立政治大學選舉研究中心在1995年與1998年所作之立委選舉面訪案，及台灣選舉與民主化調查研究（TEDS）在2001年與2004年所作之立委選舉大型面訪案，總共四次的資料加以整合，以時間的縱貫角度切入，觀察民眾長期政治知識與媒介使用情況的趨勢變化，針對影響政治知識的各項因素作檢驗，並提出可能的解釋。 　　關於變化趨勢的部分，研究發現在1995-2004年期間，總體政治知識及非政治結構知識程度有逐年減少的趨勢，但在政治結構知識程度上則變動不大，沒有逐年提升的趨勢；報紙注意程度上沒有顯著變化，而電視注意程度則有逐漸減少的情形。 　　研究結果顯示，無論時序如何變遷、政治知識如何分類，性別、教育程度及報紙注意程度，對政治知識均具顯著且穩定的影響力。男性、教育程度愈高者及報紙注意程度愈高者，其政治知識程度愈高。 　　年齡對於各類政治知識程度也是一個相當顯著的解釋變項，唯獨在政治結構知識上，老年人口的解釋力則不顯著。本研究也發現政黨認同能夠顯著解釋總體政治知識與非政治結構知識；但在政治結構知識上的影響與解釋力較弱。在總體政治知識與非政治結構知識的影響上，電視注意程度均呈現正向顯著的關聯，電視注意程度愈高，其政治知識程度愈高；但在政治結構知識上，電視注意程度的解釋力則不如預期。值得注意的是，電視媒介注意程度在2004年的資料中，對於各類政治知識均呈現無顯著差異，且影響方向改變。 　　綜觀研究結果發現，不同類型之政治知識，在本質上、變遷趨勢上、獨立變項的解釋力上的確有所差異。最能解釋總體政治知識的變項為媒介注意程度；最能解釋政治結構知識的變項為教育程度；對非政治結構知識最能解釋的變項為媒介注意程度。然而，報紙注意程度比起電視注意程度來說，對於政治知識程度的解釋力要來得正向且穩定。 / The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships of news media use and political knowledge and their changes over time among voters in Taiwan. Political knowledge, by definition, is categorized into structural and non-structural ones. Data were from four national surveys in 1995 and 1998’s National Chengchi University Election Study Center’s surveys, and the 2001 and 2004’s Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study during legislative elections, respectively. Data analysis shows that since 1995 till 2004, political knowledge and non-structural political knowledge are both slightly decreasing, but the variation of structural political knowledge is relatively stable. Attention to newspaper news is steady but attention to television news is decreasing. Gender, level of education, and attention to newspaper news all positively predict structural and non-structural political knowledge in the four data sets. Male, highly educated people, and those with higher attention to newspaper news have more political knowledge. Party identification significantly predicts non-structural political knowledge but not structural political knowledge. Attention to television news positively predicts non-structural political knowledge. What is noteworthy is that in 2004, attention to news media first time shows no significant relationship with political knowledge. Take a closer look at relationships between various predictor variables and different types of political knowledge. Our results show that attention to news media strongly predicts political knowledge; level of education highly predicts structural political knowledge; attention to news media effectively predicts non-structural political knowledge. However, attention to newspaper is a better predictor variable in predicting political knowledge.

In this thesis, news media use and trust among Swedish upper secondary schools students of Generation Z is investigated through focus group interviews with students from two different schools. This study aims to explain how and why Swedish upper secondary school students of Generation Z use and perceive news media, with focus on the relations between news media trust and news media use. To interpret the empirical data, the study uses a theoretical framework consisting of three pillars: an understanding of trust informed by Giddens (1990) definition; the use of public connection (Couldry et al., 2018) to understand the role of news media; a generational understanding based on Prensky’s (2001a; 2001b) concept of Digital Natives, and Bolin’s (2017) media generations. This study suggests that there is a clear discrepancy between the young Swedes news media use, and their trust. They acknowledge the importance of news media in society, and traditional news medias are perceived as trustworthy expert systems, providing of professional, quality journalism. Despite the high levels of trust, traditional news medias are rarely actively used. Instead, students come into contact with most news through social media feeds, on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. They mostly view the content on these platforms as unreliable and untrustworthy, due to the lack of a clear, trustworthy expert presence. Despite distrusting the content on social media, the students continue to use the services as a source of news, in part due to the convenience of use and in part as they believe themselves to well equipped to discern true and fake news through their generations’ intimate knowledge of both the structure of social medias, and strategies for fact checking. This study also argues that the use of distrusted news from social media, may in fact in some cases enable a public connection.

政治功效意識普遍被學界認為是影響民眾政治態度與政治參與的重要因素之一，因為其為個人評估自己對政治事務瞭及影響能力的評估。另一方面，新聞媒介是提供民眾訊息的主要來源，從之前相關研究也發現，在民眾接觸大眾傳播媒介後，會對其政治態度造成一定程度的影響；不過，對於大眾傳播媒介的使用與政治功效意識的關聯，過去研究的結果則有不同的看法。因此，本研究試圖藉由非選舉與選舉時期的調查資料，透過民眾使用新聞媒介的習慣，來瞭解其與內在及外在政治功效意識的關聯。 研究結果顯示，不論是在非選舉或選舉時期，民眾的新聞媒介使用從注意程度與暴露程度觀察，電視是最主要的資訊來源，其次則為報紙。其餘廣播、新聞雜誌、網路等新聞媒介的使用率皆偏低；而電視與廣播政論性CALL-IN節目，有習慣收看、收聽的民眾也佔少數。 對於新聞媒介使用與政治功效意識關聯性的探討，在非選舉時期民眾對媒體所報導的新聞愈注意時，其內在及外在政治功效意識則可能愈高。不過，民眾收看電視新聞的時間愈長，其內在政治功效意識則可能愈低；但與外在政治功效意識的關係不顯著，代表與外在政治功效意識的高低沒有顯著的關係。 至於選舉時期，則是針對民眾接觸大眾傳播媒介報導的選舉新聞進行研究；發現民眾在選舉時期對於選舉新聞的接觸，與其政治功效意識的高低沒有顯著的關係。所以，由於政治功效意識是受到生活經驗長期培養而成，是深植於民眾心中長期穩定的政治態度；新聞媒介對於報導的選舉新聞則僅出現在接近選舉的一兩個月，因此這種短期因素較難與民眾的政治功效意識有顯著的關聯。 / Political efficacy is regarded as an important factor to influence political attitudes and political participation. On the other hand, mass media nowadays are the main sources to provide people political information and may furthermore influences people’s political attitudes. However, existed literarature shows different views about the relationships between the use of mass media and political efficacy. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to analyze the relationships between mass media use and their impact on internal and external political efficacy. By conducting secondary analysis of national surveys, which were collected during the period of election and non-election, this study has the following findings. First of all, television is the major news media for people to get information, and newspaper is second to it. Radio, magazine and internet are far below the importance of television and newspaper in acquiring political information. Second, our analysis shows that during the period of non-election, the more that people pay attention to news, the higher internal and external political efficacy they have. If people spend more time on watching news on television, they have less internal political efficacy. However, there is no correlation between the exposure of news media and external political efficacy. Finally, during the period of election, there is no correlation between the use of news media and political efficacy. It is inferred that because political efficacy is mostly influenced by people’s life-long experiences so it is stable in terms of political attitude. Therefore, it is not likely that election news will influence people’s political efficacy in a short period of time.