The growth of social media use raises significant questions related to political information and its effect on political knowledge and participation. One issue is whether social media delivers news and political information in a similar manner as traditional news media sources, like newspapers, TV, and radio, by contributing to political knowledge, which is linked to voter turnout. This dissertation examines the relationship between an individual's social media use, their use of traditional news media sources, and whether they turn out to vote. It utilizes American National Election Survey data from the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to complete three studies. First, the dissertation compares people who prefer social media and those who prefer traditional news media sources across as series of political habits and attitudes. Second, it looks at the expansion of the media environment and examines whether a person's social media use and preference for news or entertainment is related to political knowledge and voter participation. Finally, this dissertations examines at whether social media use increases the odds an individual will turn out to vote, thus acting in a similar manner as traditional news media. The results identify differences between people who prefer social media and people who prefer traditional news media sources. In particular, people who prefer social media tend to be younger, have less political knowledge, and have a lower voter turnout rate. However, unlike traditional news media use, the use of social media did not increase the odds an individual turned out to vote in 2016. Further, the use of social media and an individual's content preference of entertainment versus news was not related to political knowledge nor voter turnout. While social media does not appear to have a positive relationship with turnout, it does not appear to discourage a person from voting either. The results suggest that more work needs to be done, including examining the relationship between age, social media use and turnout, as well as how content length may be related to political participation. Finally, further examination is needed of the possible indirect ways social media may be related to voter attitudes and participation.

The Hispanic population in central Texas tends to have low levels of civic engagement as compared to other groups in the same area, which leads to disproportionate political marginalization. Prior research has focused on characteristics of voters and nonvoters, but has failed to explore the lack of political mobilization among Hispanic voters. The purpose of this study was twofold; first to better understand the nature of Hispanic voters' political marginalization, and second, explore why participation levels are so low among this group. This general qualitative study applied critical race theory to explore the barriers perceived by Hispanic voters related to political marginalization that may contribute to low voter participation. Data were collected through interviews with 20 randomly selected Hispanic people residing in central Texas. Interview data were transcribed, inductively coded, and then organized into themes. The key research findings identified 3 themes that potentially explain low civic engagement; a general distrust in government, a deficiency of civics education in the public school system, and specific cultural preferences that may contribute to low levels of participation in voting and politics. Findings also revealed that there is little understanding of the voting process, and few public initiatives to encourage the Hispanic voter community to vote or otherwise engage in participatory democracy. Recommendations to policy makers to promote positive social change include increasing funding for civic education, and creating voter outreach programs. Policy makers and politicians should also seek out ways to build trust in the political process throughout the Hispanic community.

This thesis will apply a theory consuming method studying voter turnout between swing states in the United States. To accomplish the theory consuming study, the study is divided into two phases. It will start testing Downs’ rational choice theory and apply this to voter turnout. It will then move on to applying the independent variables, socioeconomic background and voting laws to understand voter turnout from this perspective. The study starts with the hypothesis that Downs’ rational choice theory should be able to explain swing states’ voter participation. However, the research shows rational choice theory cannot explain the voter turnout in swing states. In the second phase, the study tests socioeconomic background and voting laws. These two independent variables better explain the voter turnout in swing states. Being well educated while being well off financially have a bigger impact than what rational choice theory can explain. It does not matter if P is overestimated and C is almost nil, it did not help to explain the voter difference in swing states, even though according to the theory, swing states should vote accordingly. To be able to increase voter turnout in swing states with a low voter turnout, not only does voting laws have to become more liberal, but one law in particular seems to make the biggest difference: the possibility to register on election day. However, changing voting laws are not enough. The largest impact is your socioeconomic background. A high educational attainment and being financially stable over the poverty level are the core reasons for voter turnout. Taking people out of poverty and creating opportunities for all to attend college is where higher voter turnout starts.

Over the past few decades, falling voter turnout rates have induced governments to adopt compulsory voting laws, in order to mitigate issues such as the socioeconomic voter gap and to bring a broader spectrum of voters into the fold. This paper presents evidence that the introduction of mandatory voting laws increases voter turnout rates by 13 points within a particular country through an entity- and time-fixed effect panel model. Moreover, it includes a discussion of the implications of adopting mandatory voting policies within the United States, finding that compelling citizens to vote would have increased participation rates to over 90 percent in the past four presidential elections.

Que traduit la hausse de la participation aux élections présidentielles françaises de 2007 et américaines 2008 ? À partir d’enquêtes électorales française, américaine et canadienne, notre étude met en lumière les changements d’attitudes politiques des citoyens survenus ces dernières années et la pratique croissante d’une participation intermittente et sélective. Ces changements qui résultent de logiques d’individualisation ont permis aux individus de s’extirper de contraintes d’appartenance sociale et de s’affranchir d’allégeances partisanes. Leur jugement se fonde désormais sur une évaluation des critères de l’offre électorale. L’individualisation des valeurs en politique se traduit notamment par une évolution du sens du vote et une hiérarchisation des scrutins. Les électeurs ne se délaissent pas les élections, ils choisissent simplement de participer autrement. Plus instruits, plus autonomes et plus critiques, ces citoyens prescrivent des changements profonds de l’offre. Afin de rallier le plus grand nombre de suffrages, les candidats se voient contraints d’adapter leurs dispositifs stratégiques aux évolutions des comportements politiques des citoyens : structuration des partis, modernisation des campagnes électorales, militantisme à « la carte », nouvelles formes d’engagement politique, usage de l’Internet. Tout est fait pour que le citoyen individualisé trouve dans ces manières de faire la politique les bonnes raisons de voter. / What does the increase of the voter turnout in the 2007 French and the 2008 American presidential election mean? With the French, American and Canadian surveys, we highlight the changes in the political attitude of the citizens occurred in recent years. The voters are now practicing an intermittent and selective voting. This changing political behavior reflects a growing individualization values in politics. They are making their mind up from an assessment of the electoral issues positions, an evolution of the meaning of the vote and, a priorization of elections. Voters are not leaving the polling stations, they are only choosing to participate in different way. More educated, autonomous and critical, the citizens require deep changes in the political evaluations. So, by winning number of votes, candidates have to adapt their strategical plan of actions by including the individualized behavior of the citizens : structuring the political party, modernizing the electoral campaigns, promoting a membership “à la carte”, developing new forms of political engagement, and using the Internet. Everything is done to increase the individualized citizens vote.

This thesis examines the effect political trust has on voter turnout among foreign born citizens in Sweden. Economic theory is used as theoretical framework for this study and describes two types of rationale; rationale of voting and rationale of migration, which must be taking into the account when trying to understand the effect of political trust among foreign born citizens. It is from this argued that the incentives to vote for foreign born citizens are very low but that political trust is high due to an improved standard of living. Based on previous research on the positive relationship of political trust and voter turnout as well as the rationale behind it, hypotheses are constructed to be tested in statistical analysis. The hypotheses are that probability to vote increases with political trust, foreign born citizens have higher political trust than native citizens, but that the effect of political trust on voter turnout among foreign born citizens is weaker than for native citizens. The empirical data used for the study are gathered from the 2016 round of the European Social Survey. The statistical analysis supports the hypotheses that probability to vote increases with political trust and that foreign born citizens do have a higher political trust than native citizens. This support in combination with the knowledge that foreign born citizens vote to a lesser degree creates a paradox that would be solved by the last hypothesis, that the effect is weaker among foreign born citizens. However, this hypothesis cannot be completely supported, but there are reasons to believe that with better data the outcome would be positive. The study still reaches the conclusion that political trust among foreign born people is an important issue to take into account for policy makers and future research.

This study tests hypothesized causal relationships between predictor variables and voter turnout. Attention is focused on the psychological and attitudinal dimensions of turnout. Using data from the 1980 National Election Study of the Center for Political Studies, recursive and nonrecursive causal models are constructed to test the effects of election specific factors, social psychological factors, and rational choice based factors on voter turnout. Self-reported turnout is used as the primary dependent variable in all models. Validity tests support use, despite acknowledged limitations.

The aim of this study was to conduct a comparative analysis of the low voter turnout of the 2006 and 2011 municipal elections in Lukhanji Municipality. The study came as a result of the researcher’s observations of the low voter turnout during the 2011 municipal elections across the country. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the previous municipal election of 2006 also experienced low voter turnout. However, this was not the case with national and provincial elections, because since the first election that took place in 1994, voter turnout has been high. Lukhanji Municipality, which is the area of residence for the researcher, was no different from the rest of South Africa, when it comes to low voter turnout for the municipal elections and high voter turnout for national and provincial elections. It was noted that there has never been a detailed research study conducted in Lukhanji Municipality regarding the subject in question, and also that there is a limited amount of literature that seeks to investigate voter turnout in local elections in South Africa. The large amount of available literature focuses on voter turnout during national and provincial elections in established democracies. The literature review extensively explored the determinants of voter turnout in all levels of elections. From those tested elsewhere, it was evident that no single factor can be the cause of low voting during an election, therefore it was fundamental to investigate the causes of low voter turnout of the municipal elections with special focus on Lukhanji Municipality. It became evident from the study, that indeed various factors may have led to low voter turnout during 2006 and 2011 municipal elections in Lukhanji Municipality.

My thesis deals with political awareness and participation of students of Faculty of International Relations, University of Economics in Prague. In theoretical part I dealt with models of democracy and the significance of political participation in these models. Afterwards I described political participation tools, especially voter turnout, its decline in Czech Republic and its consequences. In connection with voter turnout I dealt with election campaigns in Czech Republic, especially the negative campaigns, and with the role of mass media in politics. Theoretical part is followed by case study. Its aim is to discover and describe, if the students of Faculty of International Relations are interested in faculty affairs, if they are aware of political situation, if they take part in political participation and what are the factors that influence them the most in decision-making and in their long term political preferences.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether the drop in voter turnout between the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament elections, as well as the general apathy toward the politics of the European Union, in the Czech Republic was contributed to by the mass media. Specifically, this thesis will examine the two most read daily newspapers of both 2009 and 2014, Blesk and Mladá Fronta Dnes, and analyze its articles with the use of search words in order to assess whether any change occurred in the way the European Union, its policies and institutions, were presented immediately prior to the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament elections. This will be achieved through the use of content analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, while evaluating the articles in comparative fashion. The thesis will argue that, given the essential role of the media as intermediary between the world of politics and the electorate, the portrayal, or lack thereof, of the European Union is a factor in explaining the electoral dynamics of the country. Key Words: voter turnout; European Parliament elections; mass media; electoral apathy Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)