Young adults struggle with online political participation
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
College Park, Md. -- Young adults who are Web-savvy but lack knowledge about federal government may struggle to use the Web for political participation, according to a team of researchers.
"There's a misconception that young adults are naturally skilled at all computer techniques," said Jens Grossklags, assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, "and while they might be comfortable on some sites and social networks, that doesn't necessarily mean that young adults know how to use the Internet for political participation."
In an experiment, the researchers provided 12 university students with two scenarios that required them to send two personal comments to two different federal government agencies. For example, one scenario asked participants to tell the agency that they favored stricter prescription drug regulations. Another scenario required participants to express their opinion on health care reform. Researchers did not provide the participants with the name or acronym of the government agency they were actually targeting.
In evaluating the students' success, the researchers found that only half of them were able to search successfully for the correct website. For the prescription drug scenario, only three participants found the Food and Drug Administration. One person found the Federal Aviation Administration in the scenario on airport safety, and one person correctly navigated to the Environmental Protection Agency in response to a scenario about environmental efforts. In the health care reform scenario, only one person found the White House website, and another participant navigated to the White House's Facebook page.
Grossklags, who worked with Lora Appel and Frank Bridges, both graduate students in communication and information at Rutgers University, said that several obstacles kept the students from reaching the correct online destination.
Read the whole article on Penn State Live.
