Hashtag Politics: How Political Framing via X Influences High School Students’ Advocacy Efforts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58445/rars.3387Keywords:
Political Activism, Political Framing, Media Framing, AdvocacyAbstract
With the increasing prominence of social media in shaping young people's political beliefs, understanding how framing influences students' engagement in political activities is crucial. An experimental design was employed to investigate the effects of media framing on the political activism of high school students. In this study, the control group and treatment group answered similar surveys, with the treatment group exposed to political content framed in either a positive, neutral, or negative tone. The results indicated that framing did not significantly influence students' willingness to engage in political action. The study highlights the need for further exploration of media framing and its impact on political socialization among youth, as well as strategies to foster critical thinking and media literacy.
References
References:
Bougher, L. D. (2012). The Case for Metaphor in Political Reasoning and Cognition. Political Psychology, 33(1), 145–163. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2011.00865.x
Boulianne, S., & Theocharis, Y. (2018). Young People, Digital Media, and Engagement: A Meta-Analysis of Research. Social Science Computer Review, 38(2), 089443931881419. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439318814190
Burridge, K. (2017, September 27). Euphemisms and Dysphemisms. Obo. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0210.xml
Chia, J. T. (2021). Social Media and the Global Climate Strike: A tool for youth climate change activists and politicians. Sojourners Undergraduate Journal of Sociology, 12(1), 18–39. https://doi.org/10.14288/soj.v12i1.195972
Deloitte. (2025, March 25). 2025 Digital Media Trends: Social Platforms Are Becoming a Dominant Force in Media and Entertainment. Deloitte Insights; Deloitte. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/digital-media-trends-consumption-habits-survey/2025.html
Feldman Barrett, L., Mesquita, L., Barsalou, D., Gilbert, J., Russell, J., Gross, J., Tsai, P., Niedenthal, P., Winkielman, E., Smith, C., Wright, S., Rauch, K., Ochsner, R., Lane, K., Quigley, D., Desteno, P., Devine, D., Prentice, J., Skowronski, R., & Solomon, G. (2006). Solving the Emotion Paradox: Categorization and the Experience of Emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 20–46. https://www.affective-science.org/pubs/2006/Barrett2006paradox.pdf
Fesenfeld, L., Rudolph, L., & Bernauer, T. (2022). Policy framing, design and feedback can increase public support for costly food waste regulation. Nature Food, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00460-8
Goldstein, K. L., & Shem-Tov, O. Y. (2017). Party People and Party Identification. YOUNG, 26(3), 290–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/1103308817715145
Gruner, C. R., Travillion, L. J., & Schaefer, D. E. (1991). TESTING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DOUBLESPEAK. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 48(2), 153–160. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/42577278
Hemphill, L., Culotta, A., & Heston, M. (2013, August 28). Framing in Social Media: How the US Congress Uses Twitter Hashtags to Frame Political Issues. Papers.ssrn.com. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2317335
Himelboim, I., McCreery, S., & Smith, M. (2013). Birds of a Feather Tweet Together: Integrating Network and Content Analyses to Examine Cross-Ideology Exposure on Twitter. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(2), 40–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12001
Kahne, J., Lee, N.-J., & Jessica Timpany Feezell. (2012). Digital Media Literacy Education and Online Civic and Political Participation. International Journal of Communication, 6(0), 24. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/999
Moore, R. C., & Hancock, J. T. (2022). A digital media literacy intervention for older adults improves resilience to fake news. Scientific Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-08437-0
MUTZ, D. C. (2002). Cross-cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice. American Political Science Review, 96(1), 111–126. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055402004264
Shearer, E., Naseer, S., Liedke, J., & Eva, K. (2024, June 12). How Americans Get News on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/06/12/how-americans-get-news-on-tiktok-x-facebook-and-instagram/
Steindl, C., Jonas, E., Sittenthaler, S., Traut-Mattausch, E., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Understanding Psychological Reactance. Zeitschrift Für Psychologie, 223(4), 205–214. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000222
Swart, J. (2021). Tactics of news literacy: How young people access, evaluate, and engage with news on social media. New Media & Society, 25(3), 505–521. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211011447
Swire-Thompson, B., Miklaucic, N., Wihbey, J. P., Lazer, D., & DeGutis, J. (2022). The backfire effect after correcting misinformation is strongly associated with reliability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(7). https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001131
Vladimir Figar, & Mihailo Antovic. (2014). Metaphor Clusters in the New York Times Press Reports of the 2012 Presidential Elections in the U.S. Language, Literature, Discourse. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275465143_Metaphor_Clusters_in_the_New_York_Times_Press_Reports_of_the_2012_Presidential_Elections_in_the_US
Downloads
Posted
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Celine Chang
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
