The Impacts of Political Socialization on People’s Online and Offline Political Participation—Taking the Youth of Singapore as an Example

Recent years have seen an increase in political participation among young people worldwide. In light of this heightened political consciousness among youth, the process by which the young might develop political attitudes and become engaged with politics makes a worthy and important research subject. This study thus focuses on whether political socialization by family and peers can affect the online and offline political participation of Singapore youth, also taking into consideration recent changes in the local political environment. The other aspect the study wished to explore whether offline and online news exposure might have a correlation with youth political participation. AC Nielsen Research Pte Ltd. was commissioned to conduct the post-election national telephone survey. Data analysis supported that political socialization by the two sources of family and peers was significantly correlated with young people’s political participation in both offline and online forms. In addition, the results indicate that newspaper reading was associated with youth’s online political participation but not with their offline political participation. And online news exposure was found to significantly correlate with youth’s online political participation. One other result worth mentioning is the positive correlation between mother’s education and respondent’s offline political participation.