Political Involvement

Political involvement, sometimes referred to as “engagement” or “interest in public affairs,” is of potentially great importance in political decision making because of its relationship to media use, learning about elections and issues, and public affairs participation. Research indicates that citizens who are high in political involvement are active information seekers who purposefully use media to learn about candidates, campaigns, and public affairs issues. Unfortunately, scholars in different disciplines, including political science, psychology, advertising/consumer behavior, and communication, have used the term involvement to refer to somewhat different but related constructs. In fact, even scholars within the same discipline sometimes have conceptualized involvement differently, occasionally relying on quite different questions and/or procedures to measure involvement. As a result, involvement commonly lacks definitional and operational clarity, and ...