engleski

Disaffected citizens in Croatia: Analysis of sociodemographic and media use influences on political participation

Political scientists have noted rising popular indifference to political institutions which are indicated with trends such as declining voter turnout and rising voter volatility in advanced democracies (Mair, 2006). Similar trends emerged in the radically changing „high choice“media environments. Studies in political communication (Blekesaune, Elvestad and Aalberg, 2012 ; Prior, 2007 ; Stromback and Shehata, 2012) have shown that in these media environments audiences are „tuning out“of the news and current affairs programs and the gap between the politically active and not active is deepening. The aim of this paper is to analyse those who abstain from political participation in Croatia in terms of socio-demographic characteristics and media use. National media systems are important factors in explaining differences in news consumption and political knowledge between countries. Research in Croatia will serve as a case study of how a changing media environment interacts with political participation in a post- socialist political culture. Drawing primarily on the research made by Blekesaune, Elvestad and Aalberg (2012) in their article “Tuning out the World of News and Current Affairs—An Empirical Study of Europe’s Disconnected Citizens”, I will describe the abstainers and show what socio- demographic and media use factors are influential in predicting political participation in Croatia. In the analysis binary logistic regression will be used on the data from the online survey on media use in Croatia conducted by the Centre for Media and Communication Research (at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb) as a part of the COST comparative research project „European media audiences“.

political participation; media consumption; online audiences

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