More frequent usage of Twitter positively affects the acquisition of current affairs knowledge; opposite is found for Facebook, particularly for citizens with less political interest

Social network sites and acquiring current affairs knowledge: The impact of Twitter and Facebook usage on learning about the news. Mark Boukes. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Feb 06 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2019.1572568

Abstract: This study investigates how the use of Twitter and Facebook affects citizens’ knowledge acquisition, and whether this effect is conditional upon people’s political interest. Using a panel survey design with repeated measures of knowledge acquisition, this study is able to disentangle causality and to demonstrate that more frequent usage of Twitter positively affects the acquisition of current affairs knowledge. The opposite is found for Facebook: More frequent Facebook usage causes a decline in knowledge acquisition. This negative effect of Facebook usage occurred particularly for citizens with less political interest, thereby, amplifying the existing knowledge gap between politically interested and uninterested citizens.

KEYWORDS: Social network sites, learning effects, current affairs knowledge, Facebook, Twitter, social media, knowledge gap

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To date, no research has been able to convincingly unveil a causal relationship between the usage of specific social networks sites and the acquisition of current affairs knowledge. This is partly due to the reliance on cross-sectional datasets. Survey research cannot determine the directionality of causal relationships: Associations between SNS usage and knowledge may identify a selection mechanism (i.e., knowledge causing SNS use) rather than a media effect. Using a panel survey design (three-waves; n = 3,240) with a repeated measure of (new) current affairs knowledge, the current study has a unique ability to analyze whether the two social networks most often used for news consumption (respectively Facebook and Twitter, [...]) affect the current affairs information that citizens acquire.