apathy

Late last week, a PR push began for a study coming out of Washington State University's Mass Communication and Society journal. The study made some interesting, if extremely limited, findings about the utility of celebrity GOTV campaigns. The media, however, has jumped ahead of the gun and is using the study to validate a simplistic idea that celebrity endorsements directly caused higher turnout in 2004. Such stories have already run in the Seattle PI and Reuters. These stories go beyond the extremely limited findings of the study.

The study, Celebrity Endorsements and Their Potential to Motivate Young Voters, measures the effects of celebrity promotions on "apathy" and "complacency" in young voters, in which apathy is defined as a total lack of interest and an unwillingess to get involved, whereas complacency is defined as a satisfaction with the current the state of affairs that puts the relevance of political participation at a distance and decreases one's motivation to be civically engaged.

Furthermore, scholars studying social capital raise concerns about young adults’ self-absorption and lack of concern with the larger society (Buckingham, 1997). Complacency, therefore, seems to comprise an important target for GOTV campaigns because the motivation to participate in public affairs derives, in part, from the identification of a public problem that affects the individual or those about whom the individual cares (Delli Carpini, 2000; Holbert, Kwak, & Shah, 2003).

Given that many GOTV promotions have been targeted directly toward energizing young adults, it seems useful to examine whether this type of campaign can provide an opportunity to decrease complacency among young voters. To the extent young adults are receptive to the identification-based appeals of the promotions, the campaigns may encourage them to recognize and develop an understanding of societal issues that previously seemed irrelevant.

The study interestingly suggests that it is in "complacent" youth that celebrity endorsements have the greatest impact. I'm not sure how useful the finding is, given that a field director can't exactly target for "complacent" vs. "apathetic" youth, nor can communications directors buy their ad time to hit the complacent demographic more than that apathetic demographic. Nevertheless, it's an interesting look into why celebrity PSAs might be effective in some instances but not in others.

The results of this study therefore suggest that the celebrity-based promotions seemed to hold more promise for easing involvement through the reduction of complacency than for reducing apathy. Receptivity to promotions predicted lower levels of complacency and reduced complacency associated positively with both involvement and self-efficacy. Although not tested directly in this study, these promotions may have the ability over time to help arrest young citizens’ spiral into disaffection by helping to reduce their complacency, thereby contributing to their heightened public affairs involvement and sense of self-efficacy.

This suggests that celebrities who appeal to youth can help motivate engagement in the civic affairs as their fans emulate attitudes and behaviors supportive of public affairs participation. The results suggest that this process encourages fans to become more aware of the personal relevance of issues, which motivates them to use the media to learn more, thereby further increasing efficacy.

All well and good, but the authors themselves admit that their findings are extremely limited by the scope and makeup of their sample, which consisted of only 305 youth all attending the same 4-year university:

The findings of this study are limited in that the sample was one of convenience and not generalizable to the national population of young adults.These promotions may have had a different effect in other geographic regions, as well as with other segments of young voters. In addition, all participants of the study were enrolled in a 4-year university, which could have implications for their political activity and interest in politics. Education consistently associates with voting behavior in older adults; therefore, college students may be more receptive to voting promotions than others in their age group. In addition, McDevitt and Chaffee (1998) indicated that top-down, GOTV promotions fail to motivate individuals of low socioeconomic status, thereby contributing to the ever widening knowledge gap. To gain a better understanding of mechanisms that can motivate young citizens, future research will require a study utilizing a more diverse sample. In addition, our study is limited by having occurred at a single point in the 2004 election process. Longitudinal data will be required to fully address the extent to which these promotions have lasting influence.

I would also add here that the study made no attempt to control for other factors such as how the celebrities were used. Some groups, like Music for America, Head Count, and Punk Voter, employed a field-based, peer to peer model in their celebrity partnerships. Others like Hip Hop Summit Action Network held massive, educational stadium concerts. MoveOn's Vote for Change primarily used older artists more appealing to Gen X or Boomers, and focused solely on stadium sized shows in swing states. Rock the Vote and Vote or Die ran massive PR campaigns. How a celebrity is utilized in a GOTV campaign could also determine their efficacy.

The study also does not take into account other factors influencing young voter turnout, including field and communications programs of campaigns and nonprofit groups like YDA, College Democrats, the Bus Fed, and The League, who are out there contacting voters on a daily basis.

Ultimately, this study provides some nice, tentative evidence that celebrities can do more than build a brand for an organization; they can actually help drive engagement. But far more work needs to be done before I'm comfortable seeing headlines like Celebrities can coax youth to vote, study shows, or reading interviews like this that play up the importance of celebrity endorsements without any solid data. On that note, it would be very interesting to see the study's authors team up with Music for Democracy to test the efficacy of their Be the Change tool.

In the Sunday Washington Post, David Broder - the Dean of political journalism and purveyor of Beltway conventional wisdom - put pen to paper and produced this utterly useless column about young voters: Breaking Through to Voters. I wish that my tongue-in-cheek title for this post were a joke, but sadly, this seems to be the conclusion reached by Broder, who is widely regarded as on of the most influential and knowledgeable pundits in the Beltway.

Within the space of 700 words, Broder manages to repeat the false meme that young voters are apathetic, contradictorily claim that young voters face barriers to participation (without really describing what those are or how to remove them), and claim that young voters "distrust government" without exploring what that distrust entails or how far it actually goes. The only redeeming factor of the column is Broder's (correct) conclusion: "Young Voters respond when treated seriously." It's ironic, because his own column fails to give young voters the credit and respect they deserve.

Addressing Broder's points one by one:

• Youth are not apathetic. Youth turnout is up in the past three elections. In Iowa in 2004, youth participation in the primaries quadrupled (pdf). Since 2003, literally dozens of nonprofit organizations have been started by young people for the sole purpose of engaging their peers in political action. These are trends, not blips and you will see them again soon.
• Young voters face barriers to participation. This is true, but beyond the few anecdotes provided, I would recommend you look into reports of voter suppression in college communities, the lack of voting booths on campuses, and harsh identification rules that disadvantage young voters. The Brennan Center has an excellent primer on the subject. I would also suggest that Broder look at potential solutions like Same Day Registration and Voting By Mail. Demos, a public policy groups is a wealth of information on potential solutions to these barriers and this would be an excellent issue for Broder to throw his weight behind.
• Young voters distrust government. Also true, in so far as government officials lie to us, and engage in corrupt practices or work to obfuscate the truth about their policies. That's what makes programs like The Daily Show and Colbert Report so popular. However we are also believers in the power of government to do good. This is one of the motivating factors behind our increasing rates of participation.

If David Broder wishes to write about young voters, I'm all for it. As the Dean of political journalism, he has more power than anyone to alter conventional wisdom with a few taps to his keyboard. And to be sure, conventional wisdom on the role of young voters in our political system still needs changing, as many campaign hacks and beltway pundits are still running around repeating the same tired ideas that Broder uses to open his Sunday column.

When the [dot]org Boom in progressive youth organizing occurred in '03 and '04, barely any pundits from inside the beltway reported on it. When youth turnout spiked hard in 2004, the pundits got the story wrong and said that "the youth vote never materialized for Kerry." Interestingly, that year saw more young voters at the polls (in sheer numbers) than voters over 65 - those old reliables, "seniors" (source: a power point presentation by the Harvard Institute of Politics). In 2006, young voters pushed a number of Democratic candidates over the edge (Tester, Webb, Courtney), and not only did our turnout rise, but it broke almost 2-1 in favor of Democrats, but still, many didn't believe.

Young voters are participating. In the absence of support from the parties or pundits, we started to reach out to each other more than 4 years ago. The only question is, are you going to continue to sit on the story, or will you, on behalf of the political press who got the story so wrong for son long, take the opportunity to give us the respect we deserve?