Medias makt : Hur "media salience" påverkade valdeltagandet i Sverige under riksdagsvalet 2018

Sammanfattning: The political interest of an individual has always been a factor in theindividual’s decision to vote in an election or not. But is it only theindividuals own interest that decides if they participate in the election, or arethey affected by what media they consume and how the media frames theissues? The dominant explanation for if individuals decide to participate inelections are rooted in a couple of different factors, their socioeconomicalsituation, and their cultural background, but this essay focuses on how mediaaffects individuals voting behaviour. Other studies have looked at how mediaexposure affects individuals’ participation. They found that media exposurehas a positive effect on the individual’s likelihood of participating ininstitutional political situations. This essay uses data from SOM-institute toanalyse how media consumption affects the individual’s likelihood toparticipate in the national election. The results show that media consumptioninfluences the individuals decision to vote however, the extent of mediaconsumed does not matter for participation as expected as it also could havea negative effect on participation. The other part of the result is that thesource of the media is not important to if it increases the individuals’ interestin politics. This indicates that for the individual the extent of mediaconsumed and from what source, does not have a major effect on their votingbehaviour.