Politics Get Yawn from College Students, Even Inside the Beltway

When it comes to politics, today's college students show little interest this election year--even those living inside the beltway.

Those are the findings of a recent study at the , led by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (presented in a Huffington Post article by University of Maryland Journalism Professor Susan Moeller with graduate student Elia Powers).

The study, conducted last spring, asked 200 undergraduates in an entry-level Media Literacy course to blog every three hours for three days, before, during and after Super Tuesday, about how they consume political news. The students wrote in time-stamped diaries whenever they tuned into election coverage or new about campaign issues (e.g., health care or the economy) and when they discussed politics with others (if they did).

Among the findings: "Any political news students get is in a rush, often while they are in the midst of doing something else, and taken in very small doses," said Elia Powers, lead investigator for the Political Engagement study. For example, one student reported, "[I] quickly skimmed an article on my Yahoo! home page about Romney's chances of being the Republican nominee." Another wrote, "In between classes, I checked Google news."

The results of the Political Engagement study revealed how little time college students--even those inside the DC Beltway--spend following political news. The majority of students spent 30 minutes or fewer during and after the Super Tuesday study period.

"I briefly looked through the CNN website and BBC," wrote one student. "This morning when I woke up at 10 a.m., I had a text message from my Dad asking if I was going to be watching the news later to see the results of Super Tuesday. This was the only time so far today that I talked politics for a couple of minutes," said another.

Other study findings tracked how students get their political news. "We discovered that students most commonly get their political news through the computer, followed by cell phone and word of mouth. News aggregators were the most popular news platforms, largely because students said sites such as Yahoo! News can be read at a glance and send them news alerts -- both traits catering to their passive news consumption," said Powers. "Students appear willing to scan political news that they stumble upon, but they don't go out of their way to search it out."

Nearly half of students didn't use Twitter at all for political news, but many who did said they "relied heavily" on it. The results suggest that Twitter users view the platform as a "first-alert" system -- in much the same way as non-users tap into the Yahoo! and Google alert system.

Facebook, surprisingly, did not significantly factor into students' political news-gathering. Cable networks were relatively popular for breaking headlines on the night of Super Tuesday. Students also mentioned The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

But the most frequently mentioned sources of political news were content originators, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN -- in other words, much the same sources used by their parents.

While the vast majority of students said they were registered and plan to vote in the November election, they said they'd be more likely to pay attention to politics if they saw the direct relevance of the election to their lives. And most didn't make a significant connection. Several students said the slight attention they paid to politics was because of the assignment request to post their actions and thoughts every three hours.

Said one student: "To me it is pretty amazing that my fellow students do not seem interested in Super Tuesday, [but] I must admit if it wasn't for this class I am not sure how interested I would be either."