The Impact of Social Media on Youth Political Socialization and Voting Behaviour: A Study of Haryana

Abstract

Social media is changing the context, the way young citizens have been learning about politics, forming attitudes towards political issues and then expressing those attitudes through voting. The paper focuses on the effect of social media on youth political socialization and voting behaviour in the State of Haryana, which has one of the youngest electorates in India and has seen a tremendous growth in internet penetration in the last decade. The paper builds on existing theories of political socialisation in the digital age and on the ongoing debate in the literature about the “mobilising” or “demobilising” effects of internet use, and charts the evolution of the agents of political socialisation from family- and school-based channels to peer-led, platform-based digital socialisation environments dominated by WhatsApp, YouTube and Instagram. It analyses the extent of association between social media exposure and political awareness, social media based discussion, voting behavior among young voters in Indian context, as well as charts out the negative impact of misinformation and coordinated misinformation that follows social media exposure. The paper also explores the ongoing digital divide between urban and rural areas in Haryana, against the backdrop of Norris's understanding of the "democratic divide" and the skill-based approach proposed. The study findings suggest that social media is a potent but two-sided tool of political socialization in Haryana, both having positive impacts – it has noticeably increased the political awareness level and political opportunity of the youth, but it has also created new vulnerabilities in its unregulated architecture and uneven availability, which demand ongoing investment in digital literacy, inclusiveness in infrastructure and platforms' accountability.