Partisanship, News Use, and Political Attitudes in Ghana: An Application of the Communication Mediation Model

Abstract

Past communication mediation studies have shown positive relationships between news uses and citizens’ political attitudes, but understanding the mechanisms underlying the relationship is limited because they often do not take into account the diverse affordances of the media uses and the environment it triggers effects. Using a national Afrobarometer survey (N = 2,400) in Ghana, the present study examined the relationship between news uses and a variety of citizens’ political attitudes and how such relationships are affected by partisanship. Based on a series of regression analysis, findings showed that online news uses consistently predicted all levels of citizens’ political attitudes while traditional news uses were only associated with citizens’ levels of presidential trust and confidence. When partisan differences were further examined, results showed that only online media uses by ruling party members exhibited direct effects on trust in president and democratic satisfaction. However, in all, traditional media news uses based on ruling party support and no party members exhibited indirect effects on political attitudes. Oppositional party members showed no effect.