Spanish Language Media Consumption and Latino Civic Engagement

Abstract

Spanish language media is linked to multiple forms of Latino political mobilization, including protest, naturalization, and voting. However, recent research associates geographic access to Spanish language broadcasts with significantly lower rates of Latino voter participation. We engage this controversy by exploring whether relative consumption of Spanish and English language media shapes rates of civic and voter participation among Latinos using data from the 2016 Cooperative Multiracial Postelection Survey and our own 2021 survey.1Next, we test the hypothesis that Spanish language media acts through politicized identities to shape Latino civic engagement, as some theorize. We find strong association between Spanish language media consumption and politicized identities among Latinos but no evidence that these identities constitute a conduit through which Spanish language media mobilizes. Instead, our results show that the mobilizing effect of Spanish language media consumption on civic engagement is direct and independent of politicized identity. These findings indicate a need to explore whether Spanish language media consumption influences Latino participation through differences with English language media in terms of content and/or fragmentation that better educate Latinos to participate, reduce political alienation, or accomplish both.