Exploring the relationship between media literacy, online interaction, and civic engagement

Abstract Internet and media use can provide accessible, diverse, and timely opportunities for civic engagement. However, to use media and the internet to interact and collaborate, citizens need to be equipped with particular skills and knowledge. This study draws on a national survey of Australian adults (N = 3,510) to examine how media abilities and online interaction activities are related to their civic engagement. The findings suggest that the more active people are online, interacting with content or other people, the more likely they are to be engaged in civic activities. The data also shows that those with a higher level of confidence in their media abilities are more likely to engage in more civic activities. A broader understanding of the multidimensional characteristics of media literacy is needed to consider the role online interaction activities and media literacy abilities play in contributing to civic engagement. At the same time, the research suggests that equipping citizens with media literacy as well as enabling them to use the interactive functions of digital media can increase citizens’ civic engagement.


Introduction
Contemporary digital media environments are multifaceted and full participation requires multidimensional skillsets and knowledge including technical, information, creative, and participatory abilities (Hobbs 2010;Jenkins et al. 2009;Mihailidis 2018).Accordingly, the U.S. National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE n.d.) emphasizes critical thinking, the ability to create media content, and the ability to use media to achieve desired outcomes as core media literacy 1 competencies.Likewise, The Australian Media Literacy Alliance (AMLA n.d.) emphasizes that the ability to engage with media and media technology is more important than ever before for full participation in society.
Media literacy education has developed across many countries since the 1920s when it focused on films.It is primarily taught as a peripheral area within mainstream schooling, typically treated as an add-on to the core curriculum or as an elective subject in secondary schools (Notley and Dezuanni 2019).In Australia, educators have been influenced by the British-led "key concepts" approach (Buckingham 2019), which uses concepts like media languages, representations, technologies, audiences, and institutions to organize and normalize media knowledge (Dezuanni 2015).These concepts reference complex sets of understandings that have been developed within media and cultural studies to analyze and understand the role media play in society.
In 2012, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority (ACARA) included media literacy as a mandatory learning objective for all primary school students and provided a curriculum pathway for students in years 7 to 10 (Dezuanni 2015).This focus on media literacy was then strengthened in the revised 2023 Australian English Curriculum and the Media Arts Curriculum, following a recommendation from a Federal Government inquiry into Digital Platforms that ACARA review how media literacy is covered (ACCC 2019).However, media literacy education initiatives created specifically for adults remain rare at the time of writing, and can be considered an emerging area of interest for Australian public institutions and policymakers.This interest has at least in part been prompted by concerns about online mis-and disinformation (Dezuanni, Notley, and Di Martino 2021;Notley et al. 2021).
A lack of adult media literacy opportunities is an issue since the ability to critically use media and media technology (Mihailidis 2018) is becoming increasingly essential for meaningfully engagement in modern civic life.Yet too little is known about the relationship between how people engage online and their level of civic engagement.
Civic engagement refers to the ways for "citizens to participate in social and public issues" (Haro-de-Rosario, Sáez-Martín, and del Carmen Caba-Pérez 2018, 31).It has also been described as citizens' voluntary efforts to improve the quality of a community through non-electoral means (Putnam 2000).Civic engagement can include a variety of forms of political and civic participation, as well as disengagement (Ekman and Amnå 2012).
In digital environments, there are extensive opportunities to participate in groups and communities, as the internet provides a communication infrastructure that enables direct engagement with other people, organizations, and media.The more people engage with media, and in particular with news, the more likely they are to participate in civic duties, that is, participate in social and public issues (Shah et al. 2005).Social uses of the internet can also be conducive to participatory behavior that includes civic activities (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2007).These studies indicate a link between some kinds of online activities and civic engagement.
Through a national survey of adult Australians, this study aims to extend this research to examine how particular kinds of media and online activities are related to people's civic engagement, while also considering the role media literacy plays.Since boundaries between informational, entertainment, and social content and activities are collapsing in the digital age, we propose a multidimensional concept of media literacy to be used when considering media use, online interactions, and skills that are related to these activities rather than focusing solely on news and information practices.

Multidimensional concept
People benefit from acquiring media literacy in the digital age, partly because it enables them to discern relevant information and use it to productively participate in society.In the digital environment, the ability to identify authentic information has become more difficult due to the sheer volume of information.Newton (2019) notes that contemporary literacies are attempting to address three underlying issues: information abundance in the online environment; the reality that citizens are now creators as well as consumers of information; and greater knowledge and efforts required to manage the increased volume of information.
In this article we broadly define media literacy as the ability to critically engage with media and media technology (Notley et al. 2021).We recognize that media literacy is a complex and multidimensional concept.There are many other similar terms in use and these have been applied to a range of different media and social contexts.For instance, the term "new media literacy" has been used to emphasize the participatory affordances of digital media (Tugtekin and Koc 2020), whereas "media literacy" and "information literacy" center on the users' ability of accessing and understanding media and information as a tool (Livingstone, Van Couvering, and Thumim 2005).
We use an inclusive definition of media literacy that includes similar and related literacies such as news literacy, new media literacy, digital literacy, and information literacy.It can also encompass emerging concepts such as data literacy or algorithmic literacy (Swart 2023).
A person's media literacy is influenced by the design of technologies, as well as by corporate and institutional decisions.Therefore, citizens' media literacy cannot be determined in isolation from technological, social, economic, and political contexts.Media literacy refers not only to knowledge about media structures and content but also knowing the democratic implications of news and media engagement and the role that citizens play in the circulation and dissemination of information (Mihailidis and Viotty 2017).Livingstone, Van Couvering, and Thumim (2005) note that media literacy serves three key purposes by contributing to (1) democracy, participation, and active citizenship; (2) the knowledge economy, competitiveness, and choice; and (3) lifelong learning, cultural expression, and fulfillment.Mihailidis (2018) suggests that media literacies need to prioritize "civic intentionality" and he identifies five constructs in support of this: agency, caring, critical consciousness, persistence, and emancipation.They highlight the need for capacities to deconstruct and critically engage with media texts and to "understand their impact on our ability to co-exist in communities, and leverage media to better support a common good" (159).This is in line with our understanding of what it means to "critically engage" with media.
In online environments, it is difficult to separate informational uses from other uses of content, including entertainment.Unlike traditional media where audiences are provided with scheduled content or a defined set of articles, digital media provides a gateway to a variety of information and content on demand.Audiences engage in multiple tasks of finding, locating, and retrieving the content.Due to this broad range of activities, multiple skillsets, and knowledge are needed including technical, cognitive, and analytical abilities.
Digital media and the internet require a variety of skills ranging from basic operational abilities to higher level strategic skills (Buckingham 2015;Livingstone, Van Couvering, and Thumim 2005;Van Deursen and Van Dijk 2010).This includes a broader capacity to "participate in a society that uses digital communication technology in workplaces, government, education, cultural domain, civic spaces, home, and leisure spheres" (Hoechmann and DeWaard 2015, 4).Selber ( 2004) captures this multidimensional nature into three distinct but interrelated literacies: functional, critical, and rhetorical.He acknowledges that artifacts embody design decisions, and their uses are influenced by sociopolitical contexts.
In digital environments, multi-skilled and multi-modal literacies are required for critical engagement with media (Penman and Turnbull 2007).Therefore, when we study the relationship between media literacy and civic activities, it is important to include a broad set of skills from the operational, to culturally and linguistically specific knowledge and skills, to critical skills which include the capacity for textual analysis as well as knowledge of institutional and technological contexts.

Online interaction and participation
Being equipped with media literacy and using digital media are interrelated but different capacities.The ways in which people engage with the internet influence the outcomes of their usage.That is why, even though the internet has opened up opportunities to engage with media in meaningful ways that enhance participation in society, not all internet users do this, and some do so more than others.
There are two distinct propositions about how the internet and digital technologies have influenced the public's participation in society.Early studies of internet participation and civic engagement noted that the internet increases public awareness of current affairs and provides citizens with the impetus to be more active in their engagement with society (Norris 2001).More recent research has suggested that the internet has opened up opportunities for civic discourse beyond conventional national media, through "digitally networked social interconnectivity" (Blumler and Coleman 2021, 10).Conversely however, other researchers claim the internet may have contributed to reduced offline interactions fragmented society or has led to less attentive interactions and this has arguably contributed to a more fragmented society (Putnam 2000;Turkle 2017).Nelson, Lewis, and Lei (2017) found that digital civic engagement fills the gap left by a decrease in traditional forms of political participation.They argue that the digital space brings opportunities to participate in different ways and we need to expand our notions of participation by incorporating a range of online activities.Online activities encourage rather than replace traditional civic engagement activities (Moy et al. 2005).
Some studies focus on the types of activities to explain the differential levels of participation.Rather than how much time people spend online, it is the type of activities they engage in that have an impact on their offline lives (De Vreese 2007).There are potentially "capital-enhancing" activities online that result in more beneficial outcomes (Pearce and Rice 2017) and this is a learned skill (van Deursen and Helsper 2018).
Some online activities are associated with political participation and civic engagement more than others.Informational uses of the media are linked to participatory behavior.In their study of young people, Quintelier and Vissers (2008) found that those who send political e-mails, follow news online, or participate in online discussions are more likely to participate politically.They found that other activities such as email, looking at websites, and even online shopping also increased levels of political participation.All of these activities have an interactive nature.
More recently, Erhardt and Freitag (2021) have developed a framework to analyze how online activities can be conducive to civic engagement.By mapping the purpose of internet use from entertainment to information as well as the degree of social connectedness, they conclude that activities that are social in nature or that are related to information seeking are more likely to increase civic engagement activities.
Expressive uses of the internet (e.g., writing blog posts and comments) seem to increase political participation, whereas mere consumption does not (Gil de Zúñiga et al. 2013).This is because the effects of interactions occur when the user engages with the message rather than just consuming them.Using media or observing conversation does not have the same impact as composing and sharing the one's own perspective (Pingree 2007).It is the interaction with content or other users that affects the users' level of participation, rather than media usage itself.Sang et al. (2020) found that those who engage in online interaction with news content are different from those who do not engage with news.While this study was in the context of online interaction with news, the active nature of interactive activities can be applied to other online content.
Similarly, online information seeking and interactive civic messaging influence civic engagement, and these factors were stronger predictors of civic engagement compared to traditional print and broadcast media and face-to-face communication (Lee, Shah, and McLeod 2013;Kwak et al. 2004).The use of social media can also result in offline political participation (Bode et al. 2014).
When online, audiences are no longer passive users of media but are increasingly becoming creators and distributors in the news ecosystem (Lewis, Holton, and Coddington 2014).They can actively shape social spaces online, in ways that were not possible in a pre-digital era (Warner 2002).Previous studies indicate that certain online activities are more conducive to having conversations and interacting with others.The types of online activities people engage in has a direct relationship with these outcomes.It is more likely that interactive online activities are related to participation and civic engagement.

Media use and participation
People who make use of local media, interact with other people in the community, and are active in participating in organizations are more likely to feel connected to the community and participate in civic activities (Nah and Yamamoto 2017).These communication infrastructures-media, organizations, and interpersonal networks-open the potential to be connected to "community storytelling networks."Those who are connected with communities are more likely to be informed about what is happening in their communities and pay attention to issues that affect them.Those who are connected with others are also more likely to have access to information and resources to help them to understand and address community problems (Kim and Kim 2021).
How and why people use media also seems more important to civic participation outcomes than the volume of media they use.Research on media use and participatory behavior mainly focuses on informational motives.Those who use media for information seeking (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, and Valenzuela 2012; Himelboim et al. 2012;Shah, McLeod, and Yoon 2001) have higher social or interpersonal trust.Informational uses of media have an impact on trust, which is related to a stronger community connection.
The use of informational media does not directly influence citizen action but rather increases political discussions which, in turn, influences action (McLeod and Sotirovic 2001).News consumption and political discussions channel demographic, dispositional, and contextual influences on civic and political participation (Shah et al. 2005(Shah et al. , 2007)).Here, news consumption and political discussions can occur both online and offline.The core thesis is that the impact of media use on civic participation is indirect, mediated through political discussions.
How communication plays a role in mediating participation is well explained by communication mediation models.Media use engenders the cognitive outcomes, which determine participatory behaviors (Cho et al. 2009;Shah et al. 2007).Existing orientations, such as demographics or civic interest, influence media use and the subsequent political discussions.These activities result in increased political knowledge, trust, and efficacy-cognitive outcomes, which in turn, function as mediators that lead to behavioral responses such as civic participation (McLeod, Scheufele, and Moy 1999;Shah et al. 2007).Having discussions with community members can result in increased civic engagement and political participation (see Cho et al. 2009;Reichert and Print 2017).The communication mediation model centers on the notion that people who are exposed to information (via news media) have the basic ingredients to engage in political and social discussions (Eveland 2002;Mutz 2001).Acquiring information does not always lead to action.Participation occurs when the information is mediated by discussions about those issues, which Hardy and Scheufele (2005) describe as the "differential gains model." Discussions and conversations are critical to civic engagement is because it is through political discussions that people become aware of collective problems and ways to become involved in addressing them (McLeod, Scheufele, and Moy 1999).Recent studies have included the social and affective functions of media to be important factors influencing civic behavior as well (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2007;Kwon, Lee, and Yang 2021;Shah et al. 2017).

Research questions
Drawing from previous studies, we can conclude that informational media use, online interaction activities, and media literacy are all related to civic engagement.In this study, we investigate these relationships with an inclusive approach.In online environments, the boundaries between information, entertainment, and social content are blurry and hard to differentiate.To explore these relationships, we posed the following research questions: RQ1: What is the relationship between different types of media use and civic engagement?RQ2: What is the relationship between online interaction and civic engagement?RQ3: What is the relationship between media literacy and civic engagement?

Methodology
We conducted a national online survey of Australian adults (N = 3,510) in November and December 2020.The survey was conducted online and administered by a large Australian panel-based survey provider.The survey sample was selected to be representative of the Australian population by using demographic quotas set according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016) Census data for age, gender, state and territories, and education level.The final dataset of responses was weighted to ensure the sample was reflective of these four demographic characteristics in the population.A summary of respondents is provided in Table 1.
The project was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at the authors' institutions.

Dependent variable
Based on previous measures of civic engagement (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, and Valenzuela 2012; Nah and Yamamoto 2017), we captured a range of civic and political activities.We gave a list of seven activities and asked respondents whether they had engaged in any of them in the past 12 months.Those who did not engage in any of the listed activities were coded as '0′.We combined responses into an additive index ranging from 0 to 7. The activities we included were "followed a politician or political party on social media;" "commented about a political or social issue online;" "talked to other people about politics or community issues;" "kept up to date about local or national politics;" "participated or attended social functions for organizations or groups that I belong to (i.e., church, volunteer group, book club etc.);" "participated in a petition"; or "attended a public meeting, hearing, political rally, protest, or march."We did not differentiate online and offline activities.The mean score of the variable was 1.5 and SD 1.7.Some 39% of the respondents did not engage in any of the listed activities.

Media literacy
We used the measure "confidence in media abilities" as a proxy for media literacy.Rather than using self-report measures of media literacy, which can lead people to inflate the ability (Fisher 1993), we asked if respondents would be confident in helping others to perform a series of tasks, so that respondents would think more carefully about their existing ability rather than assume they might be able to work it out.Several studies show that indirect questioning about people's abilities reduces social desirability bias when compared with self-report questions (Fisher 1993;Jang and Irwin 2021;Oral 2020).The use of a more indirect question therefore sought to reduce social desirability bias (Fisher 1993) and corresponds with the Norwegian Media Authority's approach to measuring abilities (Medietilsynet 2019).The 12 items include all four dimensions of new media literacy identified by Chen, Wu, and Wang (2011) and tested by Tugtekin and Koc (2020) that range from consuming to prosuming (producing and consuming) media literacy, and from functional to critical media literacy.Responses were recorded using a five-point scale of reported confidence (1 = Not confident at all; 5 = Extremely confident).The sum confidence score across all 12 questions was used as the variable.Cronbach's alpha was .932indicating a high reliability score of the construct.

Online interaction
To measure a person's level of participation in interactive activities online, we gave a list of 9 activities and asked respondents to check if they had engaged in any of them in the past month.The list of activities were "Posted something on social media;" "Liked/ rated/commented on something on social media"; "Shared other people's content online;" "Created a group on social media;" "Made a video and shared online;" "Made a meme or gif and shared online;" "Made/built/modified a website, blog, vlog (video blog);" "Shared my own music online or my edit of other people's music (e.g., by mixing tracks)"; "Live streamed video (e.g., on Facebook Live, YouTube Live, 'Live' on Instagram Stories)."The additive sum of the number of activities was used as a variable indicating how interactive one is online.This ranged from 0 to 9, with a mean score of 2 and SD 1.7.Twenty-seven percent of the respondents did not engage in any of these activities.Rather than confining online interaction related to news and information, we broadened this concept to be inclusive of all activities.

Media use
Media use, particularly informational media use, is known to have a relationship with civic engagement.
We measured the frequency of media use by asking respondents how they typically used newspapers, television, online news, and streaming services in the past 12 months.We modified Pew Internet's measure of media use by giving respondents a choice among 10 options: more than 10 times a day, between 6 and 10 times a day, between 2 and 5 times a day, once a day, 4-6 days a week, 2-3 days a week, once a week, once a month, a few times a year and never.We converted this into an interval variable ranging from 0 to 9 and reversed the coding.The mean scores and SDs of each media were newspaper (M = 1.9, SD = 2), TV (M = 5.4,SD = 2.1), online news (M = 4, SD = 2.7), and streaming services (M = 3.5, SD = 2.7).

Social media use
Similar to the media consumption question, we asked respondents how often they used social media platforms by giving them of list of 16 options (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitch, Twitter, Viber, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and "other").To only include active users, we only measured the frequency among those who use a platform at least once a week.The frequency measures ranged from more than 10 times a day, between 6 and 10 times a day, between 2 and 5 times a day, once a day, 2-3 days a week, 4-6 days a week, once a week and did not use in the past week.We converted this into an interval variable and reverse coded the variables, ranging from 0 to 7. We used the additive sum of the scores for all of the platforms.The scores ranged from 0 to 91, with a mean score of 16 and SD of 12.7.Among the respondents 8.9% said they did not use any of the platforms in the past week.

Control variables
Gender (male = 1), age (U40 = 1) and education (bachelor's and above = 1) dummy variables were included in the regression models as control variables.To examine the interaction between social media use and age, we included an interaction term (age dummy × social media heavy vs. light users) in the regression analysis.Heavy social media users were defined as those who scored above 20 in the social media use variable.One third (33%) of the respondents were categorized as heavy social media users.

Findings
In order to examine the relationship between media literacy, online interaction, media use and civic engagement, we conducted a hierarchical regression analysis (Table 2).First the demographic variables were entered into the regression model (Model 1).The adjusted R 2 is 0.054, which shows a weak explanatory power of the demographic variables.The model, however, is significant (F = 49.014,p < 0.001).Gender, education, age variables are all significant.Those with high education, men, and those aged 40 and above engage in a greater number of civic activities.We introduced an interaction term between age and social media use, to see if heavy uses of social media platforms have a differential impact on civic engagement based on age.The interaction term was significant and positive.
In the next step, media use variables were entered into the model (Model 2).The regression model is significant (F = 62.008, p < 0.001), with an adjusted R 2 of 0.139 (+0.085), indicating the significance of media use variables in predicting civic engagement.When we examine the impact of different types of media, the number of social media platforms variable had the strongest relationship to civic engagement (β = 0.444, p < 0.001), followed by online news use (β = 0.210, p < 0.001).Newspaper use (β = 040, p < 0.05) and streaming media use (β = 0.038, p < 0.01) are both significant but with weaker associations with civic engagement.TV use had no relationship.These findings confirm the role of media use in civic engagement, particularly the uses of online informational media.In the second model, we found that that impact of being heavy social media platforms users is smaller among younger people (U40) than it is on older people, when controlling for media use variables.
Online interaction variable was entered into the model in the third step (Model 3).The regression model is significant (F = 96.722,p < 0.001), with an adjusted R square of 0.219 (+0.081).Online interaction increased the explained variance, showing that the more interactive activities people engage in online, the higher their civic engagement.Online interaction variable had the highest coefficient (β = 0.360, p < 0.001) in this model.The next strongest predictors were online news (β = 0.195, p < 0.001) and newspaper readership (β = 0.036, p < 0.01).TV use was negative and significant (β = −0.029,p < 0.05), while streaming media is not significant.When we control for online interaction, higher use of TV has a negative relationship with civic engagement and streaming media does not have any relationship with civic engagement.This means that online interaction mediates the relationship between TV and streaming media use, and civic engagement.The use of social media platforms still had a positive and significant relationship with civic engagement but the strength of the relationship is much weaker.This is possibly because those who use more social media platforms are also more likely to engage in more online interaction activities.There were no changes in the relationship between the demographic variables and civic engagement in this model.
In the final model, media literacy was entered as an independent variable (Model 4).The regression model is significant (F = 89.352,p < 0.001), with an adjusted R 2 of 0.222 (+0.003).Including media literacy improved the explanatory power of the regression and the variable is significantly and positively (β = 0.064, p < 0.001) related to civic engagement.Those with high confidence in their media abilities are more likely to engage in civic participation.Similar to the third model, online news use, social media platform use, newspaper readership, and online interaction are all positively related to civic engagement.TV has a negative relationship with civic engagement and streaming media use has no relationship.Education level was a significant factor predicting the level of civic engagement.Those with a high level of education are more likely to engage in civic activities.This confirms previous research on the positive relationship between education and media literacy (van Laar et al. 2019;Notley et al. 2021).Gender was not a significant factor.
The strongest predictor of civic engagement is the number of online interaction activities that the user engaged in (β = 0.348, p < 0.001).Those engaged in more online interaction activities such as sharing or posting content online are more likely to engage in civic activities as well.The next important factor was the consumption of online news (β = 0.188, p < 0.001).Those frequently accessing online news are also more likely to engage in civic activities.Watching TV was negatively related to civic activities consistent with the previous studies (Rothenbuhler et al. 1996;   , 2021).The results confirm that information uses of media (online news, newspapers) have a positive impact on civic engagement, whereas entertainment media (streaming, TV) do not.In all four models, low VIF scores indicate that there are no issues of multi-collinearity among the independent variables.
To account for the somewhat inconsistent result regarding age and social media use, we grouped respondents into "under 40 years of age" (U40) and "40 years of age or older" (40+) and compared the different effects of social media use on civic engagement.The use of social media was recoded into heavy and light users.Figure 1 shows that those who are older and are active social media users have a much higher level of civic engagement, whereas social media use has less of an impact on younger people's level of civic engagement.This explains the negative coefficient of the interaction term in the above regressions (Models 2 and 3).

Discussion and conclusion
In contemporary media environments, people need multidimensional media literacy skills to partcipate fully in society.We explored the relationship between media literacy, online interaction, and civic engagement.We used inclusive measures of media literacy and online interaction to reflect the multi-skilled, multi-modal nature of online activities, and the literacies needed (Penman and Turnbull 2007) in the digital environment and not just information-related activities and abilities.When measuring civic engagement, we included both online and offline activities to examine the impact of online interaction and skills on a person's engagement in society that could be conducted either online or offline.
The first research question examined the effects of different types of media use on civic engagement.The results reinforce the importance of informational media use in shaping a person's civic engagement which confirms findings from other studies.Online news consumption had a strong and positive relationship to civic engagement, whilst TV consumption had a negative relationship.Social media use also had a positive relationship with civic engagement but with different impacts based on age; using social media had a greater impact on older people.This is possibly because younger generations tend to use social media as part of their daily media habits and are used for a variety of daily practices, that may not necessarily be related to civic participation.While there are many ways that many young people can connect to others and express themselves online, including through social media, blogs, and other means, the link with civic engagement may depend on the extent to which they use such tools to forge a bridge between media production and civic engagement (Kahne, Lee and Feezell 2012).While we did not measure this aspect of social media use, many studies indicate that people incidentally encounter news while on social media and this kind of exposure may have differential impacts on different groups of people.People pay differential attention to what they are exposed to based on their predispositions create a wider gap in their knowledge and engagement.For example, those interested in news are more likely to engage with incidental news (Kümpel 2019;Möller et al. 2020;Stromback, Djerf-Pierre, and Shehata 2013).This may have occurred among older generations and this may account for why older generation's level of social media use had a greater correlation with civic participation.We also found that online news use has a significant relationship Notes: *civic engagement: "40+" and "Light Sm users" n = 1,162 (m = 1.42)/"40+" and "heavy Sm users" n = 101 (m = 2.96)/"U40" and "Light Sm users" n = 1195 (m = 1.17)/"U40" and "heavy Sm users" n = 1026 (m = 1.88).
with civic engagement, while using print newspapers had a weaker correlation.This suggests that role of print newspapers in civic engagement is becoming less important, as there are now alternative and more common ways to get the equivalent news and information.Streaming services did not have any relationship, and TV had a negative relationship, which indicates that civic engagement is largely related to news and information activities, rather than media use more broadly.This is consistent with existing theories suggesting those exposed to information through news and informational media have the basic ingredients to engage in political and social discussions (Gil de Zúñiga et al. 2013), which in turn can increase their civic activities.
The second research question examined whether engaging in online interaction leads to higher levels of civic engagement.The findings suggest that the most significant factor that influences an individual's civic engagement is the level of engagement in online interaction activities.The more active people are online, interacting with content or other people, the more likely they are to be engaged in civic activities.This finding is consistent with existing studies (e.g., Mesch and Talmud 2010).The types of online interaction we measured in this study are all related to having an audience to share content.In other studies, these abilities have been explained with the concept of "social media literacy," which is the ability to understand social media features and to use these participate in interactive communication activities (Manca, Bocconi, and Gleason 2021;Schreurs and Vandenbosch 2021).It is not surprising that this ability and practice of expressing oneself is strongly related to civic engagement.The results are consistent with previous research that found online activities can encourage civic engagement activities (Moy et al. 2005), particularly those related to information uses (Quintelier and Vissers 2008).
The third research question sought to explore the relationship between media literacy and civic engagement.The data confirm a positive relationship between media literacy and civic engagement; those with high confidence in their media abilities are more likely to engage in more civic activities.The measure of media literacy in this study reflects a broad range of abilities and not just related to information uses.The data reveal that that the relationship between media practices and civic engagement is not exclusive to news and informational uses and skills but is broader than that.As Picone et al. (2015) suggested in an earlier study, the concept of audience activity needs to be expanded to keep pace with the rapidly changing practices of digital media users.The results confirm that multi-skilled, multi-modal literacies are required for critical engagement with media (Penman and Turnbull 2007) that supports civic participation (Mihalidis 2018).
However, we also note that the relationship between media literacy and civic engagement was weak (β = 0.064, p < 0.001) and much weaker than the link between online activities and media literacy (β = 0.360, <0.001), while both are statistically significant.There are many ways to understand this difference.First, we only measured media literacy in an online environment, while we measured a broader construct of civic engagement incorporating both online and offline activities.Future studies could include offline forms of media literacy.Second, this may mean that the actual activities people engage in online is perhaps more important for their civic engagement.For example, those who do have high media literacy but are not actively engaged online may have choosen not to participate in civic activities even though they have the skills.These questions are left to be explored in future studies.
This study is not without limits.While we found a relationship between various social media activities and civic engagement, we did not specifically measure the different uses of social media.Instead, we include general social media use and the volume of use.Social media users vary in how they use the platforms and further research is needed to examine how divergent uses of social media may have a differential impact on civic engagement and participation.
We also acknowledge that there is a limitation in measuring media literacy by asking respondents about their confidence level to help others in various activities.While this was an attempt to reduce the bias that often occurs in self-reporting abilities, this method has not been empirically tested in in the context of media literacy and in comparison with media literacy self-assessments.

Note
1. Media literacy is "the knowledge, skills and competencies that are required in order to use and interpret media" (Buckingham 2003, 36).

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Interaction between age and social media use.

Table 1 .
Summary of respondents.