| Political efficacy is an important criterion for individuals’participation in social and political life. The political efficacy of college students, the young generation of society, has a huge impact on future development of the entire society. Their political efficacy changes as college students receive different types of political information, since they are still in a value-developing stage. Politainment becomes a trend with the emerging of various media channels and the loss of young audience. How will college students’ political efficacy change in the new environment of political news? Current researches hold two opposite opinions for politainment, in favor or against. And is politainment an opportunity of success or a sign of decline for political news? To answer these questions, this study built a hypothetical model of the influence of politainment on college students’ efficacy, and discussed their factors and correlations.By literature survey, the study first determined different dimensions of politainment, emotion, political interest and political efficacy. Specifically, politainment is divided into texted-based interest, dramatic narrative, and multimedia; Emotion includes hedonic and eudaimonic; Political interest contains individuals’ interest in political events, self-estimate of the political interest level, and the frequency of discussing politics in real life; Political efficacy is divided into internal political efficacy and external political efficacy. In this way, the study established a model to research the effect of politainment, hedonic, eudaimonic and political interest on internal and external political efficacy.Based on the above, the study did a survey with 398 final effective samples. The study analyzed the survey data using SPSS 17.0 and then tested the hypothesis and the model. The result shows (1) Politainment has a positive effect on hedonic and eudaimonic; (2) There is a positive correlation between hedonic and political interest while eudaimonic has no obvious impact on political interest; (3) Political interest has a positive effect on internal political interest, but no apparent correlation with external political interest. Then the study made modifications based on above results.The study implies a much less impact of politainment on hedonic than that on eudaimonic, although both the impacts are positive. As for the influence for political efficacy, there are vast differences between individuals’ internal and external political efficacy. Therefore, the study argues that politainment shouldn’t be stopped immediately. With proper guidance and regulation, it may improve the current political efficacy of college students. However, the effect is limited, which is most evident for external political efficacy that reflects individuals’ attitudes towards government. So far, politainment cannot become an effective way to improve the political efficacy of college students. But its future prospects remain to be seen and tested by academics as social media involves with politainment more and more, either willingly or unwillingly. |
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