Televisie en de erosie van sociaal kapitaal. De invloed van televisietijd, programma-inhoud en zendervoorkeur

Samenvatting

Television and the erosion of social capital: The influence of time, programs and stations. In the debate on the alleged erosion of social cohesion in Western societies, several authors stress the negative role of television. Others have argued that some programs like news and current affairs programs could strengthen civic engagement and political participation. In this paper, we use cross-sectional survey data to disentangle the possible causal mechanisms between television and social capital indicators. We do not find evidence for a time replacement effect on the individual level, but we do find robust relations between television and attitudinal components of social capital. While news programs are positively related with some of these attitudes, we find consistent negative relations with the time spent on television and with a preference for entertainment programs and commercial stations. This could imply that especially commercial stations cultivate a less civic-minded value pattern among their viewers. The analysis demonstrates that television effects are dependent not only on the time people spend in front of their television sets, but also on the kind of programs they watch and (at least in countries with a public broadcasting system) on the station they tune in to.