Introduction

Abstract

With young voters reporting lower levels of political knowledge and information than older voters, and with young citizens often attributing their abstention from voting to their lack of political knowledge, this study focuses on the role that specific campaign messages play in enhancing young voters' political information. We first advance a theory of political information efficacy, positing that different levels of information processing occur from different sources of political information. Our findings reveal that specific types of political messages affect young and older citizens' political information efficacy differently and that political information efficacy plays a significant role in voting or nonvoting for young citizens.