Break a Story: Examining the Effects of Instagram Stories from News Accounts on Adolescents' Political Learning

The increasing reliance on social media as a source of news, particularly among adolescents, raises important questions for democracy regarding the potential of these platforms to promote engagement with politics. This study sought to examine adolescents' affective (emotions, feelings), behavioural (actions and issue-specific interest), and cognitive (issue-specific knowledge) responses to political news on Instagram Stories. We conducted a field experiment among adolescents in the Netherlands (N = 149). We exposed respondents for seven days to political news items from fictive news organizations. Respondents received either (i) Stories with a link to a news item or (ii) Stories with a link to a news item and interactive feedback features (i.e., polls, quiz stickers, and emoji sliders). The results showed no significant differences in affective, behavioural, and cognitive responses between adolescents who have been exposed to Instagram Stories with high interactivity compared to those who received a link to a news item, indicating that interactivity had no effect on these responses. The results indicate that political interest increased for all respondents throughout the experiment-irrespective of the interactivity of the Instagram Stories. This possibly indicates that exposure to political news through Instagram Stories fosters engagement with politics and current events among adolescents.