ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how young people's public orientation develops during a phase in life described as being critical for political socialization. It discusses the two key concepts of the study: public orientation and Internet spaces. The chapter focuses on the effects of space orientations on indicators of public orientation, displays the bivariate correlation between orientations toward different Internet spaces using cross-sectional data from the first panel wave. It also examines the development of three basic aspects of public orientation: values, interests and conversations. In sum up, the results presented as primarily emphasize the importance of orientations towards news space and space for social interaction. The chapter focuses not on specific mechanisms but on the main effects of young people's everyday involvement in different Internet spaces. It uses a lagged dependent variable model (LDV) to analyze how the changes in each outcome variable between successive waves. Political interest is among the most commonly used concepts in political socialization research.
