Political Socialization

We are all individually different, shaped by our personal experiences and our different outlooks on life. When it comes to politics, it isn’t any different, we all have opposing and favoring views with each other and a specific reasoning for it. Everyone’s views on politics comes from a lifelong process called political socialization, where our values, beliefs and attachments to politics are passed from generation to generation (Barbour and Wright 2017. p.365). As complicated as it may sound it is a process that goes on without you even noticing and that will never stop since views are likely to change throughout one’s lifetime. As a 19-year-old Cuban-American woman, I can recall early moments in my childhood where my father’s love for politics

Again, I saw my political party choice changing from Libertarian to No Party Affiliation because I saw my views shift with the tone of the election. The media played a large role in this evolution, and I felt myself following all the narratives the media was trying to push and the agenda they had for both candidates. Mass media is considered an extremely influential agent when it comes to political socialization, that affects the political behaviors of people. According to Hanna Adoni, “the mass media serves as socializing agents by providing direct linkage to media and contents which are essential for the development of political values” (Adoni 1978.p. 84). This reinforces the idea of media playing a huge role in political socialization and how the media can sway people to follow their

I assumed I was finally going to be able to vote for my first election, an exciting moment for me, since I just turned 18 on May 2016 and sent in my citizenship application to USCIS. Unfortunately, my case was at a deadlock for citizenship and instead of the estimated 3-6 months that was approximated for me to become a citizen and make it just in time for the elections, it ended up taking a year and a half. I was told a higher than average amount of people applied for citizenship and that there would be a major delay in my case, which devastated me since I had hoped to finally exercise the right to vote in such a historic and powerful election in this country. This affected my once conservative thinking of immigration, since I’m a person that came into this country at just 9 months old and identify as American, yet I was not eligible to vote since I was only a legal permanent resident and not a citizen. After this process I began to look at the immigration process in a different light, especially since I was fortunate enough to enter the country legally yet children that came here through different means without a choice are treated in a completely different light and face many more obstacles than the ones I had to of just filling out a form and taking a test on basic civics learned in