This study explores the concept of political capital and its relationship with various forms of media use. The results show that political capital is a complex concept that includes five basic dimensions: political networking, political interests, political knowledge, political trust, and political participation.
The results of the study also show that time spent on watching TV, reading the newspaper, and surfing the Internet are quite limited in predicting political capital, while the extent of exposure to newspaper political news is a significant predictor for political networking, opinion expression, campaign participation, political knowledge, and political interest. The preceding does not include cultivating political trust. The extent of exposure to TV political news significantly predicts campaign participation, political knowledge, and political interest. Exposure to political news on the Internet can predict opinion expression, political knowledge, and political interests.
Overall, this study shows that political content exposure is a better predictor for political capital than overall time spent on viewing media. In addition, the results indicate that tradition media work better than new media in accumulating political capital.
