| This study employs the O-S-O-R model to examine the relationships between sources of social capital, civic engagement, and mass communication. Hierarchical regression analyses of a telephone survey data (n=546) show that the influence of local news media on civic engagement and volunteering was indirect, as sources of social capital, interest in neighborhood and community issues, and interpersonal communication played a more important role than did local news media variables. Interpersonal communication had an independent and strong effect on both civic engagement and volunteering. Purposeful use of the Internet had a positive impact on civic engagement as well as on associational membership.;The relationship between use of local news media and social capital should be viewed as more conditional---highly dependent on how interested individuals are in issues concerning their neighborhood and community and how much they interact with each other. Interest in neighborhood and community issues was the driving force for both civic engagement and perceptions of interpersonal trust, reciprocity, and associational membership, better explaining (compared to interest in politics) why either limited or non-significant findings were generated in previous research about the effects of mass communication on civic engagement and social capital.;Information-processing strategies had more predictive power than local news media and motivation measures in people's perceptions of associational membership, interpersonal trust, and reciprocity, suggesting the cognitive mediation model is influential in examining how people learn from local news media about social norms. |
