This article focuses on how citizens in a high-choice media environment can compose an individual media diet and its effects on political participation. More specifically we investigate (a) how people combine the use of offline and online media into personal news diets and (b) the effects of different news diets on both offline and online political participation. Based on a two-wave panel study (N = 2,747) covering the 2014 Swedish national election, the study identifies five media diets: minimalists, public news consumers, local news consumers, social media news consumers, popular online news consumers. Firstly, the results show that minimalists are less likely to participate in politics and secondly that there is a positive relationship between a social media news diet and both offline and online participation. The main results of this study thus suggest that the social network characteristics are more mobilizing than the immediate and interactive nature of more ‘traditional’ online news or a traditional offline news diet.

In recent years, a number of studies have suggested a positive linkage between public service broad- casting and public knowledge about current affairs. Most studies are, however, based on aggregate, cross-sectional data. On the individual level they fall short of establishing any causal linkage between TV news exposure and public knowledge. In addition, studies which investigate whether the intensity of the political information environment matters for learning effects from watching TV news, are missing. Against this background, this study compares knowledge effects from watch- ing public service and commercial TV news in three contexts that vary in the intensity of the political information environment: a national election campaign, a European parliamentary election cam- paign and a non-election period. Among other things, the results show stronger knowledge effects from watching public service than commercial TV news.