Digital Exposure and Youth Political Values in Mongolia: Information Literacy, Perceived Platform-Mediated Influence, and Democratic Orientations

This article examines associations among digital exposure, information literacy, perceived platform-mediated influence, and political orientations among young adults in Mongolia. A cross-sectional quota-based online survey included 522 respondents from Ulaanbaatar and all 21 provinces. Analyses used reliability diagnostics, principal component analysis, HC3-robust regression, 5,000 bootstrap resamples, exploratory ANOVA, and k-means clustering. Digital exposure was positively associated with democratic values after demographic adjustment (standardized beta = .301, p < .001; N = 447). Information literacy accounted for a positive cross-sectional indirect association with institutional democratic support (B = .182, 95% bootstrap CI [.128, .243]); this association persisted with a narrower literacy measure. Four self-reported platform indicators were modeled separately. Associations were more consistent for authoritarian-order preferences than for contentious protest, although some significance decisions depended on measurement and multiple-testing adjustment. Two exploratory profiles showed modest separation (silhouette = .242); the higher-intensity profile had elevated mean liberal-democratic and order-oriented scores. The findings identify information literacy as a civic correlate of democratic support and demonstrate the limits of a single-axis classification of political orientations. Nonprobability recruitment, self-report measurement, and the cross-sectional design restrict generalization and preclude causal conclusions.