Suchergebnisse

This article investigates whether exposure to extreme television media informs citizens about politics. Using lab experiments with both student and non-student samples, I find that extreme media produce higher levels of political knowledge and that they also produce higher levels of negative affect among viewers compared with control groups. I also show that extreme media are at least as informative as traditional news. This research adds to the growing literature on media effects in a polarized media environment, showing that extreme television media can have a beneficial impact on at least one important area of U.S. politics: citizen competence. To account for external validity and popular conceptions on extreme media's non-informative nature, I use cross-sectional data from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey finding that extreme television viewership correlates with greater political knowledge, while controlling for other known predictors.

Internet politics & the computer science of google -- Google search returns on ballot measures -- Click behavior and direct democracy -- Learning happens : political knowledge and three ballot measures -- Internet research and intellectually-secure decisions in direct democracy -- Real-world applications : does google use correlate with real-world political behavior?

ABSTRACTGoogle Books Ngrams data are freely available and contain billions of words used in tens of millions of digitized books, which begin in the 1500s for some languages. We explore the benefits and pitfalls of these data by showing examples from comparative and American politics. Specifically, we show how usage of the phrase "political corruption" in Italian, French, German, and Hebrew books strongly correlates with Transparency International's well-cited Corruption Index for France, Italy, German, and Israel. We also use Ngrams to show that the explosive growth in usage of the phrases "Asian American," "Latino," and "Hispanic" correlates with real-world changes in these populations after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. These applications show that Ngram data correlate strongly with similar data from well-respected sources. This suggests that Ngrams has content validity and can be used as a proxy measure for previously difficult-to-research phenomena and questions.

Do popular films activate authoritarianism? We theorize that, because of the willing suspension of disbelief, films encourage social learning, which primes viewers to respond to messages activating latent personality traits such as authoritarianism. This activation then affects citizens' political attitudes. To test our theory, we use a 1 × 3 posttest experimental design where treatment groups watch feature-length films. As treatments, subjects watch 300 and V for Vendetta, and the control film is 21 Jump Street. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that 300 activates authoritarianism while V for Vendetta activates antiauthoritarianism. As expected, 21 Jump Street has no effect. In addition, we show that the activation of authoritarianism produces significant differences in attitudes on U.S. primacy, rights of protestors, immigration, and military service. This research demonstrates how the causal mechanism between entertainment media and latent personality activation affects political attitudes, which advances both the American political behavior and media politics literature.

AbstractGoogle Insights for Search provides a new and rich data source for political scientists, which may be particularly useful for state politics scholars. We outline the prior uses of Google Insights for Search in social and health sciences, explain the data-generating process, and test for the first time the validity of this data for state politics research. Our empirical test of validity shows that Google searches for ballot measures' names and topics in state one week before the 2008 Presidential election correlate with actual participation on those ballot measures. This demonstrates that the more Internet searches there were for a ballot measure, the less likely voters were to rolloff (not answering the question), and establishes the construct validity for this data for one important topic in state politics research. We also outline the limitations to this data source.

How are attitudes formed in the 21st Century, and who sets the agenda for initial COVID-19 coverage in the United States? We explore these questions using a random sample of 6 million tweets from a population of 224 million tweets collected between January 2020 and June 2020. In conjunction with a content analysis of legacy media such as newspapers, we examine the second-level agendamelding process during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The findings demonstrate that in the early weeks of the pandemic, public opinion on Twitter about the virus was distinctly different than the coverage of the issue in the traditional media. The attributes used to describe it on social media demonstrate users relying on their past experiences and personal beliefs to talk about the virus. In the 1st week of February, public opinion, traditional media, and social media converged, but traditional media soon becomes the main agenda setter of COVID-19 for 13 weeks. However, for the final 5 weeks of our sample, traditional media are taken over by social media. The findings also show that, except for a few weeks at the onset of the outbreak, Twitter users relied on their personal experiences far less than what statistical models predicted and allowed. Instead, traditional media and social media to shape their opinion of the issue.

Social networking lies at the heart of a number of fascinating political questions and social concerns, including citizen competence, social movements, and voter mobilization. In The Social Basis of the Rational Citizen, Sean Richey provides an empirical analysis of the most important hypothesized effect of social network influence on politics: social cognition.

AbstractWhat role does information concerning the beliefs of others play in the correction, or persistence, of misperceptions? Can social pressure affect whether someone will change their mind on a salient political issue? Building on the "backfire effect" and informational context literatures, we theorize that informational social influence can affect one's willingness to accept new information. Specifically, when individuals receive partisan cues, their attitudes will be different compared to individuals without similar social influence. We test our theory and hypotheses using a unique experimental between‐subjects design using a student sample (N = 839) as well as a nationally representative sample (N = 777). Using the salient debate over voter identification laws, we find some evidence for our theory. We conclude by considering the policy implications of our analysis and directions for future research.Related ArticlesCaillier, James. 2010. "Citizen Trust, Political Corruption, and Voting Behavior: Connecting the Dots." Politics & Policy 38 (5): 1015‐1035. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2010.00267Dettrey, Bryan J. 2013. "Relative Losses and Economic Voting: Sociotropic Considerations or 'Keeping up with the Joneses?'" Politics & Policy 41 (5): 788‐806. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12038Nielson, Lindsay. 2017. "Ranked Choice Voting and Attitudes toward Democracy in the United States: Results from a Survey Experiment." Politics & Policy 45 (4): 535‐570. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12212