All seminar readings
.pdf
keyboard_arrow_up
School
Starkweather High School *
*We aren’t endorsed by this school
Course
LI
Subject
Communications
Date
Nov 24, 2024
Type
Pages
25
Uploaded by cat_herineli
Professor’s office hours: 4:30-6:30 Thursdays
Week 2: What do people (need to) know about politics? Why do individuals become
politically informed?
Questions to consider ahead of class:
• What does it mean to be politically knowledgeable?
• How knowledgeable/what knowledge do people need to make sensible political
choices? Are citizens sufficiently informed?
• What active and passive factors best explain why different types of people become
politically knowledgeable (or not)?
• What could be done to increase citizen demand for political information? Does it
depend on whether motivations come from intrinsic interest or strategic
incentives?
• What are the consequences of citizens obtaining information “secondhand”
through a two-step communication flow?
Barabas, Jason, Jennifer Jerit, William Pollock, and Carlisle Rainey. 2014. “The
question(s) of political knowledge.” American Political Science Review 108(4):840-855.
●
Main Idea: There are two theoretically relevant dimensions to studying how political knowledge
impacts public opinion and political behavior: 1) Temporal dimension: corresponds to the time
when a fact was established. 2) Topical Dimension: relates to whether the fact is policy-specific
or general.
●
The two relevant dimensions yield four distinct types of knowledge questions.
●
The study considers whether the mechanisms for becoming informed such as ability, opportunity,
and motivation, operate differently across four types of questions.
○
Important points:
■
The study provides a framework for understanding how the content or type of
questions affects observed levels of knowledge.
■
■
Static facts: concrete truths, always true like the president serves one term that’s
4 years long
■
Surveillance facts: stuff that’s happening in the news today
■
Static policy facts
●
Delves into the complexities and nuances of measuring political knowledge in public opinion
research. The main idea of the paper is to critically examine the various methods and questions
used to assess political knowledge and to highlight the implications of different approaches for
our understanding of citizen competence and political behavior.
●
The authors argue that political knowledge is a multifaceted concept and that different questions
or measures can yield different results in terms of citizens' political knowledge levels. They
emphasize that the choice of questions and the framing of those questions can significantly
impact the assessment of political knowledge.
●
Furthermore, the paper suggests that the traditional approach to measuring political knowledge,
which relies on factual questions about government institutions and policies, may not capture the
full extent of citizens' political competence. The authors introduce the concept of "systematic
knowledge," which goes beyond factual information and includes citizens' ability to make
connections and understand the broader political landscape.
●
The paper highlights that the measurement of political knowledge is not a straightforward task
and that different question formulations can lead to different conclusions about citizens' political
competence. It also introduces the idea of systematic knowledge as a more comprehensive way to
assess political understanding, emphasizing that political knowledge is not just about facts but
also about citizens' ability to navigate and make sense of the political world.
Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. 1944. The People’s Choice:
How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. Columbia University
Press. Pages 13-18.
●
Main idea: To explore the complex process through which voters make decisions during a
presidential campaign.
●
The authors conducted a detailed study during the 1940 presidential election, focusing on the
impact of media, interpersonal communication, and personal characteristics on voters' choices.
They argued that voters are not passive receivers of information but are influenced by a network
of interpersonal relationships and selective exposure to media. The book highlights the
importance of word-of-mouth communication and the role of opinion leaders in shaping voters'
preferences.
●
Emphasizes that voters are influenced by a combination of personal interactions and media
exposure when making decisions in a presidential campaign, challenging the simplistic notion of
a purely rational and independent electorate.
●
Notable arguments:
○
Two-Step Flow of Communication: The authors argue that the process of political
communication is not a simple, direct transmission from media to individuals. Instead,
they propose the two-step flow model, where information first reaches opinion leaders
who then influence and mediate the information's diffusion to the broader public.
○
Selective Exposure: They emphasize that voters are selective in their exposure to media
and tend to choose sources that align with their preexisting beliefs and opinions. This
selective exposure has a significant impact on the formation of their political attitudes and
preferences.
○
Opinion Leaders: Lazarsfeld and his co-authors highlight the role of opinion leaders or
influential individuals in shaping public opinion. These opinion leaders are considered
intermediaries who play a crucial role in transmitting political information and
influencing the choices of others.
○
Word-of-Mouth Communication: The authors argue that interpersonal communication,
particularly word-of-mouth discussions among voters, is a vital factor in shaping political
attitudes and decisions. Conversations with friends, family, and acquaintances often have
a more significant impact than direct exposure to media.
○
Personal Characteristics and Social Structure: Lazarsfeld and his colleagues stress the
importance of personal characteristics and social structure in understanding how voters
make decisions. Factors such as education, social class, and demographic attributes can
influence an individual's receptivity to political messages and their ultimate voting
choices.
○
Long-Term Effects of Campaigns: They suggest that the effects of political campaigns are
not short-lived but have long-term consequences. Political messages and interactions
during campaigns can influence voters' attitudes and behaviors beyond the immediate
election cycle.
○
Challenging the Hypodermic Needle Model: The book challenges the simplistic
"hypodermic needle" model of media effects, which posits that media directly injects
messages into passive audiences. Instead, it emphasizes the interactive and selective
nature of media consumption.
Prior, Markus. 2005. “News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in
Political Knowledge and Turnout.” American Journal of Political Science 49(3):577-592.
●
Main idea: Examines the impact of media choice on political knowledge and voter turnout. The
main idea of this paper is to investigate how the proliferation of media options and the shift
towards entertainment-focused content affect individuals' political engagement.
●
Prior argues that as media choices expand, people are more likely to select content that aligns
with their preexisting political views and preferences. This selective exposure to media results in
information and knowledge gaps between individuals with different political orientations.
●
Those who engage with politically oriented news media tend to become more informed and
politically active, while those who opt for entertainment-focused content remain less politically
informed and engaged.
●
Furthermore, the paper suggests that this growing gap in political knowledge and engagement has
consequences for voter turnout. Individuals who are well-informed and politically active are more
likely to vote, while those who are less informed and disengaged are less likely to participate in
the electoral process.
●
In summary, Markus Prior's paper highlights how the increasing availability of media choices can
lead to divergent levels of political knowledge and participation, with some individuals becoming
more engaged due to exposure to political news, while others become less informed and less
likely to vote as they consume entertainment-focused media content.
Baum, Matthew A., and Angela S. Jamison. 2006. “The Oprah effect: How soft news helps inattentive
citizens vote consistently.” Journal of Politics 68(4):946-959.
●
Main Idea: explores the influence of soft news, particularly Oprah Winfrey's book
recommendations and discussions, on the political behavior of inattentive citizens. The main idea
of this paper is to investigate whether exposure to soft news, in the form of Oprah's book club,
can have a positive impact on the political engagement and voting behavior of individuals who
are generally disengaged from traditional political news.
●
The authors argue that many citizens are politically inattentive and often do not follow traditional
news sources closely. However, they posit that soft news, in this case, Oprah's book club
selections that occasionally touch on political and social issues, can serve as a bridge to connect
these inattentive citizens to political issues and encourage them to vote more consistently.
●
Baum and Jamison conducted empirical research to demonstrate that Oprah's book club had a
measurable impact on inattentive citizens' political knowledge and voting behavior. They found
that when Oprah recommended books with political content, readers were more likely to engage
with these political issues and become more consistent voters.
●
In summary, the paper suggests that soft news, such as Oprah's book club, can play a significant
role in mobilizing inattentive citizens to become more politically engaged and vote consistently
by providing them with accessible and relatable content that touches on political and social issues.
Marshall, John. 2019. “Signaling sophistication: How social expectations can increase political
information acquisition.” Journal of Politics 81(1):167-186. [You can skip the technical “Model” and
“Equilibrium and comparative statics” subsections.]
●
Main Idea: explores the concept of signaling sophistication in the context of political information
acquisition. The main idea of the paper is to examine how individuals may be motivated to
acquire political knowledge based on social expectations and perceptions of being seen as
informed or sophisticated by their peers.
●
Marshall argues that individuals often seek to signal their sophistication or competence to their
social circles, and this can extend to the realm of politics. When people believe that their peers or
social groups value political knowledge and sophistication, they are more inclined to actively
seek out and acquire political information. This behavior is driven by the desire to conform to
social expectations and maintain a positive social identity.
●
The paper suggests that social norms and expectations play a significant role in motivating
individuals to become politically informed, even if their primary motivation is not an intrinsic
interest in politics. People may engage in political information acquisition to fit in, gain social
approval, or be perceived as knowledgeable by their peers.
●
In summary, Marshall's paper highlights how social expectations and the desire to signal
sophistication within social groups can incentivize individuals to actively acquire political
information, contributing to a more politically engaged and informed citizenry.
Week 3: How do individuals process information and form beliefs?
Questions to consider ahead of class:
●
When, if ever, do citizens rationally process political information? Is it possible to differentiate
between rational and behavioral models of information processing?
●
When do individuals accept new information as reliable and incorporate it into their perspective
on politics? Has this changed in a more polarized world?
●
If citizens are subject to behavioral biases, such as motivated reasoning, how could this be
counteracted and what are the implications for political choices?
Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge University
Press. Chapter 3: How Citizens Acquire Information and Convert it to Public Opinion.
●
Main Idea: How citizens learn about matters beyond their immediate experience and how they
convert the information they acquire into opinions. The RAS (Recieve-Accept-Sample) outlines
how opinion statements are the outcome of a process in which people receive new information,
decide whether to accept it, and then sample at the moment of answering questions. The RAS
model arguest that the probability that a person will support or oppose a given policy depends on
the mix of positive and negative consideration available in the person’s mind at the moment of
answering a question about it.
○
The Model: A1. Reception Axiom: The greater a person’s level of cognitive engagement
with an issue, the more likely he or she is to be exposed to and comprehend political
messages concerning that issue.
■
Essentially, the reception of politically relevant communications, whatever their
origin, is positively associated with intellectual engagement with a given issue.
○
A2: Resistance Axiom: People tend to resist arguments that are inconsistent with their
political predispositions, but they do so only to the extent that they possess the contextual
information necessary to perceive a relationship between the message and their
predispositions.
■
Political inattentive persons will often be unaware of the implications of the
persuasive communications they encounter, and so often end up ‘mistakenly’
accepting them.
■
Some individuals will entirely ignore factors like “source credibility” and instead
base their attitudes on the quality of persuasive information that they have been
given.
○
A3: Accessibility Axiom: The more recently a consideration has been called to mind or
thought about, the less time it takes to retrieve that consideration or related considerations
from memory and bring them to the top of the head for use.
○
A4: Response Axiom: individuals answer survey questions by averaging across the
considerations that are immediately salient or accessible to them.
■
Responding at the “top of their head”
■
Abandons the notion that individuals typically possess preformed attitudes that
they simply reveal when asked by a pollster to do so and instead adopts the view
that people possess numerous, frequently inconsistent “considerations” relating to
each issues and base survey responses on whichever of them is at the “top of the
head”.
●
Key Points:
○
Definitions:
■
Consideration: defined as any reason that might induce an individual to decide a
political issue one way or another. A compound of cognition and affect.
■
Two types of political messages:
●
1) Persuasive messages: are arguments or images providing a reason for
taking a position or point of view. If accepted by an individual, they
become considerations. Doesn’t have to be coldly rational— can hark
emotion, be subtle, etc.
●
2) Cueing messages: carried in elite discourse, consist of “contextual
information” about the ideological or partisan implications of a
persuasive message; perceive relationships between persuasive messages
vs their political predispositions.
○
People who score higher on tests of political knowledge are substantially more stable in
their attitude reports than people who score low on political awareness. However, people
who describe themselves at highly interested in politics are not significantly more table
than persons who express little political interest.
○
Political interest is a strong correlate of voter turnout, slightly stronger than political
knowledge, so while affective engagement can be important unless coupled with
intellectual engagement, it appears to have only limited effects on opinion per se.
○
The 1987 NES pilot study was conducted to investigate how individuals gather
information and form opinions on political issues, especially during election campaigns.
It aimed to understand the dynamics of opinion formation in the context of real-world
politics.
■
Findings: The study's findings helped support Zaller's theories. It demonstrated
that individuals often rely on cognitive shortcuts, such as party identification and
existing attitudes, to form opinions on political issues. The longitudinal data
allowed researchers to observe how changing information environments and
campaign events influenced opinion changes over time.
Hill, Seth J. 2017. “Learning together slowly: Bayesian learning about political facts.”
Journal of Politics 79(4):1403-1418.
●
Main Idea: Concept of Bayesian learning and how individuals gradually acquire political
information and update their beliefs. Delves into the process of how individuals acquire and
update their political beliefs within a Bayesian framework. It emphasizes that this learning is
often gradual, influenced by confirmation bias, and shaped by specific examples and social
interactions.
○
The result of his experiment suggests that citizens do not learn political information as
perfect Bayesians. They are cautious in responding to signals delivered and are modestly
biased in response to signals by consistency with their initial beliefs.
○
Nonetheless, subjects are capable of learning in the appropriate direction about
partisan-relevant facts and appear to learn in a similar fashion about political and
non-political facts.
○
Citizens learn together slowly about political facts.
Your preview ends here
Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version
- Access to all documents
- Unlimited textbook solutions
- 24/7 expert homework help