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An four-wave experimental study (N = 116) was conducted to assess the influence of a shifting media environment (i.e., varied news:entertainment ratio) on news consumption, perceptions of a quality media experience, and the ability to articulate a political stance. In addition, the concept of procrastination is introduced as a potentially important individual-difference variable, with assessments being offered for both its main effects and its ability to moderate the influence of media environment. The media environment manipulation produced strong, but opposing main effects on news consumption and our criterion democratic outcome. Procrastination's main effect was on media experience perceptions (i.e., did your media consumption aid you in completing the assigned task?), and there was also a media environment-by-procrastination interaction on this portion of the hypothesized model. Discussion is offered for taking a more nuanced approach to assessments of the changing media environment and its impact on political media effects research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media are an emerging news source, but questions remain regarding how citizens engage news content in this environment. This study focuses on social media news reception and friending a journalist/news organization as predictors of social media news dissemination. Secondary analysis of 2010 PEW data (N=1264) reveals reception and friending to be positive predictors of dissemination, and a reception-by-friending interaction is also evident. Partisanship moderates these relationships such that reception is a stronger predictor of dissemination among partisans, while the friending-dissemination link is evident for non-partisans only. These results provide novel insights into citizens' social media news experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although television and newspaper public affairs use are two of the foundation variables employed in the empirical study of mass communication, there is still a great deal that media scholars have yet to understand about the true relationship that exists between these forms of media use. This study posits and tests for a mutually reinforcing positive reciprocal relationship between television and newspaper public affairs use. Combined 1992, 1996, and 2000 American National Election Study (ANES) survey data (N = 6006) are used to test for this relationship via Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). A simultaneous positive reciprocal relationship is found to exist between these two forms of public affairs media use, providing evidence to a lingering question that has been often assumed but never directly tested. Ramifications of this finding for studies analyzing both forms of public affairs media use are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study merges insights from extant cultivation research with a media uses and gratifications perspective to examine the relationship between environmental concern, five forms of television viewing, and pro-environmental behaviors. In doing so, we consider a host of variables, including environmental attitudes, that are exogenous television use and environmental behaviors and may motivate certain viewing patterns and social actions. Thus, perspective advanced by this research considers both the direct effects of various forms of television viewing and their potential mediating roles in the relationship between environmental attitudes and behaviors. Analysis of 1999 and 2000 DDB Life Style Study data reveals that television public affairs and nature documentary use, the genres of programming that give tangible and visible form to abstract environmental issues, are predicted by environmental concern and contribute to pro-environmental behaviors, whereas the three forms of entertainment television use are not consistently linked to these variables. Public affairs and nature documentary use were also found to be important mediators of the effects of other exogenous variables on pro-environmental behaviors. Implications for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every four years presidential candidates devote months and hundreds of millions of dollars campaigning for the highest office in the land. Some question whether these presidential campaigns actually make a difference. In 2000, the Bush and Gore campaigns provided a golden opportunity to empirically assess campaign effects because both candidates focused their campaigns on a set of "battleground" states. 2000 NES data indicates that those who lived in "battleground" states had significantly more issue knowledge and issue salience than citizens from other states. Because this kind of targeted campaigning is encouraged by the Electoral College, with its winner-take-all rules, the data show that the Electoral College has a demonstrably negative effect on representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]