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This article advances a communicative approach to social capital that views communication as the fundamental source of societal integration. We contend that integration occurring at the system level via news consumption and at the individual level via interpersonal discussion is amplified through ties at the community level. This cross-level interaction is theorized to encourage civic engagement, writ large, above and beyond the influences of news, talk, or social ties. This perspective distinguishes between the extent of news use and political talk and the orientation toward news consumption and political conversation. We offer evidence that communication variables, specifically news attention and exposure along with conversational frequency and orientation toward conversational understanding, interact with associational membership and network size to foster engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political communication researchers have devoted a great deal of attention to the role of political advertising, the Internet, and political discussion in civic and political life. This article integrates and extends this research by developing a campaign communication mediation model of civic and campaign participation. Two data sets are merged for this inquiry: content-coded ad-buy data on the placement of campaign messages on a market-by-market and program-by-program basis, and a national panel study concerning patterns of traditional and digital media consumption and levels of civic and campaign participation. Exposure to televised campaign advertising is estimated by developing an algorithm based on the market and program placement of specific advertisements and geo-coded survey respondents' viewing of certain categories of television content in which these advertisements were concentrated. Structural equation models reveal that advertising exposure drives online news use in ways that complement conventional news influences on political discussion and political messaging. However, campaign exposure emphasizing "attack" messages appears to diminish information seeking motivations via broadcast and print media yet only indirectly and weakly suppresses participation in civic and political life. Further, alternative specifications reveal that the authors' original model produces the best fit, empirically and theoretically. The authors use these insights to propose an O-S-R-O-R (orientations-stimuli-reasoning-orientations-responses) framework as an alternative to the longstanding O-S-O-R model in communication and social psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars studying the content of televised entertainment programming bare long argued for a relationship between exposure to sexist media representations of women and opinions concerning women's status in society, yet research has rarely examined prime-time television audiences and their sociopolitical opinions concerning women's rights. To explore these relationships, we engaged in a secondary analysis of the 1997, 1998, and 1999 DDB Life Style Studies. Using hierarchical regression, we found three forms of entertainment television use (traditional drama, progressive drama, and situation comedy) that retain statistically significant, unique relationships with opinions concerning women's rights, even after accounting for variables thought to shape patterns of media use and influence support for women's rights. Further, regression path analysis revealed that these three forms also mediate relationships between various demographic, situational and orientational variables and the criterion variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the democratic significance of citizen talk about politics, the field of communication has not considered how that talk is weathering stresses facing our civic culture. We examine political talk during an archetypal case of political contentiousness: the recall of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin in 2012. Pairing qualitative and quantitative methods, we show that a fracturing of civic culture took place in which many citizens found it impossible to continue political discussion. Individuals at fault lines of contention, by nature of occupation, geographic location, or other personal circumstance, were most prone to this breakdown. Our results call into question the ability of talk to bridge political and social differences in periods of polarization and fragmentation, with implications for democratic functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the information society, especially the rise of blogs, have refocused attention on questions of media modality, source identification, and motivation in online environments. We manipulate the structure of a blogger's critique on a news story (global vs. interspersed) and the partisan target of the blogger (Democrats vs. Republicans) in an experiment embedded in an online survey. Our results support our expectations: The more difficult story format decreases the ability of less motivated readers to correctly identify the source of their information, without affecting the motivated. These effects of structure on source identification are democratically consequential when people rely on blogs for facts about public affairs without the proper cautionary caveats regarding the credibility of the source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the tension between national security and civil liberties as a backdrop, this study examines responses to news coverage of activist groups. This 2 × 2 experiment presented participants with news stories about government efforts to restrict the civil liberties of an “extremist” individual or group (news frame) advocating for a cause supported or opposed by the respondent (cause predisposition). Willingness to take expressive action was greatest for individual-framed stories about a cause opposed by the respondent and for group-framed stories about a cause supported by the respondent. We contend that when reporters frame stories about extremist groups around individuals, fewer people will speak out in favor of causes they agree with and more will rally against causes they oppose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]