Search

Stepping beyond traditional mass communication and political communication frameworks, this study utilizes the integrated behavioral model to predict traditional broadcast and print news media exposure. Specific focus is given to experiential (Is politics interesting?) and instrumental (Is politics important?) attitudes. A secondary analysis is performed on 2010–2014 World Values Survey data (N = 6,961) consisting of representative samples collected from the United States, Germany, Australia, and Sweden. Interest is a statistically significant predictor of both types of news media exposure, but importance and Interest × Importance are statistically significant for broadcast only. The positive predictive value of political interest for broadcast is isolated to only those individuals who perceive politics to be of low personal importance. Discussion focuses on task difficulty when comparing broadcast and print news media exposure and the theoretical implications of the study’s findings. In addition, a research agenda based on the integrated behavioral model is proposed for the study of news media engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Every 4 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 election outcomes, 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. Data from the 2000 National Election Survey indicate that those who lived in battleground states had significantly more issue knowledge and issue salience than citizens from other states. Because the Electoral College. with its winner-take-all rules. encourages candidates to concentrate on battleground states, the results suggest that the Electoral College may have a pernicious effect on representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the mass media on civic engagement in the United States. Use of the time displacement hypothesis in testing the effect of television viewing and newspaper reading on social capitalism; Mechanisms by which television influences participation levels; Indicators of group involvement; Trends in the use of newspapers and television.