POLI 231 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Personalization, Public Opinion, John Zaller
17 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
February 27th, 2018
Politics and the Media
● Media Effects and Politics
○Affects discourse
○Affects attitudes
○Demonstrating shifts and changes (or can cement certain dispositions)
○Mainstreaming of non-mainstream positions
○Can change partisan identification
○Can change voter turnout
○Can point to media as an independent variable
●Difficulties with measuring the effects of media
○Trying to accurately measure when the media had an effect on politics
○Minimal Media Effects Model
■One of the early views
■Said that media does not have a big effect on politics
A growing awakening
●Bartels (1980s)
○If media effects aren’t there, then why is there so much attention by political
staff?
●Why it’s hard:
○Effect of media vs. the effect of the event itself
○Need better theories about how people digest political information
○Need better social science
Experimental studies
●Control vs. external validity
●During the 1980s TV was very popular, a lot of news stations were booming
○Iyengar and Kinder then set up their experiment during this time
●Iyengar and Kinder 1987 (News that Matters)
○Experiment: Got a sample of students in university. Asked them to watch TV.
gave them a survey to measure political attitudes. Then they get randomly
assigned to two different media treatments. After the treatments, they are given
another survey.
○Agenda setting
○Priming/Framing: the way you construct the treatment changes the way people
interpret and answer questions
Document Summary
Demonstrating shifts and changes (or can cement certain dispositions) Can point to media as an independent variable. Difficulties with measuring the effects of media. Trying to accurately measure when the media had an effect on politics. Said that media does not have a big effect on politics. Effect of media vs. the effect of the event itself. Need better theories about how people digest political information. During the 1980s tv was very popular, a lot of news stations were booming. Iyengar and kinder then set up their experiment during this time. Iyengar and kinder 1987 (news that matters) Experiment: got a sample of students in university. Asked them to watch tv. gave them a survey to measure political attitudes. Then they get randomly assigned to two different media treatments. After the treatments, they are given another survey. Priming/framing: the way you construct the treatment changes the way people interpret and answer questions.
