Political fans - note #5

The growth of new media is increasing inequality in political knowledge. Starting in the 1970s, cable television slowly offered television viewers more programming choices. Some viewers - people who prefer entertainment to news programming - began to abandon the nightly newscasts in favour of more entertaining programs. In the low-choice media environment before cable TV, they encountered politics at least occasionally, because they liked watching television - even television news - more than most other leisure activities. With access to numerous entertainment-oriented cable channels and Internet websites, entertainment fans learn less about politics than they used to and vote less often.

The transition from the low-choice environment to the high-choice world of cable and the Internet has had the oppposite effect on people who prefer news to entertainment. These news junkies take advantage of the greater number of information sources to become more knowledgable and more likely to vote than in the past. In short, cable TV and the Internet confer greater importance to individual motivations in seeking political information out of the mass of other content. The current high-choice environment concentrates political knowledge among those who like the news.

Markus Prior. “News Junkies as Monitorial Citizens? Conditions for Political Accountability in a High-Choice Media Environment.” Paper for the Conference on Changing Media and Political Accountability, Princeton, 2007.

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Political fans - note #4

This group [“newshounds”] made up 50.5% of the population. Their mean consumption was above average on all forms of media (positive means). The within-cluster standard deviations were large for all media indicating that not all Newshounds consume the same news media. For example, some watched more cable TV news than others. The distribution of Internet news consumption was right skewed with 81.5% of the population not consuming any Internet news at the time of this study; those who use the Internet are Newshounds, but the majority of Newshounds did not use the Internet.

In addition to their patterns of news consumption, the two groups also differ demographically and in terms of their participatory activities. Newshounds tend to be older, have more education, and greater income than Avoiders. More than half (63%) of Newshounds are above the age of 45, compared to only 28% of Avoiders. Newshounds(39%) are also more than twice as likely as Avoiders (17%) to have a college degree. Only 15% of Avoiders have annual incomes above $50,000, compared to 35% of Newshounds. While over half of the Newshounds belong to at least one civic organization, the same can only be said for one-third of Avoiders. Finally, 82% of the Newshounds are registered voters, compared to only 56% of Avoiders. Whereas Prior (2007a) found age to be the primary difference between news junkies and switchers, we find that those who consume news and those who avoid it are also substantively different in a number of other ways.

Ksiazek, T. B., Malthouse, E.C., & Webster, J.G. (In Press). “Newshounds and Avoiders: Exploring Patterns of Total News Consumption Across Media and the Relationship to Civic Participation.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, forthcoming.

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Political fans - note #3

“Citizens with a strong interest in politics often function like “political fans” cheering on their side rather than as rational assessors of information (Somin, “Knowledge about Ignorance,” 260–61). They evaluate data in a highly biased manner that tends to confirm rather than objectively test their preexisting views. The “fans’” mode of processing information is perfectly rational for purposes of psychic gratification even though it disserves the objective of improving the quality of their votes. The latter goal, however, is one that they have very little incentive to pursue.”

Ilya Somin. “Democracy and Political Knowledge in Ancient Athens.” Ethics, Vol. 119, No. 3, pp. 585-590, April 2009

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Political Fans - Note #2

“This conjecture is strengthened by a recent study showing that the most knowledgeable voters tend to be more biased in their evaluation of new evidence than those with less prior political information (Taber and Lodge 2006)  If those who acquire political knowledge do so inorder to cast “better” votes,such a result would be difficult to explain. But if, as the rational ignorance hypothesis implies, the main goal is to enjoy psychic benefits similar to those available to sports fans, the greater bias of the more politically knowledgeable is perfectly rational. The fact that they acquired more knowledge in the past suggests that they value the “fan”experience more than those who acquired less; thus, it is not at all surprising that they tend to be more close-minded in their evaluation of new information, because acknowledging that the other side may have a good argument would diminish their psychic gratification.”

Ilya Somin. “Knowledge about Ignorance: New Directions in the Study of Political Information.” Critical Review, Vol. 18, Nos. 1-3, pp. 255-278, 2006

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Political Fans - Note #1

“Political campaigns take on a carnival and sporting atmosphere. This transformation is often decried, but it performs a valuable social function: it increases the return to having political knowledge. Just as sports fans revel in statistics and arguments about performance, political fans do the same with campaign promises, campaign expenditure levels, and past performances. The quadrennial media circus surrounding American presidential campaigns is dramatic evidence of the demand by the average citizen for political information.”

Don L. Coursey and Russell D. Roberts. ” Competition in political and economic markets.” Public Choice. Volume 70, Number 1. April, 1991: 83-88.

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Bolt's laughable attack on the Australian Research Council

Andrew Bolt must look forward to the announcement of ARC Grants as much as academics do. It provides him, once a year, with a column that writes itself. Instead of pouring scorn on projects in Cultural Studies, he’s killed two birds with one stone this year by having a pop at all the scientific research that aims to address climate change.

PSST. Want a surefire way to get a grant - maybe $300,000, or even more - for your university research? Then gather around, my dear professors, and say these magic words. Climate change.

That leaves us with two very interesting possibilities, either 1022 ARC grant recipients are too dumb to follow Andrew’s funding recommendations, or alternatively, we have a well balanced research funding system, unaffected by political interference.

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