THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION-capitulo 3 Lipmann.pdf
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About This Presentation
Las Dinamicas de la Comunicación Política
Slide Content
I I
I
pART TWO
Political
Communication
Concepts and Effects
I
pART TWO
Political
Communication
Concepts and Effects
l
CHAPTER
3 The Study
of Political
Communication
For nearly a century, the debate has raged. Does political communication have massive,
'<propagandizing" effects on the public? Are its effects more limited, circumscribed
by psychological and sociological factors? Do political media effects (especially in
an era of congenial social media posts) simply reinforce what people already believe,
or do they expand ideological horizons? I-low strong are political media effects, what
approaches should we harness to study them, and which methods reign supreme?
Although the study of political communication is popularly believed to have begun
with television, it actually dates back nearly a century. It was Walter Lippmann, the
American journalist writing in the 1920s, who eloquently and influentially described
the ability of the media to mold the images people carried in their heads about a distant
world that was "out of reach, out of sight (and) out of mind." This chapter describes the
journey Lippmann helped launch, chronicling the history of political communication
research, with its many currents, waves, and oscillating changes. The chapter introduces
the concepts and methods that have guided the field, continuities and changes in aca
demic thinking about political communication over the past century, and the surprising
conflicts that make the history of political communication so animating.
The hi tory of political communication research is not a placid story of academic schol
ars gathering facts and dutifully placing each droplet of infonnation into the vessel
of knowledge. On the contrary, it is more like a maritime expedition, with competing
explorer.;, anned with different maps and diving equipment. One group amasses find
ings, only to have these notions questioned by another group of explorers, who, guided
by their own maps, probe a different portion of the ocean's depths, uncovering new
facts and theories of what constitutes the underlying structure of the sea. All too ofien
we think of the history of an academic discipline as a monotonous description of how
CHAPTER
3 The Study
of Political
Communication
For nearly a century, the debate has raged. Does political communication have massive,
'<propagandizing" effects on the public? Are its effects more limited, circumscribed
by psychological and sociological factors? Do political media effects (especially in
an era of congenial social media posts) simply reinforce what people already believe,
or do they expand ideological horizons? I-low strong are political media effects, what
approaches should we harness to study them, and which methods reign supreme?
Although the study of political communication is popularly believed to have begun
with television, it actually dates back nearly a century. It was Walter Lippmann, the
American journalist writing in the 1920s, who eloquently and influentially described
the ability of the media to mold the images people carried in their heads about a distant
world that was "out of reach, out of sight (and) out of mind." This chapter describes the
journey Lippmann helped launch, chronicling the history of political communication
research, with its many currents, waves, and oscillating changes. The chapter introduces
the concepts and methods that have guided the field, continuities and changes in aca
demic thinking about political communication over the past century, and the surprising
conflicts that make the history of political communication so animating.
The hi tory of political communication research is not a placid story of academic schol
ars gathering facts and dutifully placing each droplet of infonnation into the vessel
of knowledge. On the contrary, it is more like a maritime expedition, with competing
explorer.;, anned with different maps and diving equipment. One group amasses find
ings, only to have these notions questioned by another group of explorers, who, guided
by their own maps, probe a different portion of the ocean's depths, uncovering new
facts and theories of what constitutes the underlying structure of the sea. All too ofien
we think of the history of an academic discipline as a monotonous description of how
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68 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
Back to Lippmann in the I 920s. After the war, Lippmann became disillusioned by the
ways that Creel had used the powers of persuasion and coercion to influence the mass
public. He rejected classic liberal democracy concepts, such as the power of rational
thought or the ability of the press to relay accurate infonnation. Instead, he concluded
that people were prone lo psychologically distort information and engage in stereo
typing. ''We do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see," he said.
But there was more. Unlike earlier eras, where individuals lived in small towns and
had direct experience with issues of their communities, in the modem world, peo
ple were compelled to make decisions about complex problems that they could not
directly experience. Living in a world that was "out of reach, out of sight, out of mind,"
Lippmann (1922) poetically penned, people had to rely on governments and the press
for accurate infonnation (p. 18). But-and here was the modem wrinkle-governments
could effectively manipulate symbols to manufacture consent. The press did not convey
deeper truths, Lippmann concluded. Instead, it simply transmitted events, even forcing
attention on selected issues. News, he emphasiz.ed, was not the same as truth, a theme
emphasized by today's press critics, but sometimes in ways that undercut the virtues a
free press performs for society.
Writing at the end of the 20th century, Ewen ( 1996) observed that "one cannot avoid
being struck by Lippmann's clairvoyance; the extent to which his analysis of symbols-
how they may be employed to sway the public ,ounds uncomfortably familiar"(p. 158).
Prior to Lippmann and others writing during this period, there was little appreciation of
the ways that media images could mold public sentiments. Lippmann grasped that the
media would necessarily assume a large role in shaping public opinion in a world where
individuals had to rely on indirect experience to make sense of politics.
Some critics have viewed Lippmann as elitist, calling attention to his belief that the
public is passive, easily diverted, and incapable of appreciating complex political events
(Carey, 1995). These scholars, critical of Lippmann's faith in a class of political experts,
have been drawn to Lippmann's contemporary, John Dewey ( 1927), who placed greater
stock in citiz.ens' capacity to understand politics and participate in democratic dialogue
(Westbrook, 1991 ). These criticisms have merit (some more than others). They spotlight
Lippmann's biases and are intellectually intriguing (Schudson, 2008). Still, political
communication owes a debt to Lippmann: I le was a pathbreaking thinker who laid the
groundwork for the study of political media by conceptualizing the critical roles that
press and public opinion play in American politics, and where they can go astray.
ABCs of Propaganda
The United States was changing, and perceptive observers took note. Chronicling the
ways government could exploit mass media, political scientist Harold Lasswell ( 1927),
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 69
t1owing in Lippmann's footsteps, described the power communicatio~s could exert on
fo ass soul. Lasswell and others used the term '"propaganda" to describe these effects,
thern . r · ·1·t1
although today these might be re1erred to as persuasion or socta m uence.
the t 930s, the Institute of Propaganda assembled a list of the ''ABC's of propaganda"
:at included testimonial, the ability of a co~nm~nication to call on the views o~a cred
ible spokesperson; bandwagon, the persuasive influence exerted by the p:rception that
1
e numbers of people supported a cause; and transfer, the powerful impact that a
arg sage could exert if it was associated with a popular image or symbol. The organiz
~:of the Institute feared that these techniques could be used widely and for pernicious
purposes.
As it turned out, scholars working in the Institute of Propaganda during the 1930s
c~urately forecast the future. During the 1930s and 1940s, the world witnessed the
:xploitation of mass propaganda for more heinous o~jec!ives. In ad~ition to brute c~r
cion, Hitler's Nazi Party harnessed mass commumca_tton-rhetonc, speech-making,
and movies-to seduce the people of a once democratic country, Germany, to adopt a
honific policy of world domination.
™ Institute of Propaganda dissolved in the early I 940s. The tenn propaganda, with
its sweeping, heavy, and negative connotations, gave way to less pejorative tenns like
persuasion and information control. (The term propaganda continues to be fraught, fre
quently invoked to describe persuasive communications "we" dislike, or, more deno
tatively, communications under government control.) Importantly, the questions the
Institute of Propaganda raised in the 1930s would continue to consume students of
political persuasion. For example: Do governments in democratic countries mislead cit
izenry through the power of mediated political messages? How can the tension between
democratic values and elites' ability to manipulate public sentiments be satisfactorily
resolved? Do mass media offer citizens the information they need to make informed
judgments, or massage people with deceptive political imagery?
These questions would be put on hold in the 1940s as the field of political communi
cation research took a different direction. It moved in a more concrete, pragmatically
American path. Intrigued by the effects of radio, researchers examined the social effects
of a new medium that conveyed content that ran the gamut from speeches featuring the
melodious voice of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the dramatization of H. G.
Wells's The War oft he Worlds, a science fiction story that described the invasion ofEarth
by Martians. In contrast to some of the early propaganda theorists, the new research
ers adopted a decidedly empirical approach, one that underscored the complexity of
media effects of programs like the now famous War of the Worlds telecast. Although
the program amazingly led some Americans to believe that Martians were invading our
Back to Lippmann in the I 920s. After the war, Lippmann became disillusioned by the
ways that Creel had used the powers of persuasion and coercion to influence the mass
public. He rejected classic liberal democracy concepts, such as the power of rational
thought or the ability of the press to relay accurate infonnation. Instead, he concluded
that people were prone lo psychologically distort information and engage in stereo
typing. ''We do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see," he said.
But there was more. Unlike earlier eras, where individuals lived in small towns and
had direct experience with issues of their communities, in the modem world, peo
ple were compelled to make decisions about complex problems that they could not
directly experience. Living in a world that was "out of reach, out of sight, out of mind,"
Lippmann (1922) poetically penned, people had to rely on governments and the press
for accurate infonnation (p. 18). But-and here was the modem wrinkle-governments
could effectively manipulate symbols to manufacture consent. The press did not convey
deeper truths, Lippmann concluded. Instead, it simply transmitted events, even forcing
attention on selected issues. News, he emphasiz.ed, was not the same as truth, a theme
emphasized by today's press critics, but sometimes in ways that undercut the virtues a
free press performs for society.
Writing at the end of the 20th century, Ewen ( 1996) observed that "one cannot avoid
being struck by Lippmann's clairvoyance; the extent to which his analysis of symbols-
how they may be employed to sway the public ,ounds uncomfortably familiar"(p. 158).
Prior to Lippmann and others writing during this period, there was little appreciation of
the ways that media images could mold public sentiments. Lippmann grasped that the
media would necessarily assume a large role in shaping public opinion in a world where
individuals had to rely on indirect experience to make sense of politics.
Some critics have viewed Lippmann as elitist, calling attention to his belief that the
public is passive, easily diverted, and incapable of appreciating complex political events
(Carey, 1995). These scholars, critical of Lippmann's faith in a class of political experts,
have been drawn to Lippmann's contemporary, John Dewey ( 1927), who placed greater
stock in citiz.ens' capacity to understand politics and participate in democratic dialogue
(Westbrook, 1991 ). These criticisms have merit (some more than others). They spotlight
Lippmann's biases and are intellectually intriguing (Schudson, 2008). Still, political
communication owes a debt to Lippmann: I le was a pathbreaking thinker who laid the
groundwork for the study of political media by conceptualizing the critical roles that
press and public opinion play in American politics, and where they can go astray.
ABCs of Propaganda
The United States was changing, and perceptive observers took note. Chronicling the
ways government could exploit mass media, political scientist Harold Lasswell ( 1927),
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 69
t1owing in Lippmann's footsteps, described the power communicatio~s could exert on
fo ass soul. Lasswell and others used the term '"propaganda" to describe these effects,
thern . r · ·1·t1
although today these might be re1erred to as persuasion or socta m uence.
the t 930s, the Institute of Propaganda assembled a list of the ''ABC's of propaganda"
:at included testimonial, the ability of a co~nm~nication to call on the views o~a cred
ible spokesperson; bandwagon, the persuasive influence exerted by the p:rception that
1
e numbers of people supported a cause; and transfer, the powerful impact that a
arg sage could exert if it was associated with a popular image or symbol. The organiz
~:of the Institute feared that these techniques could be used widely and for pernicious
purposes.
As it turned out, scholars working in the Institute of Propaganda during the 1930s
c~urately forecast the future. During the 1930s and 1940s, the world witnessed the
:xploitation of mass propaganda for more heinous o~jec!ives. In ad~ition to brute c~r
cion, Hitler's Nazi Party harnessed mass commumca_tton-rhetonc, speech-making,
and movies-to seduce the people of a once democratic country, Germany, to adopt a
honific policy of world domination.
™ Institute of Propaganda dissolved in the early I 940s. The tenn propaganda, with
its sweeping, heavy, and negative connotations, gave way to less pejorative tenns like
persuasion and information control. (The term propaganda continues to be fraught, fre
quently invoked to describe persuasive communications "we" dislike, or, more deno
tatively, communications under government control.) Importantly, the questions the
Institute of Propaganda raised in the 1930s would continue to consume students of
political persuasion. For example: Do governments in democratic countries mislead cit
izenry through the power of mediated political messages? How can the tension between
democratic values and elites' ability to manipulate public sentiments be satisfactorily
resolved? Do mass media offer citizens the information they need to make informed
judgments, or massage people with deceptive political imagery?
These questions would be put on hold in the 1940s as the field of political communi
cation research took a different direction. It moved in a more concrete, pragmatically
American path. Intrigued by the effects of radio, researchers examined the social effects
of a new medium that conveyed content that ran the gamut from speeches featuring the
melodious voice of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the dramatization of H. G.
Wells's The War oft he Worlds, a science fiction story that described the invasion ofEarth
by Martians. In contrast to some of the early propaganda theorists, the new research
ers adopted a decidedly empirical approach, one that underscored the complexity of
media effects of programs like the now famous War of the Worlds telecast. Although
the program amazingly led some Americans to believe that Martians were invading our
70 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
planet, its impact was actually contingent on a host of psychological factors (Cantril
Gaudet, & Herzog, 1940; McDonald, 2004). The radio studies suggested that rned·'
ffi . I • be 1· ta
e ects m1g 1t Just more comp 1ca1ed than some scholars originally believed a c
I
•
1
, on.
c us1on t mt would also find resonance in a pioneering study of political communicar
in Ohio during a presidential election. •on
The Pendulum Shifts
Sandusky, Ohio, is a quaint city on Lake Erie·s shores. lt is more than 400 miles from
Washington, D.C., and New York City, the teeming centers of elite influence that housed
the powe~ful purveyors of ~ass communications. In 1940, Sandusky was a small, qui
escent Midwestern community that bore an intriguing characteristic: in every presiden
tial election of the 20th century, it had closely reflected national voting patterns. For
this reason it attracted the interest of three political scientists, eager to explore the role
communication played in people's voting decisions.
Paul Lazarsfeld and two colleagues from Columbia University made the trip to San
dusky, embarking on a study of the 1940 election that pitted President Franklin o.
Roosevelt, a popular incumbent and a Democrat. against Wendell Wilkie, a corpo
rate lawyer and dark horse Republican candidate .. Roosevelt won handily. which was
not exactly a surprise. But the results that Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet ( 1944)
obtained must have been something of a whopper, a balloon-bursting surprise to
those who believed in the power of the political communication media. In a scientific
study of Sandusky (or more generally Erie County, Ohio) residents· uses of newspa
pers and radio, their conversations with others, and voting. the researchers reported
clear and dramatic effects. They found that media exerted modest influences, clari
fying attitudes about the candidates and strengthening vote intentions of those who
felt strongly about the election. But they converted only a handful of voters to the
other side.
It was not mass media that sent the researchers scurrying to their typewriters. Instead,
it was interpersonal communications, or face-to-face conversations. Certain individu
als served as opinion leaders for others, influencing followers' political views. Ideas
seemed to flow from radio and newspapers to these influential leaders; the opinion
leaders then scooped them up, distilled them, and conveyed them to the Jess involved,
less active members of the electorate. The researchers dubbed this the two-step Oow.
Thus, media did not impact the mass audience directly, as the propaganda theorists
feared. Instead, their influence was itself mediated-watered down, perhaps, but cer
tainly tempered-by these influential leaders. The model looked like this:
Media -Opinion Leaders -Voting Public
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 71
'fthe much-ballyhooed media were not all they had been crac~ed to be.
It seemed as
I
reJ·ust another factor in the persuasion mix and not nearly as important
d they we
1nstd ' I communication (see also Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954).
as interpersona
fl
nee in Illinois
In ua
• ty Ohio, study propelled Lazarsfeld's career. Born in Austria, Lnzars-
'fhe Erie Co~ned, a Ph o in applied mathematics from the University of Vienna. With
h d obtain · ·
feld a_ . 1 ·tuation in his native Austria disintegrating in the wake of World War II,
the pohtica s1 • • b •
feld immigrated to the United States and took up a position as a f~c~lty mem er m
~ t Columbia University. Lazarsfeld was a complex man: a bnlhant researcher,
5(J(l1ology 8 • I t
ething of an operator, a bustling entrepreneur to some, a savvy mampu a or
bu~!:~s~~orrison, 2006; Simonson, 2006; see also Gitlin, 1978). Building on the now
to · • lly famous findings in the Erie County voting study, he sought to explore
intemauona · · · h'I
hoping to study the new opinion leader notion as a soc1olog1st, w t e,
new venues, , h ·
ffi h·s entrepreneurial cap, seeking to attract new streams of money to t e univer-
do ng
1
• • bl' ·
• , B , reau of Applied Social Research. He convinced Macfadden Pu 1cat1ons, a
s1ty s u . . .. k'
bl• her of American magazines, to underwnte a study of consumer dec1s1on-ma mg
ptl JS ' De (J)' .
in the small but representative community of catur, mo1s.
Loz.arSfeld, for his part, needed money to conduct an in-depth, statist~cal stud~ of the ~le
communication played in Decatur women's decisions about marketing. fashion, mov1e
going, end public affairs. He enlisted h_is ~duate student,_ Elihu Katz, who went on to
become an important political commumcat1on scholar. Their suliVey (Katz & Laz.ar.;feld,
1955) became a milestone in communication research, one of the most cited studies in
the social sciences (Lang & Lang. 2006). It made Katz and Lazarsfcld an internationally
famous communication dyad. When talking about personal influence, you couldn't say
one name without mentioning the other, usually in the same breath. For our purposes,
!heir study's main contributions were that it (a) pioneered a precise scientific technique to
examine the flow of influence; (b) suggested that mass media played second fiddle to inter
personal inAuence; and (c) demonstrated that context mattered (emerging as an opinion
leader in the area of fashion did not mean one influenced opinions toward public affairs).
Interesting as these findings were at the time, to some degree they reflected a conser
vative, pro-social system bias. The Decatur study received some of its funding from
a magazine publisher, and the earlier, classic Erie County study had been underwrit
ten by the well-heeled Rockefeller Foundation and Life, a mass circulation magazine.
The funding may have restricted the scope of the projects, encouraged the researchers
to view politics and opinion leadership as marketing phenomena., and implicitly sug
gested that the larger cultural system, with its social inequities, was not to be questioned
(Gitlin, 1978; Weimann, 1994).
planet, its impact was actually contingent on a host of psychological factors (Cantril
Gaudet, & Herzog, 1940; McDonald, 2004). The radio studies suggested that rned·'
ffi . I • be 1· ta
e ects m1g 1t Just more comp 1ca1ed than some scholars originally believed a c
I
•
1
, on.
c us1on t mt would also find resonance in a pioneering study of political communicar
in Ohio during a presidential election. •on
The Pendulum Shifts
Sandusky, Ohio, is a quaint city on Lake Erie·s shores. lt is more than 400 miles from
Washington, D.C., and New York City, the teeming centers of elite influence that housed
the powe~ful purveyors of ~ass communications. In 1940, Sandusky was a small, qui
escent Midwestern community that bore an intriguing characteristic: in every presiden
tial election of the 20th century, it had closely reflected national voting patterns. For
this reason it attracted the interest of three political scientists, eager to explore the role
communication played in people's voting decisions.
Paul Lazarsfeld and two colleagues from Columbia University made the trip to San
dusky, embarking on a study of the 1940 election that pitted President Franklin o.
Roosevelt, a popular incumbent and a Democrat. against Wendell Wilkie, a corpo
rate lawyer and dark horse Republican candidate .. Roosevelt won handily. which was
not exactly a surprise. But the results that Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet ( 1944)
obtained must have been something of a whopper, a balloon-bursting surprise to
those who believed in the power of the political communication media. In a scientific
study of Sandusky (or more generally Erie County, Ohio) residents· uses of newspa
pers and radio, their conversations with others, and voting. the researchers reported
clear and dramatic effects. They found that media exerted modest influences, clari
fying attitudes about the candidates and strengthening vote intentions of those who
felt strongly about the election. But they converted only a handful of voters to the
other side.
It was not mass media that sent the researchers scurrying to their typewriters. Instead,
it was interpersonal communications, or face-to-face conversations. Certain individu
als served as opinion leaders for others, influencing followers' political views. Ideas
seemed to flow from radio and newspapers to these influential leaders; the opinion
leaders then scooped them up, distilled them, and conveyed them to the Jess involved,
less active members of the electorate. The researchers dubbed this the two-step Oow.
Thus, media did not impact the mass audience directly, as the propaganda theorists
feared. Instead, their influence was itself mediated-watered down, perhaps, but cer
tainly tempered-by these influential leaders. The model looked like this:
Media -Opinion Leaders -Voting Public
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 71
'fthe much-ballyhooed media were not all they had been crac~ed to be.
It seemed as
I
reJ·ust another factor in the persuasion mix and not nearly as important
d they we
1nstd ' I communication (see also Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954).
as interpersona
fl
nee in Illinois
In ua
• ty Ohio, study propelled Lazarsfeld's career. Born in Austria, Lnzars-
'fhe Erie Co~ned, a Ph o in applied mathematics from the University of Vienna. With
h d obtain · ·
feld a_ . 1 ·tuation in his native Austria disintegrating in the wake of World War II,
the pohtica s1 • • b •
feld immigrated to the United States and took up a position as a f~c~lty mem er m
~ t Columbia University. Lazarsfeld was a complex man: a bnlhant researcher,
5(J(l1ology 8 • I t
ething of an operator, a bustling entrepreneur to some, a savvy mampu a or
bu~!:~s~~orrison, 2006; Simonson, 2006; see also Gitlin, 1978). Building on the now
to · • lly famous findings in the Erie County voting study, he sought to explore
intemauona · · · h'I
hoping to study the new opinion leader notion as a soc1olog1st, w t e,
new venues, , h ·
ffi h·s entrepreneurial cap, seeking to attract new streams of money to t e univer-
do ng
1
• • bl' ·
• , B , reau of Applied Social Research. He convinced Macfadden Pu 1cat1ons, a
s1ty s u . . .. k'
bl• her of American magazines, to underwnte a study of consumer dec1s1on-ma mg
ptl JS ' De (J)' .
in the small but representative community of catur, mo1s.
Loz.arSfeld, for his part, needed money to conduct an in-depth, statist~cal stud~ of the ~le
communication played in Decatur women's decisions about marketing. fashion, mov1e
going, end public affairs. He enlisted h_is ~duate student,_ Elihu Katz, who went on to
become an important political commumcat1on scholar. Their suliVey (Katz & Laz.ar.;feld,
1955) became a milestone in communication research, one of the most cited studies in
the social sciences (Lang & Lang. 2006). It made Katz and Lazarsfcld an internationally
famous communication dyad. When talking about personal influence, you couldn't say
one name without mentioning the other, usually in the same breath. For our purposes,
!heir study's main contributions were that it (a) pioneered a precise scientific technique to
examine the flow of influence; (b) suggested that mass media played second fiddle to inter
personal inAuence; and (c) demonstrated that context mattered (emerging as an opinion
leader in the area of fashion did not mean one influenced opinions toward public affairs).
Interesting as these findings were at the time, to some degree they reflected a conser
vative, pro-social system bias. The Decatur study received some of its funding from
a magazine publisher, and the earlier, classic Erie County study had been underwrit
ten by the well-heeled Rockefeller Foundation and Life, a mass circulation magazine.
The funding may have restricted the scope of the projects, encouraged the researchers
to view politics and opinion leadership as marketing phenomena., and implicitly sug
gested that the larger cultural system, with its social inequities, was not to be questioned
(Gitlin, 1978; Weimann, 1994).
72 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
These criticisms have merit. Yet they should not blind us to the contributions of the
opinion leader concept, pioneered through Katz and Lazarsfeld's study. You might say
that a half century before Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, Katz and LazarsfeJd
found social networks matter, influencing consumer and political decisions. What's
more, the opinion leader concept enriched and clarified understanding of media effects.
To those researchers who believed that the media audience was an undifferentiated mass
of clay shaped by an all-powerful mass media, Katz and Lazarsfeld sounded a note
of caution, emphasizing that the audience was composed of social networks of opin
ions leaders and their peers, with interpersonal leaders exerting a persuasive impact on
acquaintances and followers. It is a conclusion that is intriguingly relevant to today's
era of social media.
During the same period when Katz and Laz.arsfeld documented opinion leadership,
researchers at Columbia University and the University of Michigan showed that demo
graphic factors like religion, urban versus rural residence, and in particular party iden
tification exerted stable innuences on voting behavior. The academic wisdom in this
pre-television era came to emphasize the impact that stable individual difference factors
exerted on voting behavior. Although media effects might have been uncovered had
survey instruments included appropriate measures of media uses, the pendulum shifted
to minimize media effects. This came to an intellectual crescendo with a book published
in 1960, the iconic beginning of a decade that would change perspectives on political
communication.
Joseph Klapper Makes His Statement
So, Joseph Klapper wanted to know, when all is said and done: What are the effects
of mass media and political communication? Guided by Lazarsfeld, his dissertation
adviser, Klapper thought it was high time that someone wrote up a summary statement
about this new field of communication research. Now that there had been a considerable
number of studies of mass media effects and a new decade the 1960.· was set to
begin, it seemed a propitious moment to put together a book that summarized knowl
edge of media effects.
Following the tradition blazed by Katz and Lazarsfeld, Klapper ( 1960) concluded
that media influences on society were small to modest. People had acquired strong
preexisting attitudes before they came to media. They were members of reference
groups, like the family, religious organizations, and labor unions. These groups gen
erally exerted a stronger impact on attitudes than mass media. The media were not the
sole or primary agent that innuenced political attitudes and behavior. Instead, Klapper
emphasized, media worked together with social environmental factors, contributing
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 73
• c. rcing the effects these other agents exerted. This became known as the
or rein10
to . ed rrects model.
lill'llt e
er acknowledged that mass media could strengthen attitudes. But, to Klapper,
J<l&PP.d ot have the immense effects that many observers seemed to attribute to them.
theY di :ere not a "tabula rasa" on which media could imprint their message. They
P~~~:t reexisting group identifications (such as religion) and attitudes (such as liber
~~· /conservatism) to their encounters with media. Their well-learned beliefs and
aisrn -~ng biases helped determine how individuals reacted to political media fare,
:e:1 85 the effects media exerted. For Klapper, the media did not exert the massive
impact that so many seemed to assume.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Suddenly, things changed.
During the decade in which Klapper published a book describing minimal media
effects, something very different was occurring in the supposedly minimally signif
icant mass media. The very different phenomenon was television news. It swept the
coWltry by storm, expanding to a half hour, capturing viewers and captivating audi
ences with vivid, sometimes visceral images. Televised pictures and sounds bom
barded Americans in the 1960s. There was a handsome John F. Kennedy challenging
the jowl-faced, sweaty Richard Nixon in the first 1960 presidential debate; Southern
police clubbing impassioned Black protesters; gut-wrenching scenes of American
soldiers battling enemy troops in the rice paddies of Vietnam; angry, long-haired,
scruffy college students holding signs, circling around campus buildings, protesting,
denouncing a president, or strumming guitars, with a less aggressive mien, sing
ing blissfully of a nonviolent future. These images, TV's ubiquity, and the media's
presumptive effects clashed with Klapper's thesis that the media were of little con
sequence. Intuitively, it seemed, broadcast news exerted a strong impact on Ameri
cans' political attitudes, even if no one had yet documented the effects empirically
(Lang & Lang, 2006).
There was also this quandary, frequently bandied about: If media were so ineffective,
why did advertisers spend so much on commercials for cars like the hot new Mus
tang? Why were they spending money to promote candidates like Richard Nixon in
1968, whose blatant marketing spawned a book called The Selling of the President
(McGinniss, 1969) and perhaps a movie, The Candidate, with the actor Robert Redford
depicting an empty-headed politician who had been sold by vapid TV images? True,
These criticisms have merit. Yet they should not blind us to the contributions of the
opinion leader concept, pioneered through Katz and Lazarsfeld's study. You might say
that a half century before Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, Katz and LazarsfeJd
found social networks matter, influencing consumer and political decisions. What's
more, the opinion leader concept enriched and clarified understanding of media effects.
To those researchers who believed that the media audience was an undifferentiated mass
of clay shaped by an all-powerful mass media, Katz and Lazarsfeld sounded a note
of caution, emphasizing that the audience was composed of social networks of opin
ions leaders and their peers, with interpersonal leaders exerting a persuasive impact on
acquaintances and followers. It is a conclusion that is intriguingly relevant to today's
era of social media.
During the same period when Katz and Laz.arsfeld documented opinion leadership,
researchers at Columbia University and the University of Michigan showed that demo
graphic factors like religion, urban versus rural residence, and in particular party iden
tification exerted stable innuences on voting behavior. The academic wisdom in this
pre-television era came to emphasize the impact that stable individual difference factors
exerted on voting behavior. Although media effects might have been uncovered had
survey instruments included appropriate measures of media uses, the pendulum shifted
to minimize media effects. This came to an intellectual crescendo with a book published
in 1960, the iconic beginning of a decade that would change perspectives on political
communication.
Joseph Klapper Makes His Statement
So, Joseph Klapper wanted to know, when all is said and done: What are the effects
of mass media and political communication? Guided by Lazarsfeld, his dissertation
adviser, Klapper thought it was high time that someone wrote up a summary statement
about this new field of communication research. Now that there had been a considerable
number of studies of mass media effects and a new decade the 1960.· was set to
begin, it seemed a propitious moment to put together a book that summarized knowl
edge of media effects.
Following the tradition blazed by Katz and Lazarsfeld, Klapper ( 1960) concluded
that media influences on society were small to modest. People had acquired strong
preexisting attitudes before they came to media. They were members of reference
groups, like the family, religious organizations, and labor unions. These groups gen
erally exerted a stronger impact on attitudes than mass media. The media were not the
sole or primary agent that innuenced political attitudes and behavior. Instead, Klapper
emphasized, media worked together with social environmental factors, contributing
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 73
• c. rcing the effects these other agents exerted. This became known as the
or rein10
to . ed rrects model.
lill'llt e
er acknowledged that mass media could strengthen attitudes. But, to Klapper,
J<l&PP.d ot have the immense effects that many observers seemed to attribute to them.
theY di :ere not a "tabula rasa" on which media could imprint their message. They
P~~~:t reexisting group identifications (such as religion) and attitudes (such as liber
~~· /conservatism) to their encounters with media. Their well-learned beliefs and
aisrn -~ng biases helped determine how individuals reacted to political media fare,
:e:1 85 the effects media exerted. For Klapper, the media did not exert the massive
impact that so many seemed to assume.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Suddenly, things changed.
During the decade in which Klapper published a book describing minimal media
effects, something very different was occurring in the supposedly minimally signif
icant mass media. The very different phenomenon was television news. It swept the
coWltry by storm, expanding to a half hour, capturing viewers and captivating audi
ences with vivid, sometimes visceral images. Televised pictures and sounds bom
barded Americans in the 1960s. There was a handsome John F. Kennedy challenging
the jowl-faced, sweaty Richard Nixon in the first 1960 presidential debate; Southern
police clubbing impassioned Black protesters; gut-wrenching scenes of American
soldiers battling enemy troops in the rice paddies of Vietnam; angry, long-haired,
scruffy college students holding signs, circling around campus buildings, protesting,
denouncing a president, or strumming guitars, with a less aggressive mien, sing
ing blissfully of a nonviolent future. These images, TV's ubiquity, and the media's
presumptive effects clashed with Klapper's thesis that the media were of little con
sequence. Intuitively, it seemed, broadcast news exerted a strong impact on Ameri
cans' political attitudes, even if no one had yet documented the effects empirically
(Lang & Lang, 2006).
There was also this quandary, frequently bandied about: If media were so ineffective,
why did advertisers spend so much on commercials for cars like the hot new Mus
tang? Why were they spending money to promote candidates like Richard Nixon in
1968, whose blatant marketing spawned a book called The Selling of the President
(McGinniss, 1969) and perhaps a movie, The Candidate, with the actor Robert Redford
depicting an empty-headed politician who had been sold by vapid TV images? True,
74 Pan 2 • Concepts and Effects
the paradox of advertisers spending lavishly on a supposedly ineffective media did
scientifically prove that media advertising had effects. but the question could not':
ignored.
A New Set o·f Questions
"There has to be a problem, this just can,t be right, the media obviously have an impact,
the limited effects view must be wrong." Ruminations like these no doubt settled in
growing number of researchers· minds as the stonny '60s ended. Political communi~
cation researchers began to take another look at the research that purported to show
minimal effects. Among those exploring this issue was Jack M. McLeod. a mass corn.
munication researcher at the nivcrsity of Wisconsin.
In 1975, McLeod, Lee B. Becker (who had worked with McLeod as a doctoral student
at Wisconsin and was currently a young assi tant professor at Syracuse University),
and the researcher Maxwell McCornbs came upon an intriguing discovery. They pored
over Lazarsfeld's Erie County study, with Becker taking the lead in scrutinizing the
charts that broke down the sample on the basis of both partisanship and exposure to
media that favored Republican and Democratic candidates. Becker and his colleagues
came up with a serendipitous but exciting discovery: Lazarsfcld and his colleagues
had unwittingly understated the media's effects. Upon closer analysb, it turned out
that that nearly half of Republicans with exposure to predominantly Democratic
media actually voted for the Democrat, Pre ident Franklin D. Roosevelt. A similar
pattern emerged for Democrat::;: Democratic voters who had exposure to primarily
Republican newspapers and radio stations were more likely to vote for the Republi
can candidate than those who had primarily Democratic media exposure. The media
seemed to have strongly influenced the voting behavior of both Republican and Dem
ocratic respondents. Voters still might inte,rpret political media fare in light of their
biases (aod this could also be evidence of selective exposure; see Chapter 12). Yet the
reanalysis suggested that media had greater effects than the early researchers believed
(Becker, Mccombs, & McLeod, 1975).
Another problem surfaced. Lazarsfeld and his colleagues focused only on voting
behavior. Had they looked at factors other than voting-for example, discussion, vot
ers' cognitions, or factors operating on the macro level-media effects might have
emerged (Chaffee & Hochheimer, 1985). For example, the Republican candidate,
Wendell Wilkie, seemed to come from nowhere to become the Republican candidate.
Media surely played some part in this. And then there was this-so obvious a problem
in the limited effects model it must have almost embarrassed scholars to mention it:
Klapper had based his conclusions on studies that had been conducted before televi
sion had become the preeminent medium of political communication. These minimal
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 75
. could hardly be expected to describe the latter part of the 20th century.
ct findinl~ TV had widely diffused throughout society and conveyed so much of
rain wh1c
epalitical spectacle.
. . ed ffects edifice was crumbling, but still standing. In the social sciences, the
liJ11lt ;
1
of a theoretical approach is evidence, and in the early 1970s, the pro
t,ottom-linfe ;ng political media effects had yet to amass much evidence. But the facts
nentso s .
~Id not be long in com mg.
ed by Lippmann's speculations, researchers showed that the media could set
Jnfluen~ or influence people's perceptions of problems ailing America (McCombs &
the age
19
;
2
. McLeod, Becker, & Byrnes, 1974). This turned out to be a major rev'.
ShaW,f th ~onventional wisdom. Media might not affect what people thought-their
sion° e - 1 · f
. b i•ec... ~but they powerfully influenced what voters thought about. T 11s tum o
J,aslC e I 1:.-- •
h became a mantra in the field. Agenda-settmg, as the model became known,
8 &e ~ different, more optimistic view of media effects, and it became the focal point
0 f re ew perspective on political communication (see Chapter 6). At the same time,
~s::Ch on the uses and gratitkati~ns of media (_Katz, _B~umler, ~ Gurevit~h, I :14)
hasi:zed that audience could actively use media, deriving particular grat1ficat1ons,
~;: knowledge or vote guidance. These gratifications could steer audiences in certain
ways, influencing how they used media and impacting how media eventually influenced
their attitudes and beliefs.
Emboldened by these new frameworks, research blossomed, changing the received wis
dom of the field. Surveys demonstrated that media did not just influence individuals'
cognitions, but could affect the dynamics of the larger political system. 171omas E. Pat
terson ( 1980), a political scientist who had long argued that media effects in elections
were understated, showed that presidential campaigns were organized around the media,
from primary elections to news media verdicts on presidential debates. Gladys Lang and
Kurt Lang (1983) examined Watergate, the series of events that led to the resignation
of President Richard Nixon. They argued that the news media's ubiquitous presence
and lhe very public impeachment hearings shown on television-encouraged political
leaders to hold Nixon accountable for crimes he committed. Kathleen Hall Jamieson
(1984) took readers on a colorful tour of American elections from 1840 to 1980. She
showed that candidates had long harnessed communication-primarily speeches and
campaign appearances-to mold images. Television advertising followed this rhetori
cal tradition, emerging as a particularly effective modality by which politicians "pack
age the presidency." By 1980, when Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor whose
communication skills on the small screen became legendary, was elected president, the
academic consensus was that media mattered. Research would come to demonstrate
empirically that mediated messages and campaign rhetoric exert key effects on voters
the paradox of advertisers spending lavishly on a supposedly ineffective media did
scientifically prove that media advertising had effects. but the question could not':
ignored.
A New Set o·f Questions
"There has to be a problem, this just can,t be right, the media obviously have an impact,
the limited effects view must be wrong." Ruminations like these no doubt settled in
growing number of researchers· minds as the stonny '60s ended. Political communi~
cation researchers began to take another look at the research that purported to show
minimal effects. Among those exploring this issue was Jack M. McLeod. a mass corn.
munication researcher at the nivcrsity of Wisconsin.
In 1975, McLeod, Lee B. Becker (who had worked with McLeod as a doctoral student
at Wisconsin and was currently a young assi tant professor at Syracuse University),
and the researcher Maxwell McCornbs came upon an intriguing discovery. They pored
over Lazarsfeld's Erie County study, with Becker taking the lead in scrutinizing the
charts that broke down the sample on the basis of both partisanship and exposure to
media that favored Republican and Democratic candidates. Becker and his colleagues
came up with a serendipitous but exciting discovery: Lazarsfcld and his colleagues
had unwittingly understated the media's effects. Upon closer analysb, it turned out
that that nearly half of Republicans with exposure to predominantly Democratic
media actually voted for the Democrat, Pre ident Franklin D. Roosevelt. A similar
pattern emerged for Democrat::;: Democratic voters who had exposure to primarily
Republican newspapers and radio stations were more likely to vote for the Republi
can candidate than those who had primarily Democratic media exposure. The media
seemed to have strongly influenced the voting behavior of both Republican and Dem
ocratic respondents. Voters still might inte,rpret political media fare in light of their
biases (aod this could also be evidence of selective exposure; see Chapter 12). Yet the
reanalysis suggested that media had greater effects than the early researchers believed
(Becker, Mccombs, & McLeod, 1975).
Another problem surfaced. Lazarsfeld and his colleagues focused only on voting
behavior. Had they looked at factors other than voting-for example, discussion, vot
ers' cognitions, or factors operating on the macro level-media effects might have
emerged (Chaffee & Hochheimer, 1985). For example, the Republican candidate,
Wendell Wilkie, seemed to come from nowhere to become the Republican candidate.
Media surely played some part in this. And then there was this-so obvious a problem
in the limited effects model it must have almost embarrassed scholars to mention it:
Klapper had based his conclusions on studies that had been conducted before televi
sion had become the preeminent medium of political communication. These minimal
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 75
. could hardly be expected to describe the latter part of the 20th century.
ct findinl~ TV had widely diffused throughout society and conveyed so much of
rain wh1c
epalitical spectacle.
. . ed ffects edifice was crumbling, but still standing. In the social sciences, the
liJ11lt ;
1
of a theoretical approach is evidence, and in the early 1970s, the pro
t,ottom-linfe ;ng political media effects had yet to amass much evidence. But the facts
nentso s .
~Id not be long in com mg.
ed by Lippmann's speculations, researchers showed that the media could set
Jnfluen~ or influence people's perceptions of problems ailing America (McCombs &
the age
19
;
2
. McLeod, Becker, & Byrnes, 1974). This turned out to be a major rev'.
ShaW,f th ~onventional wisdom. Media might not affect what people thought-their
sion° e - 1 · f
. b i•ec... ~but they powerfully influenced what voters thought about. T 11s tum o
J,aslC e I 1:.-- •
h became a mantra in the field. Agenda-settmg, as the model became known,
8 &e ~ different, more optimistic view of media effects, and it became the focal point
0 f re ew perspective on political communication (see Chapter 6). At the same time,
~s::Ch on the uses and gratitkati~ns of media (_Katz, _B~umler, ~ Gurevit~h, I :14)
hasi:zed that audience could actively use media, deriving particular grat1ficat1ons,
~;: knowledge or vote guidance. These gratifications could steer audiences in certain
ways, influencing how they used media and impacting how media eventually influenced
their attitudes and beliefs.
Emboldened by these new frameworks, research blossomed, changing the received wis
dom of the field. Surveys demonstrated that media did not just influence individuals'
cognitions, but could affect the dynamics of the larger political system. 171omas E. Pat
terson ( 1980), a political scientist who had long argued that media effects in elections
were understated, showed that presidential campaigns were organized around the media,
from primary elections to news media verdicts on presidential debates. Gladys Lang and
Kurt Lang (1983) examined Watergate, the series of events that led to the resignation
of President Richard Nixon. They argued that the news media's ubiquitous presence
and lhe very public impeachment hearings shown on television-encouraged political
leaders to hold Nixon accountable for crimes he committed. Kathleen Hall Jamieson
(1984) took readers on a colorful tour of American elections from 1840 to 1980. She
showed that candidates had long harnessed communication-primarily speeches and
campaign appearances-to mold images. Television advertising followed this rhetori
cal tradition, emerging as a particularly effective modality by which politicians "pack
age the presidency." By 1980, when Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor whose
communication skills on the small screen became legendary, was elected president, the
academic consensus was that media mattered. Research would come to demonstrate
empirically that mediated messages and campaign rhetoric exert key effects on voters
76 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
by influencing agendas, priming cognitions, and activating attitudes, the latter impact
intriguingly suggested by Lazarsfeld back in the 1940s, fusing contemporary and clas.
sic research around common themes (Jamie on, 2014).
The effects of media , nee questioned, frequently misunderstood, and always chang
ing as a function of the time became increasingly salient over the ensuing decades,
as candidates like George 11. W. Bush employed negative advertising in political cam
paigns; Bill Clinton used clever wording, even prevarication, to persuade the public
to accept his controversial, sexual affair-infused candidacy in 1992 and later, to tamp
down concerns about his womanizing ns president; George W. Bush called on patriotic
rhetoric to unify the country after 9/11, as well as deceptive messages to persuade the
public to support the war against Iraq in 2002; Barack Obama harnessed new media to
gain election in 2008 and a cocktail of social media and Internet platfonns to influence
public opinion about his controversial health care plan; and Donald J. Trump tweeted
his way to the Republican nomination in 2016, energizing supporters, manipulating
media to gain a cavalcade of favorable news coverage (Patterson, 2016), and massag
ing his populist base with a torrent of frequently incendiary attacks on his Democratic
opponent. TI1ese media effects focus on presidential elections and White House policy
making, the emphasis of political communication research. Research has also examined
a host of media and communicative influences on lower-level American elections, as
well as on elections in countries with different political and media systems.
Attuned to these different contexts as well as new developments in academic scholar
ship, political communication researchers proposed a variety of models of media and
public opinion that emphasize the more subtle, indirect effects of media on attitudes
and behavior. These include agenda~setting, agenda-building, and framing approaches.
Researchers also have explored the content of election news, shedding light on the key
storylines that emerge in political news, some functional for the system, others less so.
They examined the impact of news, political advertising, debates, the rhetoric of presi
dential address, and galloping technological appeals on attitudes and behaviors.
Over the past several decades, researchers working in different social science disci•
plines have coalesced, forging a cross-disciplinary field of political communication that
examines a multitude of issues that cut across different levels, including psychological
processing of political media, content and effects of political news, political marketing
of presidential campaigns, interfaces among news, polling, and the presidential nomina·
tion, as well as macro effects of political communication on the larger electoral system.
Scholars Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (2014) have pulled together different
contexts, genres, processes of meaning construction, complex media effects, and imp Ii·
cations for the new communicative landscape in an authoritative handbook of political
communication.
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 77
t in these panoply of issues began with Lippmann; morphed with Dewey; con
l~tere;through Katz and Lazarsfeld's interpersonal influence research; oscillated in the
ttnue f Klapper's limited effects thesis; rebounded with research on the subtle influ
wake ~fnews; expanded with a focus on institutional intersections among media, public
en~~ n and politics; and continues apace as scholars explore how political commu
o~in~~~ has changed for good and for ill in the wake of the social-networked era of
n1ca 1· 1·r
21st-century pubic 11e.
pUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Let1s bring past and present together. What can we conclude from the historical review
f political communication research? What do the twists and turns in the intellectual
~jstory of American political communication research lell us? What general themes
emerge? Threading together Lippmann, Lazarsfeld, Klapper, McLeod, Mccombs,
Jamieson, and rejuvenated scholarly interest in political media effects, we discover six
important themes.
Fint, Lippmann Was Right: Media Shape Our Images
of the World
l.Jippmann famously sugge ted that the media form the "pictures in our heads" of the
world that lies outside our immediate experiences. His insight was prescient and contin
ues to be true today. We do not experience politics directly. Instead, citizens necessarily
rely on the media (and now the Internet) to learn what is happening in Washington,
O.C., and in far-off war zones like Kabul, Afghanistan. The media supply us with
images that we use to construct beliefs about the political world. This is one reason they
are powerful.
Second, Social Networks Matter
Opinion leaders are important. Katz and Lazarsfeld called attention to this in their
Decatur study, and it remains true today, ever more so in the era of social media. In our
social media-dominated environment, national companies like American Eagle and
Hewlett-Packard hire opinion-leading student ambassadors who promote the brands
on Facebook, exploiting their social connections to market the product (Singer, 2011 ).
Political conversations occur frequently on social media (Southwell, 2014), often ten
dentiously, with conversations frequently reinforcing people's views of the political
world. In electoral contexts, interpersonal influence and frequency of discussion com
plexly affect political decisions and participation in politics (Huckfeldt & Sprague,
1995; Eveland & Hively, 2009).
by influencing agendas, priming cognitions, and activating attitudes, the latter impact
intriguingly suggested by Lazarsfeld back in the 1940s, fusing contemporary and clas.
sic research around common themes (Jamie on, 2014).
The effects of media , nee questioned, frequently misunderstood, and always chang
ing as a function of the time became increasingly salient over the ensuing decades,
as candidates like George 11. W. Bush employed negative advertising in political cam
paigns; Bill Clinton used clever wording, even prevarication, to persuade the public
to accept his controversial, sexual affair-infused candidacy in 1992 and later, to tamp
down concerns about his womanizing ns president; George W. Bush called on patriotic
rhetoric to unify the country after 9/11, as well as deceptive messages to persuade the
public to support the war against Iraq in 2002; Barack Obama harnessed new media to
gain election in 2008 and a cocktail of social media and Internet platfonns to influence
public opinion about his controversial health care plan; and Donald J. Trump tweeted
his way to the Republican nomination in 2016, energizing supporters, manipulating
media to gain a cavalcade of favorable news coverage (Patterson, 2016), and massag
ing his populist base with a torrent of frequently incendiary attacks on his Democratic
opponent. TI1ese media effects focus on presidential elections and White House policy
making, the emphasis of political communication research. Research has also examined
a host of media and communicative influences on lower-level American elections, as
well as on elections in countries with different political and media systems.
Attuned to these different contexts as well as new developments in academic scholar
ship, political communication researchers proposed a variety of models of media and
public opinion that emphasize the more subtle, indirect effects of media on attitudes
and behavior. These include agenda~setting, agenda-building, and framing approaches.
Researchers also have explored the content of election news, shedding light on the key
storylines that emerge in political news, some functional for the system, others less so.
They examined the impact of news, political advertising, debates, the rhetoric of presi
dential address, and galloping technological appeals on attitudes and behaviors.
Over the past several decades, researchers working in different social science disci•
plines have coalesced, forging a cross-disciplinary field of political communication that
examines a multitude of issues that cut across different levels, including psychological
processing of political media, content and effects of political news, political marketing
of presidential campaigns, interfaces among news, polling, and the presidential nomina·
tion, as well as macro effects of political communication on the larger electoral system.
Scholars Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (2014) have pulled together different
contexts, genres, processes of meaning construction, complex media effects, and imp Ii·
cations for the new communicative landscape in an authoritative handbook of political
communication.
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 77
t in these panoply of issues began with Lippmann; morphed with Dewey; con
l~tere;through Katz and Lazarsfeld's interpersonal influence research; oscillated in the
ttnue f Klapper's limited effects thesis; rebounded with research on the subtle influ
wake ~fnews; expanded with a focus on institutional intersections among media, public
en~~ n and politics; and continues apace as scholars explore how political commu
o~in~~~ has changed for good and for ill in the wake of the social-networked era of
n1ca 1· 1·r
21st-century pubic 11e.
pUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Let1s bring past and present together. What can we conclude from the historical review
f political communication research? What do the twists and turns in the intellectual
~jstory of American political communication research lell us? What general themes
emerge? Threading together Lippmann, Lazarsfeld, Klapper, McLeod, Mccombs,
Jamieson, and rejuvenated scholarly interest in political media effects, we discover six
important themes.
Fint, Lippmann Was Right: Media Shape Our Images
of the World
l.Jippmann famously sugge ted that the media form the "pictures in our heads" of the
world that lies outside our immediate experiences. His insight was prescient and contin
ues to be true today. We do not experience politics directly. Instead, citizens necessarily
rely on the media (and now the Internet) to learn what is happening in Washington,
O.C., and in far-off war zones like Kabul, Afghanistan. The media supply us with
images that we use to construct beliefs about the political world. This is one reason they
are powerful.
Second, Social Networks Matter
Opinion leaders are important. Katz and Lazarsfeld called attention to this in their
Decatur study, and it remains true today, ever more so in the era of social media. In our
social media-dominated environment, national companies like American Eagle and
Hewlett-Packard hire opinion-leading student ambassadors who promote the brands
on Facebook, exploiting their social connections to market the product (Singer, 2011 ).
Political conversations occur frequently on social media (Southwell, 2014), often ten
dentiously, with conversations frequently reinforcing people's views of the political
world. In electoral contexts, interpersonal influence and frequency of discussion com
plexly affect political decisions and participation in politics (Huckfeldt & Sprague,
1995; Eveland & Hively, 2009).
r
78 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
Other research documents that individuals' political networks can moderate media
effects. For example, voters who spend time in politically consonant networks, charae.
terized by political agreement among members, feel more strongly about their votin
preferences when exposed to candidate ads (Neiheisel & Niebler, 2015). When a real~
life Facebook friend posts a news story on Facebook and is perceived as an opinion
leader, social media recommendations amplify media trust, inducing people to want to
read more news from the particular media platfonn in the future (Turcotte, York, Irving,
Scholl, & Pingree, 2015 ).
In these ways, a concept advanced in l 955~interpersonal innuence-continues to
plays a vital role in political communication today, as controversies about whether
online political exposure reinforces preexisting biases or offers more salutary electoral
effects continue apace.
Third, a Review of the Early Research Shows That It
Was Right About Some Things, Wrong About Others,
But Got People Thinking
The two-step flow-whereby media influence opinion leaders, who in tum affect
others-was an innovative, heuristic concept when it was proposed in 1955. It still
operates today. Research published more than a half century after Katz and Lazars
feld's landmark study found that exposure to a national anti-drug media campaign
influenced older siblings, who in turn shaped the beliefs of their younger sisters and
brothers (Hornik, 2006). There is evidence suggesting a two-step flow operates in
online political marketing. For example, campaigns ask activists-for example, union
supporters in Ohio who visited a Big Labor website-to contact less political involved
union members from work who might be susceptible to an appeal from a trustworthy,
politically similar source {see Duhigg, 2012).
On the other hand, the two-step flow does not always operate. For some issues, there is
a one-step flow: from media to public (Bennett & Manheim, 2006). This was a theme in
research on news diffusion, the idea that exposure to mass communication spreads new
infonnation through society. Where do people leam about important events, like who
won a presidential election, a candidate's political gaffe, a key Supreme Court decision
on health care or gay marriage, or U.S. military action? Facebook? Twitter? Or even
television? (e.g., Kaye & Johnson, 2011). Diffusion is complicated. Increasingly, peo
ple arc learning about important political events through the Internet and increasingly
social media apps like WhatsApp, the way that some Turkish adults first learned about
the country's 2016 coup. Researchers have studied diffusion over the past decades,
assembling a variety of conclusions about how people learn about events of national
consequence, such as when news diffuses first from media, when it spreads primarily
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 79
·nterpersonal communication channels, and when followers spread infonna
t!"'°~e~ders (Weimann, 1994). These lines of inquiry were generated by the original
~h on the two-step How.
d
vs the diffusion concept is out of date and less interesting than before, because
... ,owa a., ' · c: • I d'
1"' . le quickly and obviously obtain infonnation. mst~ntl~ 1rom socm _me ta apps,
peo_P !lfld a host of online text platfonns. At the ttme 1t gamed currency m the 1960s,
~•tt~r, research demonstrated that media effects transcended simple attitude change,
dtffusion . . · · I d I
vi nee of psycholog1cally oriented studies, and could branch out to me u e ~am-
~~ beliefs about politics. Subsequently, evidence that people learned about national
111g aned'es directly from media, without the intervention of opinion leaders, led to modifi
u-ag I • • • h'I I 1· t
. s ·
1
n the two-step now concept. Nowadays, d1ffus1on questions, w i e ess sa 1en,
cation • h I
,:evolve around the accuracy, completeness, and degre~ of bias that occurs w en peop e
·re
1•nfonnation instantaneously from online media. In these ways, an old concept
acqUI · d' f 1· . I
expands in fonn and content, offering new applications to the understan mg o po 1t1ca
communication.
fourth, Two Different Political Communication
perspectives Can Be Simultaneously True
The media profoundly influence politics. The early work got that right. At the same
time voters harbor st~ong attitudes. What people bring to media can strongly influence
how,they use and process media content, and can limit the impact of ".1edi~ on attitu_des.
As Klapper emphasized, people filter campaign messages through their attitudes, reject
ing communications that conflict with their political attitudes an~ a~cept~ng those thot
congeal with what they believe. Klapper was correct that preexisting biases dampen
media effects, but his work underplayed the subtle ways political media influence cog
nitions (Tessler & Zaller, 2014, as well as exert macro effects on institutions, like the
presidential nominations, and the larger political system. What's more, the concepts of
strong media effects and powerful preexisting psychological attitudes can interact, as
when committed partisans tune in to politically congruent social media posts and the
content leads them to feel even more strongly about their preferred candidate.
Fifth, Concerns About Powerful Media Effects Are
a Pervasive Theme in American Political Communication
Scholars have detected an interesting continuity in communication research. During the
1930s, critics worried about pernicious inOuences wielded by radio programs. When
comic books came around, fears centered on them. Not to be outdone, television, par
ticularly violence, then, video games, next the Internet and now social media are the
repository of concerns about-typically-harmful media effects. As Ellen A. Wartella
78 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
Other research documents that individuals' political networks can moderate media
effects. For example, voters who spend time in politically consonant networks, charae.
terized by political agreement among members, feel more strongly about their votin
preferences when exposed to candidate ads (Neiheisel & Niebler, 2015). When a real~
life Facebook friend posts a news story on Facebook and is perceived as an opinion
leader, social media recommendations amplify media trust, inducing people to want to
read more news from the particular media platfonn in the future (Turcotte, York, Irving,
Scholl, & Pingree, 2015 ).
In these ways, a concept advanced in l 955~interpersonal innuence-continues to
plays a vital role in political communication today, as controversies about whether
online political exposure reinforces preexisting biases or offers more salutary electoral
effects continue apace.
Third, a Review of the Early Research Shows That It
Was Right About Some Things, Wrong About Others,
But Got People Thinking
The two-step flow-whereby media influence opinion leaders, who in tum affect
others-was an innovative, heuristic concept when it was proposed in 1955. It still
operates today. Research published more than a half century after Katz and Lazars
feld's landmark study found that exposure to a national anti-drug media campaign
influenced older siblings, who in turn shaped the beliefs of their younger sisters and
brothers (Hornik, 2006). There is evidence suggesting a two-step flow operates in
online political marketing. For example, campaigns ask activists-for example, union
supporters in Ohio who visited a Big Labor website-to contact less political involved
union members from work who might be susceptible to an appeal from a trustworthy,
politically similar source {see Duhigg, 2012).
On the other hand, the two-step flow does not always operate. For some issues, there is
a one-step flow: from media to public (Bennett & Manheim, 2006). This was a theme in
research on news diffusion, the idea that exposure to mass communication spreads new
infonnation through society. Where do people leam about important events, like who
won a presidential election, a candidate's political gaffe, a key Supreme Court decision
on health care or gay marriage, or U.S. military action? Facebook? Twitter? Or even
television? (e.g., Kaye & Johnson, 2011). Diffusion is complicated. Increasingly, peo
ple arc learning about important political events through the Internet and increasingly
social media apps like WhatsApp, the way that some Turkish adults first learned about
the country's 2016 coup. Researchers have studied diffusion over the past decades,
assembling a variety of conclusions about how people learn about events of national
consequence, such as when news diffuses first from media, when it spreads primarily
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 79
·nterpersonal communication channels, and when followers spread infonna
t!"'°~e~ders (Weimann, 1994). These lines of inquiry were generated by the original
~h on the two-step How.
d
vs the diffusion concept is out of date and less interesting than before, because
... ,owa a., ' · c: • I d'
1"' . le quickly and obviously obtain infonnation. mst~ntl~ 1rom socm _me ta apps,
peo_P !lfld a host of online text platfonns. At the ttme 1t gamed currency m the 1960s,
~•tt~r, research demonstrated that media effects transcended simple attitude change,
dtffusion . . · · I d I
vi nee of psycholog1cally oriented studies, and could branch out to me u e ~am-
~~ beliefs about politics. Subsequently, evidence that people learned about national
111g aned'es directly from media, without the intervention of opinion leaders, led to modifi
u-ag I • • • h'I I 1· t
. s ·
1
n the two-step now concept. Nowadays, d1ffus1on questions, w i e ess sa 1en,
cation • h I
,:evolve around the accuracy, completeness, and degre~ of bias that occurs w en peop e
·re
1•nfonnation instantaneously from online media. In these ways, an old concept
acqUI · d' f 1· . I
expands in fonn and content, offering new applications to the understan mg o po 1t1ca
communication.
fourth, Two Different Political Communication
perspectives Can Be Simultaneously True
The media profoundly influence politics. The early work got that right. At the same
time voters harbor st~ong attitudes. What people bring to media can strongly influence
how,they use and process media content, and can limit the impact of ".1edi~ on attitu_des.
As Klapper emphasized, people filter campaign messages through their attitudes, reject
ing communications that conflict with their political attitudes an~ a~cept~ng those thot
congeal with what they believe. Klapper was correct that preexisting biases dampen
media effects, but his work underplayed the subtle ways political media influence cog
nitions (Tessler & Zaller, 2014, as well as exert macro effects on institutions, like the
presidential nominations, and the larger political system. What's more, the concepts of
strong media effects and powerful preexisting psychological attitudes can interact, as
when committed partisans tune in to politically congruent social media posts and the
content leads them to feel even more strongly about their preferred candidate.
Fifth, Concerns About Powerful Media Effects Are
a Pervasive Theme in American Political Communication
Scholars have detected an interesting continuity in communication research. During the
1930s, critics worried about pernicious inOuences wielded by radio programs. When
comic books came around, fears centered on them. Not to be outdone, television, par
ticularly violence, then, video games, next the Internet and now social media are the
repository of concerns about-typically-harmful media effects. As Ellen A. Wartella
80 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
and her colleagues noted, both academics and the public at large typically assume th
the ne~v media will exer1 pow~rful effects (Wartella, 1996; Wartella & Reeves, 1985~~
Over time, as the technology diffuses and becomes part of everyday lite, a more modest,
complex theory takes hold. Scholars change their tune, recognizing that the medium is
not as powerful as they once feared, and they qualify their conjectures (Wartella, 1996).
This has stimulated an interesting "meta-debate" among communication researchers
For many years it was widely assumed that early propaganda researchers believed i ·
a simplistic model of media effects that likened the media to a hypodermic needle tha~
injected a message into audiences. But when scholars tried to find the tenn in the early
research of the 20th century, they could find little evidence that the phrase hypodermic
needle was invoked to describe mass media effects (Chaffee & Hochheimer, 1985; see
also Bineham, 1988). Adding another layer to the discussion, Wanella and Stout (2002)
reported that some research conducted during the 1930s adopted a more complex and
nuanced view of media effects, hardly what one would expect if all the researchers
thought of media in simple terms. Other scholars (Lubkcn, 2008) have even argued that
the hypodermic needle notion served the function of a "straw man" for contemporary
researchers. It allowed them to pat themselves on the back for corning up with more
sophisticated perspective on media, when in fact few scholars ac1ually held a simplistic
view in the 1930s and '40s.
Academics aside, there is no question that across different eras, many people have
assumed the media exer1 powerful effects. In 1922, Lippmann worried that the powers
!hat be could instill pictures in our heads and manufacture consent. In 2011, a New fork
Times critic, describing video art, remarked on "the degree to which our world, what
we take for reality, is formed by recording and image-making machinery." He noted
that ·•our minds organize incoming information into images and narratives that may or
may not be true to the facts," adding ''we live in a world of scary, reality-determining
technologies" (Johnson, 2011, p. C22).
The critic may be correct, but the point is you could have found a similar paragraph in
articles writers penned in the 1920s, except they would have worried that movies or
radio or propaganda controlled us. This represents a common thread in American polit
ical history. "The central paradox of America's constitutional tradition.'' Hogan (2013)
obseives, "lies in a persistent tension between our commitment 10 popular sovereignty
and fears that 'the people' might be too easily distracted or manipulated to govern them
selves" (p. I 0). A conundrum of democracy is that government needs an institutional
mechanism to infonn and persuade the citizenry. However, the presence of both insti•
tutionalized public relations and mass media industries generate fears of abuse, some
based in fantasy, others in fact. When is the public justified in fearing manipulation?
When are fears about ''brainwashing" and massive media effects out of whack with
Chapter 3 • Study or Political Communication 81
lity? When should critics worry about White House news management and implant-
res · t • · f · ·
. of false infonnation? When do these worries reflect a cymca proJectmn o s1ms-
111g rnotives to well-intentioned policies developed by the nation's leaders? These are
1er • 1-· I · ·
ilflPortant questions that thread their way through American po 1tica communication.
Sixth, Continued Debate and Dialogue Char~cterize
current Political Communication Scholarship
niere is not a pany line, but continuing question,, the mark _of a ~ealthy disci_plinc.
D. social media facilitate or impede democracy? Do campaigns inform or mislead
th~ electorate? Some scholars are more optimistic about the_ Internet and social media
ffects, arguing they can strengthen civic engagement (Bouhanne, 2009). Others se~ a
e ore negative picture, arguing that they merely reinforce existing prejudices {Sunstem,
;001). Some researchers point to the deceptive, manipulative aspects of campaigns,
emphasizing their singular ability to cultivate beliefs that ali_gn with the_ powers t~mt be
(Le Cheminant & Parrish, 2011 ). Newer approa~hes emphasize the mult1tud_e of d1_verse
latforms, as well as the ways that social media reaffirm what people bel1ev_e via the
~line architecture of social networking sites, characterized by strong personalized con
nections to a narrow range of(frcqucntly congenial) partisan views (Seaton, 2016). This
too has stimulated debate between critics who believe social media promotes new forms
of participation, and others who fear it divides and polarizes. D_ialoguc a_mong_ propo
nents of different scholarly frameworks is healthy. It generates vigorous d1scuss1on and
helps researchers come up with more sophisticated models of political communication.
WHERE WE ARE NOW
Amid all the debate. a new scholarly consensus has emerged. As social media have pro
liferated, people no -longer simultaneously receive the same mass message delivered by
television; individuals arc more likely to receive news customized to their own political
tastes on Facebook; and boundaries between opinion and fact have blurred. The long
held consensus that political media exert simultaneous, homogenizing effects on the
mass public has come under scrutiny.
The dominant model used to emphasize that political media had top-down influences,
with government and leading political elites using media to promote particular political
perspectives. It was never that simple, of course, as there has long been a pluralism
of elite viewpoints on most issues in America. However, the media-to-public model,
with news as a centerpiece, had considerable support. In contemporary scholarship,
the mass mediated model has been supplemented with a ·•networked public sphere"
(Friedland, Hove, & Rojas, 2006). Mainstream media exist on line alongside competing
and her colleagues noted, both academics and the public at large typically assume th
the ne~v media will exer1 pow~rful effects (Wartella, 1996; Wartella & Reeves, 1985~~
Over time, as the technology diffuses and becomes part of everyday lite, a more modest,
complex theory takes hold. Scholars change their tune, recognizing that the medium is
not as powerful as they once feared, and they qualify their conjectures (Wartella, 1996).
This has stimulated an interesting "meta-debate" among communication researchers
For many years it was widely assumed that early propaganda researchers believed i ·
a simplistic model of media effects that likened the media to a hypodermic needle tha~
injected a message into audiences. But when scholars tried to find the tenn in the early
research of the 20th century, they could find little evidence that the phrase hypodermic
needle was invoked to describe mass media effects (Chaffee & Hochheimer, 1985; see
also Bineham, 1988). Adding another layer to the discussion, Wanella and Stout (2002)
reported that some research conducted during the 1930s adopted a more complex and
nuanced view of media effects, hardly what one would expect if all the researchers
thought of media in simple terms. Other scholars (Lubkcn, 2008) have even argued that
the hypodermic needle notion served the function of a "straw man" for contemporary
researchers. It allowed them to pat themselves on the back for corning up with more
sophisticated perspective on media, when in fact few scholars ac1ually held a simplistic
view in the 1930s and '40s.
Academics aside, there is no question that across different eras, many people have
assumed the media exer1 powerful effects. In 1922, Lippmann worried that the powers
!hat be could instill pictures in our heads and manufacture consent. In 2011, a New fork
Times critic, describing video art, remarked on "the degree to which our world, what
we take for reality, is formed by recording and image-making machinery." He noted
that ·•our minds organize incoming information into images and narratives that may or
may not be true to the facts," adding ''we live in a world of scary, reality-determining
technologies" (Johnson, 2011, p. C22).
The critic may be correct, but the point is you could have found a similar paragraph in
articles writers penned in the 1920s, except they would have worried that movies or
radio or propaganda controlled us. This represents a common thread in American polit
ical history. "The central paradox of America's constitutional tradition.'' Hogan (2013)
obseives, "lies in a persistent tension between our commitment 10 popular sovereignty
and fears that 'the people' might be too easily distracted or manipulated to govern them
selves" (p. I 0). A conundrum of democracy is that government needs an institutional
mechanism to infonn and persuade the citizenry. However, the presence of both insti•
tutionalized public relations and mass media industries generate fears of abuse, some
based in fantasy, others in fact. When is the public justified in fearing manipulation?
When are fears about ''brainwashing" and massive media effects out of whack with
Chapter 3 • Study or Political Communication 81
lity? When should critics worry about White House news management and implant-
res · t • · f · ·
. of false infonnation? When do these worries reflect a cymca proJectmn o s1ms-
111g rnotives to well-intentioned policies developed by the nation's leaders? These are
1er • 1-· I · ·
ilflPortant questions that thread their way through American po 1tica communication.
Sixth, Continued Debate and Dialogue Char~cterize
current Political Communication Scholarship
niere is not a pany line, but continuing question,, the mark _of a ~ealthy disci_plinc.
D. social media facilitate or impede democracy? Do campaigns inform or mislead
th~ electorate? Some scholars are more optimistic about the_ Internet and social media
ffects, arguing they can strengthen civic engagement (Bouhanne, 2009). Others se~ a
e ore negative picture, arguing that they merely reinforce existing prejudices {Sunstem,
;001). Some researchers point to the deceptive, manipulative aspects of campaigns,
emphasizing their singular ability to cultivate beliefs that ali_gn with the_ powers t~mt be
(Le Cheminant & Parrish, 2011 ). Newer approa~hes emphasize the mult1tud_e of d1_verse
latforms, as well as the ways that social media reaffirm what people bel1ev_e via the
~line architecture of social networking sites, characterized by strong personalized con
nections to a narrow range of(frcqucntly congenial) partisan views (Seaton, 2016). This
too has stimulated debate between critics who believe social media promotes new forms
of participation, and others who fear it divides and polarizes. D_ialoguc a_mong_ propo
nents of different scholarly frameworks is healthy. It generates vigorous d1scuss1on and
helps researchers come up with more sophisticated models of political communication.
WHERE WE ARE NOW
Amid all the debate. a new scholarly consensus has emerged. As social media have pro
liferated, people no -longer simultaneously receive the same mass message delivered by
television; individuals arc more likely to receive news customized to their own political
tastes on Facebook; and boundaries between opinion and fact have blurred. The long
held consensus that political media exert simultaneous, homogenizing effects on the
mass public has come under scrutiny.
The dominant model used to emphasize that political media had top-down influences,
with government and leading political elites using media to promote particular political
perspectives. It was never that simple, of course, as there has long been a pluralism
of elite viewpoints on most issues in America. However, the media-to-public model,
with news as a centerpiece, had considerable support. In contemporary scholarship,
the mass mediated model has been supplemented with a ·•networked public sphere"
(Friedland, Hove, & Rojas, 2006). Mainstream media exist on line alongside competing
82 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
platfonns and a multitude of online posts. Citizens are no longer exclusively recei
of political messages, but now initiate political conversations with friends, joumaJ~ers
and leaders, frequently seeking out infonnation that confinns what they already t~~
(Bennett & Iyengar, 2008). What's more, with individuals increasingly living in co nl(
munication enclaves peopled by those who share their perspective, there are questi rn.
b hi
.. . ons
a out w et 1er c1t1zens gam exposure to a common set of consensually agreed-on fa
(like on climate change and terrorism threats), whether they even come into con:
with facts that call their ideas into question, and if they are open to viewpoints oth
h h
. ~
t ant e1r own.
The change from past to present is a matter of degree, because mainstream media,
including broadcast news, are still major sources of information (Holbert, Garrett, &
Gleason, 20 I 0). Even young people who get most of their information from the
Internet and social media tune in to sites operated by big media like CNN, which
gather and disseminate information to a public that sees content streamed rather
than just transmitted via television. There is debate about the extent to which peo
ple are exposed primarily to information with which they agree, or if they actually
have greater access to different viewpoints nowadays, given the sea of information
available on the Internet. And there are questions about who has the power. Is it the
active online publics that tweet vociferously, give money to candidates with whom
they agree, and build movements online, as occurred as palpable voter anger helped
solidify support for the conservative Tea Party and the candidacies of Bernie Sand
ers and Donald Trump in 2016? Or does this understate the ways that government,
powerful elites, and corporate interest groups still control and frame major policy
issues in this country'?
In either case, there is little doubt that a centralized model of mass media news has
been replaced by a far more decentralized, less linear approach. People actively seek
out content and cluster in on line networks that at least sometimes provide a congenial
symbolic worldview, in ways that greatly extend the uses and gratifications approach
that emphasized an active political audience. We don't speak of media audiences
anymore because that diminishes the ways people: act on, choose, and, through online
media campaigns, influence politics.
Gray areas abound, contexts matter, and normative questions, such as what is good
and bad about social media-dominated politics (and what ''good" and "bad" mean) are
ever more interesting. Political media scholarship provides a way of exploring ideas in
systematic ways by articulating theories, teasing out hypotheses, testing predictions,
accumulating knowledge, and comparing knowledge to the anchor of nonnative phi
losophy. This is the purview of social science research, the theme of the next section.
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 83
SCIENCE AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
OIAL-.~ ~:::,.:,__-----------
th
·s· After tossing different topics over in your mind, you decide that an
ome to t • • •
t JlaS c . f Political media bias seems like a pretty good topic for a paper rn your
ioatton ° unication class. Aller all, you think to yourself, "it's a well-known fact
Utical. corn~·ased ,, It should be an interesting paper, you muse. Almost fun, though
med1aare i • •
·,.ht be stretching it.
dlaltn'!,"'
. the paper to roll out smoothly, it comes as a surprise when suddenly intrigu-
E,<peCtin~ grab hold of you and won't let go. Questions like: What do we mean by
· g quesuons · · · I h · b' ? 1-l d
•~ the news put a candidate in a negative hght wit 1out s owmg ms. ow o
bias? Can re bias anyway? How do you figure out if the candidate is described in a way
you ~cfa~~rablc unfavorable, or neutral?
that IS '
. out those are good questions just the kind that social scientists wrestle with
~dN~ , ' I
nducting research (see Chapter 9). Research fundamentally focuses on exp or-
when co · . . . . .
• th unknown and uncovering mysteries. It 1s about finding answers to questions
UIS e b . I .
uzz(e us and trying to figure out if a hunch is correct or an o servahon t 1at 1s
that p nly believed to be true actually is. But research is not a walk in the park. Social
commo, . .
· nee involves a series of logical and empirical steps (Babbie, 2004). The logic con-
sc1e . . "' h • f
ms development of theories and hypotheses. The empmcal re1ers tot e testmg o
;potheses through evidence gathered in actual social setting_s. Social scienti~ts ap?l.y
scientific methods to try to uncover regularities or patterns m human behavior. 1111s
section describes the social science methods that political communication researchers
employ to answer interesting questions about politics and media.
Communication and political science scholars strive to develop a body of knowledge of
the role political communication plays in society (Holbert & Bucy, 2011 ). To be sure,
the social scientific approach is not the only way to approach the study of politics and
media We can gain insights from investigative articles in the press, film documentaries,
and even political novels. But social science offers a dispassionate framework in which
researchers ideally set aside personal biases and explore issues through the rigorous
realm of hypothesis testing and empirical methodologies.
Social science cannot answer "should" questions. It cannot tell us whether limits
should be placed on campaign spending or, alternatively, if a hands-off approach is
better for democracy. It cannot say whether presidential debates should be open to
third party candidates, if news should be required to devote a certain amount of time
to issues or if voting should be compulsory. However, by accumulating research
findings, social science can provide insights on normative questions like these. For
platfonns and a multitude of online posts. Citizens are no longer exclusively recei
of political messages, but now initiate political conversations with friends, joumaJ~ers
and leaders, frequently seeking out infonnation that confinns what they already t~~
(Bennett & Iyengar, 2008). What's more, with individuals increasingly living in co nl(
munication enclaves peopled by those who share their perspective, there are questi rn.
b hi
.. . ons
a out w et 1er c1t1zens gam exposure to a common set of consensually agreed-on fa
(like on climate change and terrorism threats), whether they even come into con:
with facts that call their ideas into question, and if they are open to viewpoints oth
h h
. ~
t ant e1r own.
The change from past to present is a matter of degree, because mainstream media,
including broadcast news, are still major sources of information (Holbert, Garrett, &
Gleason, 20 I 0). Even young people who get most of their information from the
Internet and social media tune in to sites operated by big media like CNN, which
gather and disseminate information to a public that sees content streamed rather
than just transmitted via television. There is debate about the extent to which peo
ple are exposed primarily to information with which they agree, or if they actually
have greater access to different viewpoints nowadays, given the sea of information
available on the Internet. And there are questions about who has the power. Is it the
active online publics that tweet vociferously, give money to candidates with whom
they agree, and build movements online, as occurred as palpable voter anger helped
solidify support for the conservative Tea Party and the candidacies of Bernie Sand
ers and Donald Trump in 2016? Or does this understate the ways that government,
powerful elites, and corporate interest groups still control and frame major policy
issues in this country'?
In either case, there is little doubt that a centralized model of mass media news has
been replaced by a far more decentralized, less linear approach. People actively seek
out content and cluster in on line networks that at least sometimes provide a congenial
symbolic worldview, in ways that greatly extend the uses and gratifications approach
that emphasized an active political audience. We don't speak of media audiences
anymore because that diminishes the ways people: act on, choose, and, through online
media campaigns, influence politics.
Gray areas abound, contexts matter, and normative questions, such as what is good
and bad about social media-dominated politics (and what ''good" and "bad" mean) are
ever more interesting. Political media scholarship provides a way of exploring ideas in
systematic ways by articulating theories, teasing out hypotheses, testing predictions,
accumulating knowledge, and comparing knowledge to the anchor of nonnative phi
losophy. This is the purview of social science research, the theme of the next section.
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 83
SCIENCE AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
OIAL-.~ ~:::,.:,__-----------
th
·s· After tossing different topics over in your mind, you decide that an
ome to t • • •
t JlaS c . f Political media bias seems like a pretty good topic for a paper rn your
ioatton ° unication class. Aller all, you think to yourself, "it's a well-known fact
Utical. corn~·ased ,, It should be an interesting paper, you muse. Almost fun, though
med1aare i • •
·,.ht be stretching it.
dlaltn'!,"'
. the paper to roll out smoothly, it comes as a surprise when suddenly intrigu-
E,<peCtin~ grab hold of you and won't let go. Questions like: What do we mean by
· g quesuons · · · I h · b' ? 1-l d
•~ the news put a candidate in a negative hght wit 1out s owmg ms. ow o
bias? Can re bias anyway? How do you figure out if the candidate is described in a way
you ~cfa~~rablc unfavorable, or neutral?
that IS '
. out those are good questions just the kind that social scientists wrestle with
~dN~ , ' I
nducting research (see Chapter 9). Research fundamentally focuses on exp or-
when co · . . . . .
• th unknown and uncovering mysteries. It 1s about finding answers to questions
UIS e b . I .
uzz(e us and trying to figure out if a hunch is correct or an o servahon t 1at 1s
that p nly believed to be true actually is. But research is not a walk in the park. Social
commo, . .
· nee involves a series of logical and empirical steps (Babbie, 2004). The logic con-
sc1e . . "' h • f
ms development of theories and hypotheses. The empmcal re1ers tot e testmg o
;potheses through evidence gathered in actual social setting_s. Social scienti~ts ap?l.y
scientific methods to try to uncover regularities or patterns m human behavior. 1111s
section describes the social science methods that political communication researchers
employ to answer interesting questions about politics and media.
Communication and political science scholars strive to develop a body of knowledge of
the role political communication plays in society (Holbert & Bucy, 2011 ). To be sure,
the social scientific approach is not the only way to approach the study of politics and
media We can gain insights from investigative articles in the press, film documentaries,
and even political novels. But social science offers a dispassionate framework in which
researchers ideally set aside personal biases and explore issues through the rigorous
realm of hypothesis testing and empirical methodologies.
Social science cannot answer "should" questions. It cannot tell us whether limits
should be placed on campaign spending or, alternatively, if a hands-off approach is
better for democracy. It cannot say whether presidential debates should be open to
third party candidates, if news should be required to devote a certain amount of time
to issues or if voting should be compulsory. However, by accumulating research
findings, social science can provide insights on normative questions like these. For
84 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
example, if we find that voters are woefully uninformed by current news formats
and learn more from interactive styles of presenting news, this suggests that new~
platforms might emphasize interactive methods of news presentation. If it turns
out that the wealthiest individuals and companies dominate campaign advertising
and their commercials powerfully influence the vote, this would suggest tinkerin~
with campaign finance law or political commercials. If people are more likely to be
infonned, seek out media, and feel politically efficacious in countries with comput.
sory voting, this would suggest that the U.S. might want to weigh the pros and cons
of requiring the vote.
Research will not direct you to one policy option or another. This involves a careful
consideration of values and political philosophy. But, in some cases, research can help.
More generally, research expands our knowledge about the effects of political commu
nication in society. It explodes myths or time-honored misconceptions about politics,
while building knowledge of political communication processes and effects. These are
laudatory pursuits.
Research starts with a theory and hypothesis. To some degree, everyone has theories
about politics and media. If you think the media are the primary influence on people's
beliefs about politics, you have a theory. If you think the media are irrelevant, and it's
our friends who influence us, you have a theory. If you believe that the media bash
conservatives, prop up the powers that be, or, alternatively, arc increasingly irrelevant
to how young people experience politics, you have a theory.
At least, sort of. TI1ese are "lay theories'' or intuitions about political communication.
Truth be told, they are not formal scientific theories unless they contain a well-developed
underlying conceptualization and a series of predictions that describe, explain, and pre
dict events. A theory is a large, sweeping conceptualization that offers a wide-ranging
explanation of a phenomenon and generales concrete hypotheses about when and why
specific events will occur. A hypothesis is a specific proposition that can be tested through
evidence.
Researchers begin with a theory and hypothesis because they provide a potential road
map to the territory. Starting a research journey without a theory and hypotheses would
be like venturing off onto a journey of a foreign land with your eyes closed, or like
starting a day's trek through the circuitous pathways of a European city-say, Florence,
Italy-with no roadmap, only a desire to see some art. Theories offer a way to interpret
the world of human phenomena; hypotheses present a way to empirically determine if
these ideas arc likely to be true. Together they can help us arrive at a body of factually
based knowledge, which in tum can offer insights and build a body of knowledge of
political communication effects.
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 85
. ti speaking, research tests a hypothesis derived from a theory. When enough
StrJC ~eses from different layers of the theory are supported, we no longer call it a
hYPo but an established body of knowledge. In the biological sciences, evolution fits
~eo: category. We have much less certainty in the social sciences, but there arc areas
mto
1
~patheses have been confinned with enough regularity and sufficient confinn
where_dence has been obtained that we can speak with confidence about the validity of
!ngeVI
the 1cnowledge base.
Whe you are talking with your friends, you can claim that such-and-such is true and
~e will politely agree. (Or perhaps not, if you have a particularly contentious group
p~:ends!) When you are working in the domain of social scientific studies of political
0
munication, you cannot say something is true unless there is scientific evidence to
co:stantiate it. And that's the beauty of research. It separates the fanciful wheat from
:efactual chaff. It tells us what is more likely to be true and more likely to be false. In
0 world where some like trying to deny that there are facts and the Trump White I-louse
haS put forth Orwellian statements suggesting that falsehoods constitute "alternative
facts," a social science discipline that plies theory and methods to discover empirical
truths has much to olTer society.
Research Methodologies
Methodology is to research as cooking is to the work of a chef. You need creative reci~
pes, but the key to a good meal is how you executive the culinary plans in the kitchen.
In the realm of social science, methods put hypotheses to the lest. TI1ere are a number of
research methodologies that are harnessed in political communication studies.
A widely used tool in social science research, content analysis is a systematic method
to quwttitatively examine the characteristics, themes and symbols of a message. Con
tent wtalyses can tell us if news covers certain candidates more favorably than others,
whether female politicians receive different types of news coverage than male politi
cians; and the themes candidates use in negative ads. Content analysis was an ingenious
invention because it offered a fine-grained method to describe the attributes contained
in a message. It helped researchers to map the symbolic landscape of a nation·s political
system. However, an analysis of media content does not indicate that the content has
effects. This requires evidence gleaned from experiments and surveys.
Content analysis quantifies-or describes with numbers--components of the content of
communications. Content analyses usually examine verbal dimensions of media con
tent, such as words and arguments. But they can also quantify audiovisual images, like
how frequently candidates display compassion or toughness in their nonverbal displays,
as well as the camera shots the news selects that depict a candidate smiling or frowning
example, if we find that voters are woefully uninformed by current news formats
and learn more from interactive styles of presenting news, this suggests that new~
platforms might emphasize interactive methods of news presentation. If it turns
out that the wealthiest individuals and companies dominate campaign advertising
and their commercials powerfully influence the vote, this would suggest tinkerin~
with campaign finance law or political commercials. If people are more likely to be
infonned, seek out media, and feel politically efficacious in countries with comput.
sory voting, this would suggest that the U.S. might want to weigh the pros and cons
of requiring the vote.
Research will not direct you to one policy option or another. This involves a careful
consideration of values and political philosophy. But, in some cases, research can help.
More generally, research expands our knowledge about the effects of political commu
nication in society. It explodes myths or time-honored misconceptions about politics,
while building knowledge of political communication processes and effects. These are
laudatory pursuits.
Research starts with a theory and hypothesis. To some degree, everyone has theories
about politics and media. If you think the media are the primary influence on people's
beliefs about politics, you have a theory. If you think the media are irrelevant, and it's
our friends who influence us, you have a theory. If you believe that the media bash
conservatives, prop up the powers that be, or, alternatively, arc increasingly irrelevant
to how young people experience politics, you have a theory.
At least, sort of. TI1ese are "lay theories'' or intuitions about political communication.
Truth be told, they are not formal scientific theories unless they contain a well-developed
underlying conceptualization and a series of predictions that describe, explain, and pre
dict events. A theory is a large, sweeping conceptualization that offers a wide-ranging
explanation of a phenomenon and generales concrete hypotheses about when and why
specific events will occur. A hypothesis is a specific proposition that can be tested through
evidence.
Researchers begin with a theory and hypothesis because they provide a potential road
map to the territory. Starting a research journey without a theory and hypotheses would
be like venturing off onto a journey of a foreign land with your eyes closed, or like
starting a day's trek through the circuitous pathways of a European city-say, Florence,
Italy-with no roadmap, only a desire to see some art. Theories offer a way to interpret
the world of human phenomena; hypotheses present a way to empirically determine if
these ideas arc likely to be true. Together they can help us arrive at a body of factually
based knowledge, which in tum can offer insights and build a body of knowledge of
political communication effects.
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 85
. ti speaking, research tests a hypothesis derived from a theory. When enough
StrJC ~eses from different layers of the theory are supported, we no longer call it a
hYPo but an established body of knowledge. In the biological sciences, evolution fits
~eo: category. We have much less certainty in the social sciences, but there arc areas
mto
1
~patheses have been confinned with enough regularity and sufficient confinn
where_dence has been obtained that we can speak with confidence about the validity of
!ngeVI
the 1cnowledge base.
Whe you are talking with your friends, you can claim that such-and-such is true and
~e will politely agree. (Or perhaps not, if you have a particularly contentious group
p~:ends!) When you are working in the domain of social scientific studies of political
0
munication, you cannot say something is true unless there is scientific evidence to
co:stantiate it. And that's the beauty of research. It separates the fanciful wheat from
:efactual chaff. It tells us what is more likely to be true and more likely to be false. In
0 world where some like trying to deny that there are facts and the Trump White I-louse
haS put forth Orwellian statements suggesting that falsehoods constitute "alternative
facts," a social science discipline that plies theory and methods to discover empirical
truths has much to olTer society.
Research Methodologies
Methodology is to research as cooking is to the work of a chef. You need creative reci~
pes, but the key to a good meal is how you executive the culinary plans in the kitchen.
In the realm of social science, methods put hypotheses to the lest. TI1ere are a number of
research methodologies that are harnessed in political communication studies.
A widely used tool in social science research, content analysis is a systematic method
to quwttitatively examine the characteristics, themes and symbols of a message. Con
tent wtalyses can tell us if news covers certain candidates more favorably than others,
whether female politicians receive different types of news coverage than male politi
cians; and the themes candidates use in negative ads. Content analysis was an ingenious
invention because it offered a fine-grained method to describe the attributes contained
in a message. It helped researchers to map the symbolic landscape of a nation·s political
system. However, an analysis of media content does not indicate that the content has
effects. This requires evidence gleaned from experiments and surveys.
Content analysis quantifies-or describes with numbers--components of the content of
communications. Content analyses usually examine verbal dimensions of media con
tent, such as words and arguments. But they can also quantify audiovisual images, like
how frequently candidates display compassion or toughness in their nonverbal displays,
as well as the camera shots the news selects that depict a candidate smiling or frowning
86 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
(Grabe & Bucy, 2011). Visual images play an important role in political com .
tion, and content analysis offers a way to carefully document these images. mu,uca,.
A challenge in content analysis is determining your unit of analysis. Should you
for bias in each paragraph in a news story? Or should you focus instead on the adjese~h
reporters use to describe a political figure? In addition, you probably will not wctives
. r . I • ant to
examine each and every news story, po itica speech, or website. You will need to sa
pie. But what type of sample shou_ld you draw and how? There are criteria researc~
employ to help answer these questions.
Cont_ent analysis also di fferentia~es bet~een manifest and latent content (Benoit, 20l
1
~
Manifest content refers to what 1s obvmusly there, right on the surface, like the iss ·
h I. · · d' lies
t at a po 1t1c1an 1scusses or sour~es a reporter quotes. Latent content is the subtl
deeper message that requires more ;udgment and analysis to ferret out, like the emotio~
that a candidate expresses or the deg~e to which news coverage showcases support for
the electoral system. Note that a particular content does not demonstrate that the adver.
tisement or news story exerts an impact on voters or the larger political system. This i
a question of media effects, the purview of methods that follow.
5
The hallmark of scientific research, an ex~erimcnt is a controlled study that provides
evidence of causation through random assignment of individuals to a treatment or con.
trol group. A treatment is a stimulus of interest-~for example, an experimental drug in
a medical study, and an election news. story or segment from a presidential debate in
a political communication experiment. A scientific experiment involves at least two
conditions: an experimental condition in which the treatment is administered and a
. '
comparison or control group. Random assignment refers to the allocation of individuals
to conditions, based on chance factors. Names may be assigned numbers, and numbers
are randomly selected from a random numbers table.
Experiments have demonstrated that news influences beliefs about national problems,
negative advertisements shape attitudes, and televised political humor can increase cyn
icism. Although it may seem funny to think about rarefied experiments in the rough
and-tumble world of politics, they are actually extremely useful in helping us say with
certainty whether Factor X causes Outcome Y. Political communication is so complicated
that it is good to know for certain ifa variable can cause an outcome (Arceneaux, 2010).
The strength of experiments is also their weakness. Precisely because they take place
in a controlled setting, experiments cannot tel I us whether the experimental finding
actually occurs in the real world. An experiment may tell us that exposure to a carefully'
edited fictitious political advertisement makes people more cynical about politics. But
does this apply to the real world, where voters already have formed attitudes toward
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 87
I d ·1n ads or in instances where they may scarcely see the commer-
d"sp aye ,
fdate
1
• ? Will effects persist over time? Over the past decades, researchers
In quesu~n number of strategies to increase the realism of experiments, enhanc
perfecte tah "can apply the results to real-life political contexts (Iyengar, 2011 ).
confidence eJ
eY
arch strategy in political communication (Holbert & Bucy, 20 I 1 ), the
priltl~ res:tionnaire or interview-based study that documents a correlation or rela-
is a qu · I · I Id · . d . c. • f: t th
. between two or more variab es m a rea -wor seHmg, 1 ent11ymg ac ors at
nshlP redict a particular outcome. A correlation is a measure of the linkage or rela
b~,bep tween two factors. You undoubtedly have taken many surveys yourself, from
t1onsh1p 11
valuations to Facebook po s.
1:0urse e
lay a particularly important role in political communication because they are
sui;eyi~fe. Researchers can ask a variety of questions about different political vari-
901 ex d unlike super-sensitive topics like prejudice, where people don't always tell
ab es, an . . b 1· .
1h tn1th people are usually fairly comfortable answering questions a out po 1t1cs on
e esti~nnaire. A survey can tell us many interesting things, like if Internet use leads
aqu · · · h 1 • • • k I d f d'd t to more civic part1c1pat1on, whet er te ev1s1on news increases now e ge o can I a e
issue positions, and the degree to which the impact of news on knowledge depends on
youreducational level.
A key aspect of surveys is measurement: measuring concepts reliably and validly in
a questionnaire. Let's say you are a journalism major and believe that political news
has many positive influences, like increasing knowledge of politics and offering voters
guidance in making candidate choices. Tired of your friends' cracks that the news is
boring and ridiculously superficial, you decide to conduct a survey to demonstrate that
your hypothesis (news enhances political knowledge) is supported by evidence. But you
first need to empirically assess news media use to differentiate those who follow the
news a lot from those who hardly follow it at all. You ask people how much exposure
they have to news.
Alas, exposure to political news is a general category. It would be like testing the hypoth
esis that college increases critical thinking skills by asking students how much exposure
they had to college or to college classes. It's not just exposure that could catalyze critical
thinking. It is how much attention that students pay to the material, how they process the
infonnation, how they link up the class to other goals in their life, and so forth. Applying
this to news, it would be better to ask respondents how much attention they pay to news,
as well as how they reflect on and process what they see (Hoffman & Young, 2011;
Kosicki, McLeod, & McLeod, 2011).
(Grabe & Bucy, 2011). Visual images play an important role in political com .
tion, and content analysis offers a way to carefully document these images. mu,uca,.
A challenge in content analysis is determining your unit of analysis. Should you
for bias in each paragraph in a news story? Or should you focus instead on the adjese~h
reporters use to describe a political figure? In addition, you probably will not wctives
. r . I • ant to
examine each and every news story, po itica speech, or website. You will need to sa
pie. But what type of sample shou_ld you draw and how? There are criteria researc~
employ to help answer these questions.
Cont_ent analysis also di fferentia~es bet~een manifest and latent content (Benoit, 20l
1
~
Manifest content refers to what 1s obvmusly there, right on the surface, like the iss ·
h I. · · d' lies
t at a po 1t1c1an 1scusses or sour~es a reporter quotes. Latent content is the subtl
deeper message that requires more ;udgment and analysis to ferret out, like the emotio~
that a candidate expresses or the deg~e to which news coverage showcases support for
the electoral system. Note that a particular content does not demonstrate that the adver.
tisement or news story exerts an impact on voters or the larger political system. This i
a question of media effects, the purview of methods that follow.
5
The hallmark of scientific research, an ex~erimcnt is a controlled study that provides
evidence of causation through random assignment of individuals to a treatment or con.
trol group. A treatment is a stimulus of interest-~for example, an experimental drug in
a medical study, and an election news. story or segment from a presidential debate in
a political communication experiment. A scientific experiment involves at least two
conditions: an experimental condition in which the treatment is administered and a
. '
comparison or control group. Random assignment refers to the allocation of individuals
to conditions, based on chance factors. Names may be assigned numbers, and numbers
are randomly selected from a random numbers table.
Experiments have demonstrated that news influences beliefs about national problems,
negative advertisements shape attitudes, and televised political humor can increase cyn
icism. Although it may seem funny to think about rarefied experiments in the rough
and-tumble world of politics, they are actually extremely useful in helping us say with
certainty whether Factor X causes Outcome Y. Political communication is so complicated
that it is good to know for certain ifa variable can cause an outcome (Arceneaux, 2010).
The strength of experiments is also their weakness. Precisely because they take place
in a controlled setting, experiments cannot tel I us whether the experimental finding
actually occurs in the real world. An experiment may tell us that exposure to a carefully'
edited fictitious political advertisement makes people more cynical about politics. But
does this apply to the real world, where voters already have formed attitudes toward
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 87
I d ·1n ads or in instances where they may scarcely see the commer-
d"sp aye ,
fdate
1
• ? Will effects persist over time? Over the past decades, researchers
In quesu~n number of strategies to increase the realism of experiments, enhanc
perfecte tah "can apply the results to real-life political contexts (Iyengar, 2011 ).
confidence eJ
eY
arch strategy in political communication (Holbert & Bucy, 20 I 1 ), the
priltl~ res:tionnaire or interview-based study that documents a correlation or rela-
is a qu · I · I Id · . d . c. • f: t th
. between two or more variab es m a rea -wor seHmg, 1 ent11ymg ac ors at
nshlP redict a particular outcome. A correlation is a measure of the linkage or rela
b~,bep tween two factors. You undoubtedly have taken many surveys yourself, from
t1onsh1p 11
valuations to Facebook po s.
1:0urse e
lay a particularly important role in political communication because they are
sui;eyi~fe. Researchers can ask a variety of questions about different political vari-
901 ex d unlike super-sensitive topics like prejudice, where people don't always tell
ab es, an . . b 1· .
1h tn1th people are usually fairly comfortable answering questions a out po 1t1cs on
e esti~nnaire. A survey can tell us many interesting things, like if Internet use leads
aqu · · · h 1 • • • k I d f d'd t to more civic part1c1pat1on, whet er te ev1s1on news increases now e ge o can I a e
issue positions, and the degree to which the impact of news on knowledge depends on
youreducational level.
A key aspect of surveys is measurement: measuring concepts reliably and validly in
a questionnaire. Let's say you are a journalism major and believe that political news
has many positive influences, like increasing knowledge of politics and offering voters
guidance in making candidate choices. Tired of your friends' cracks that the news is
boring and ridiculously superficial, you decide to conduct a survey to demonstrate that
your hypothesis (news enhances political knowledge) is supported by evidence. But you
first need to empirically assess news media use to differentiate those who follow the
news a lot from those who hardly follow it at all. You ask people how much exposure
they have to news.
Alas, exposure to political news is a general category. It would be like testing the hypoth
esis that college increases critical thinking skills by asking students how much exposure
they had to college or to college classes. It's not just exposure that could catalyze critical
thinking. It is how much attention that students pay to the material, how they process the
infonnation, how they link up the class to other goals in their life, and so forth. Applying
this to news, it would be better to ask respondents how much attention they pay to news,
as well as how they reflect on and process what they see (Hoffman & Young, 2011;
Kosicki, McLeod, & McLeod, 2011).
88 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
News !s also~ general calegory. What type of news? Fox? MSNBC? Politico? An arn
gamat1on of mfonnation seen on Facebook? If you ask respondents about their onljal.
news use, what exactly d~ you ~ean? A newspaper website, a CNN report, or a sen ne
of posts. on r:acebook, which might not be news at all but opinionated statements Wies
supportive videos attached? A decidedly fake news report? You need a clear d fi •.
th
f I
. . I I e nit1on
o po 1tlca news t mt meels journalistic canons.
Specificity is a cardinal virtue in research and when it comes to measu
. . b , rernent
1t 1s est to develop precise, validated measures of news exposure. This i .
nently doable, and there is considerable contemporary research to guide instr:::~;
development, as Hoffman and Young (2011) note. The payoff is that more fine
tu_ned measures could help you i:nake a stronger case to your politically apatheti~
friends that news has a salutary impact on knowledge. Of course you would I
need to dev_elop a scientifically reliable and valid measure of pubiic affairs kno3:~
edge. Happily, recent refinements in political communicalion survey research have
enabled researcl~ers to make more specific and precise statements about cognitive
and related ~edta effects (e.g., Eveland & Morey, 2011; Hayes, Preacher, & Myers
2011; Kensk1, Gottfried, & Jamieson, 20 J 1 ). '
Certain pro_ble~s still bedevil researchers who study polilical media impact. Respon
dent~ ma~ indicate on a survey that they learned a candidate's issue position frorn
presidential debate, believing this is where they gleaned the infonnation. But th a
I . d I · ey
ma~ 1ave acquire t 1e mfonnation from news of the debate or a conversation with
a friend who attended closely to the debate. The survey infonnation would therefore
overstate news media effects. The trick is to tease out the particular factor that caused
an effect and empirically demonstrate that news exposure is causally related to politi
~al knowledge-a complex, but important, issue. There are ways to home in on these
1ssu~s, a.nd there are several additional research strategics that can help pinpoint com
munication effects (see Box 3.1 ).
BOX 3.1 ADDITIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
METHODOLOGIES
More than 40 years ago, when the modern field of political communication
was launched (Chaffee, 1975), the discipline lacked the methodology and
tech_nology to zoom in on a number of important issues. Over the past decades,
the intellectual horizons of the field have expanded, and with this have com
l
.f • ea
pro I erat1on of new and improved methods (Kosicki et al 2011) Th · I d . ., . ese rnc u e.
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 89
· darY analysis, a technique that allows researchers to reanalyze
Se~on
I
data sets with a particular focus or innovative twist (Holbert &
neuona
it1ielowski, 2011 );
H groups in which a trained leader coordinates a group interview that
Focus ' .
• Id rich insights on a variety of topics. such as how people talk about
can y1e .
politics in evervday life, why many young people do not vote, and reactions
to political ads (Jarvis, 2011 ); . . . . .
Multiple strategies to explore communication that occurs m deltberat1ve
•
11188
tings. This includes systematic analysis of discussion at a school board ,
11188
ting or town hall forum, as well as post-meeting follow-up interviews
with participants (Black, Burkhalter, Gastil, & Stromer-Galley, 2011 ); and
• psychophysiological measures of heart rate, facial muscle activation, brain
imaging and other bodily arousal that occurs while watching candidate
speeches and negative political ads (Bucy & Bradley, 2011 ).
Complementing these approaches, rhetorical and discourse-focused scholars
study political communication with more qualitative methods. Although these
leek the precision of scientific techniques, they can illuminate the rich tableau
of political communication, as practiced by leaders and activists. Campbell and
Jamieson (2008) call on elements of classical political rhetoric in delineating
characteristics of presidential inaugural addresses, State of the Union speeches,
war rhetoric, and national eulogies. Other scholars have employed discourse
analysis to offer insights into communicative practices and sometimes
contradictory political beliefs expressed by ordinary people in community
gatherings, such as school board meetings (Tracy, 2010).
CONCLUSIONS
This chapter traced the trajectory of political communication research, describing mile
stones, critical junctures, the current zeitgeist (or consensus about scholarly effects),
and research methods used to test hypotheses. Emphasizing that the history of a field of
study is not a boring, straight-line summation of facts, the discussion tracked political
communication's zigzag path of historical development, from late 19th-century theoret
ical speculations about media and crowd behavior through Lippmann's path-breaking
observations about the power of media to mold public opinion, coupled with criticisms
that his elitist focus neglected the role played by citizen dialogue. As the new field
took a tum toward propaganda analysis, political media research seemed to upend the
assumption of powerful media effects by documenting that the political press exerted
only a modest impact on voting, emphasizing instead the role played by interpersonal
influence and opinion leadership. Based on research of the 1940s and '50s, researchers
News !s also~ general calegory. What type of news? Fox? MSNBC? Politico? An arn
gamat1on of mfonnation seen on Facebook? If you ask respondents about their onljal.
news use, what exactly d~ you ~ean? A newspaper website, a CNN report, or a sen ne
of posts. on r:acebook, which might not be news at all but opinionated statements Wies
supportive videos attached? A decidedly fake news report? You need a clear d fi •.
th
f I
. . I I e nit1on
o po 1tlca news t mt meels journalistic canons.
Specificity is a cardinal virtue in research and when it comes to measu
. . b , rernent
1t 1s est to develop precise, validated measures of news exposure. This i .
nently doable, and there is considerable contemporary research to guide instr:::~;
development, as Hoffman and Young (2011) note. The payoff is that more fine
tu_ned measures could help you i:nake a stronger case to your politically apatheti~
friends that news has a salutary impact on knowledge. Of course you would I
need to dev_elop a scientifically reliable and valid measure of pubiic affairs kno3:~
edge. Happily, recent refinements in political communicalion survey research have
enabled researcl~ers to make more specific and precise statements about cognitive
and related ~edta effects (e.g., Eveland & Morey, 2011; Hayes, Preacher, & Myers
2011; Kensk1, Gottfried, & Jamieson, 20 J 1 ). '
Certain pro_ble~s still bedevil researchers who study polilical media impact. Respon
dent~ ma~ indicate on a survey that they learned a candidate's issue position frorn
presidential debate, believing this is where they gleaned the infonnation. But th a
I . d I · ey
ma~ 1ave acquire t 1e mfonnation from news of the debate or a conversation with
a friend who attended closely to the debate. The survey infonnation would therefore
overstate news media effects. The trick is to tease out the particular factor that caused
an effect and empirically demonstrate that news exposure is causally related to politi
~al knowledge-a complex, but important, issue. There are ways to home in on these
1ssu~s, a.nd there are several additional research strategics that can help pinpoint com
munication effects (see Box 3.1 ).
BOX 3.1 ADDITIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
METHODOLOGIES
More than 40 years ago, when the modern field of political communication
was launched (Chaffee, 1975), the discipline lacked the methodology and
tech_nology to zoom in on a number of important issues. Over the past decades,
the intellectual horizons of the field have expanded, and with this have com
l
.f • ea
pro I erat1on of new and improved methods (Kosicki et al 2011) Th · I d . ., . ese rnc u e.
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 89
· darY analysis, a technique that allows researchers to reanalyze
Se~on
I
data sets with a particular focus or innovative twist (Holbert &
neuona
it1ielowski, 2011 );
H groups in which a trained leader coordinates a group interview that
Focus ' .
• Id rich insights on a variety of topics. such as how people talk about
can y1e .
politics in evervday life, why many young people do not vote, and reactions
to political ads (Jarvis, 2011 ); . . . . .
Multiple strategies to explore communication that occurs m deltberat1ve
•
11188
tings. This includes systematic analysis of discussion at a school board ,
11188
ting or town hall forum, as well as post-meeting follow-up interviews
with participants (Black, Burkhalter, Gastil, & Stromer-Galley, 2011 ); and
• psychophysiological measures of heart rate, facial muscle activation, brain
imaging and other bodily arousal that occurs while watching candidate
speeches and negative political ads (Bucy & Bradley, 2011 ).
Complementing these approaches, rhetorical and discourse-focused scholars
study political communication with more qualitative methods. Although these
leek the precision of scientific techniques, they can illuminate the rich tableau
of political communication, as practiced by leaders and activists. Campbell and
Jamieson (2008) call on elements of classical political rhetoric in delineating
characteristics of presidential inaugural addresses, State of the Union speeches,
war rhetoric, and national eulogies. Other scholars have employed discourse
analysis to offer insights into communicative practices and sometimes
contradictory political beliefs expressed by ordinary people in community
gatherings, such as school board meetings (Tracy, 2010).
CONCLUSIONS
This chapter traced the trajectory of political communication research, describing mile
stones, critical junctures, the current zeitgeist (or consensus about scholarly effects),
and research methods used to test hypotheses. Emphasizing that the history of a field of
study is not a boring, straight-line summation of facts, the discussion tracked political
communication's zigzag path of historical development, from late 19th-century theoret
ical speculations about media and crowd behavior through Lippmann's path-breaking
observations about the power of media to mold public opinion, coupled with criticisms
that his elitist focus neglected the role played by citizen dialogue. As the new field
took a tum toward propaganda analysis, political media research seemed to upend the
assumption of powerful media effects by documenting that the political press exerted
only a modest impact on voting, emphasizing instead the role played by interpersonal
influence and opinion leadership. Based on research of the 1940s and '50s, researchers
l
90 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
concluded that political media had minimal effects. This perspective, epitomized by
Klapper's (1960) conclusions, proved controversial, rankling scholars who believed
media exerted a preeminent role in politics. With the diffusion of television, apparent
inHuences of political news, widespread popular belief in media impact, and growing
scientific evidence of strong political communication influences, Klapper's limited
effects model fell by the wayside, supplanted by a model that emphasized the direct,
indirect, subtle, micro, and macro ways media inHuence politics.
Reviewing the history of political communication scholarship, one glimpses twists and
turns as well as continuities. As will be discussed throughout this book, political media
decidedly influence our pictures of the world, molding ideas, and helping us construct
beliefs about politics. Interpersonal inHuence, an old concept that became passe in the
970s and '80s as television exerted significant effects (and the field sought to define
itself in tenns of primordial media impact), has become important again. We live in an
era of social networks, where communication that occurs online has accoutrements of
old•style interpersonal communication. In an era of social networks and online opin.
ion configurations, socially mediated opinion leadership and infonnation flows can
inHuence political participation, while also reinforcing selective exposure to politically
congruent infonnation. Political media exert a wealth of effects, but-packaging old
political communication wine in new online bottles-refinements of Klapper's view
have some support. Political media intersect with preexisting attitudes, reinforcing atti
tudes in politically consequential ways.
Over the years, researchers have documented a multitude of political communication
effects, such as agenda-setting, framing, and persuasion that results from cognitive pro
cessing of electoral messages. These concepts departed from the original social psycho
logical focus of the field, pointing to the ways that mediated communication processes
and effects explain the dynamics of political communication. There continue to be
lively debates about whether political media exert strong or modest impacts, the extent
to which messages infonn or mislead the public, and, in a vibrant social media age, the
degree to which media are echo chambers mirroring what we already believe, or expose
us to divergent points of view, broadening our range of political beliefs.
The chapter emphasized the social scientific underpinnings of political communi
cation and scholars' commitment to accumulating a body of empirical knowledge.
Theory, hypotheses, and a host of research methods guide political communication
inquiries. Rigorous tests of hypotheses allow us to advance theory and build a body
of knowledge of political communication effects. There are always limits, a function
of the difficulties of studying ongoing media effects over the course of a campaign,
convincingly establishing causality, wrestling with unreliable measures, and grap
pling with the temptation of overgeneralizing empirical results (Kosicki et al., 2011 ).
Imperfect as methods are, they do yield interesting, scientifically based insights about
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 91
•. al communication. And while our research cannot answer ''ought'' questions,
:~;•;lnrify issues, pinpoint falsehoods, and offer broad insights about the quality of
t mporary democracy.
cone
REFERENCES
-Arceneaux, K. (2010). The benefits of experimental methods for the study of campaign effects.
Political Co1111111111icalion, 27, 199-215.
Babbie, E. (2004). The practice of social research (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
Becker, L.B., McCombs, M.E., & McLeod, J.M. (1975). The development of political cogni
tions. In S. 1-1. Chaffee (Ed.), Po/ilical comm1micatio,r Stralegiesfor research (pp. 2 l--{i3).
Newbul}' Park, CA: Sage.
Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2008). A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of
political communication. Journal of Con111111nicalio11, 58, 707-731.
Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S.(2010). The shilling foundations of political communication: Respond
ing to a defense of the media effects paradigm. Journal ofC011111111nicatio11, 60, 35-39.
Benoit, W.L. (2011). Content analysis in political communication. In E.P. Bucy & R. L. Holbert
(Eds.), The sourcebookfor politico/ co1111mmicalion re:;earch: /1-/ethods, mea.mrcs, and ana
lytical techniques (pp. 268-279). New York: Routledge.
Berelson, B., Laz.arsfeld, P. F., & McPhee, W.N. ( 1954). Voting: A s111dy of opinion formation in
a presidential campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bineham, J.L. (1988). A historical account of the hypodennic model in mass communication.
Comnumication /l/011ographr, 55, 230-246.
Black, L. W., Burklmller, S., Gastil, J., & Stromer-Galley, J. (2011). Methods for analyzing and
measuring group deliberation. In E. P. Bucy & R. L. Holbert (Eds.), 11,e sourcebook for
political comm1111icatio11 research: .Methods, mea.mres, and analytical techniques (pp. 323-
345). New York: Routledge.
Boulianne, S. (2009). Docs Internet use affect engagement? A meta-analysis of research. Politi
cal Communication, 26, 193-211.
Bucy, E. P., & Bradley, S. D. (2011 ). What the body can tell us about politics: The use of psycho
physiological measures in political communication research. In E. P. Bucy & R. L. Holbert
(Eds.), The .mwr:ebookfor political comm1111ication re.rearch: /l/etl10df, measm'l!s, and ana
lytical tech11iq11es (pp. 525-540). New York: Routledge.
Cnmpbell, K.K., & Jamieson, K.H. (2008). Presidellls c1l!ating the presidency: Deedr done in
wonls. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cantril, H., Gaudet, H., & l-lcrzog, H. ( 1940). T'1e inmsio11fi'om Mar.r: A .rlllcly in tl1e psycholoro,
of panic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Carey, J. W. (1995). The press, public opinion, and public discourse. In T.L. Glasser & C.T. Salmon
(Eds.), Public opinion and the com1111111ication of comelll (pp. 373-402). New York: Guilford.
Chaffee, S. H. (Ed.). ( 1975). Political comnumicatio11: Issues and strategies for Research. Bev
erly Hills, CA: Sage.
Chaffee, S. H., & Hochheimer, J. L. ( 1985). The beginnings of political communication research in
the United States: Origins of the "limited effects" model. In M. Gurevitch & M. R. Levy (Eds.),
Mru.r con11111mication re1•iew yearbook (Vol. 5, pp. 75-104), Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
90 Part 2 • Concepts and Effects
concluded that political media had minimal effects. This perspective, epitomized by
Klapper's (1960) conclusions, proved controversial, rankling scholars who believed
media exerted a preeminent role in politics. With the diffusion of television, apparent
inHuences of political news, widespread popular belief in media impact, and growing
scientific evidence of strong political communication influences, Klapper's limited
effects model fell by the wayside, supplanted by a model that emphasized the direct,
indirect, subtle, micro, and macro ways media inHuence politics.
Reviewing the history of political communication scholarship, one glimpses twists and
turns as well as continuities. As will be discussed throughout this book, political media
decidedly influence our pictures of the world, molding ideas, and helping us construct
beliefs about politics. Interpersonal inHuence, an old concept that became passe in the
970s and '80s as television exerted significant effects (and the field sought to define
itself in tenns of primordial media impact), has become important again. We live in an
era of social networks, where communication that occurs online has accoutrements of
old•style interpersonal communication. In an era of social networks and online opin.
ion configurations, socially mediated opinion leadership and infonnation flows can
inHuence political participation, while also reinforcing selective exposure to politically
congruent infonnation. Political media exert a wealth of effects, but-packaging old
political communication wine in new online bottles-refinements of Klapper's view
have some support. Political media intersect with preexisting attitudes, reinforcing atti
tudes in politically consequential ways.
Over the years, researchers have documented a multitude of political communication
effects, such as agenda-setting, framing, and persuasion that results from cognitive pro
cessing of electoral messages. These concepts departed from the original social psycho
logical focus of the field, pointing to the ways that mediated communication processes
and effects explain the dynamics of political communication. There continue to be
lively debates about whether political media exert strong or modest impacts, the extent
to which messages infonn or mislead the public, and, in a vibrant social media age, the
degree to which media are echo chambers mirroring what we already believe, or expose
us to divergent points of view, broadening our range of political beliefs.
The chapter emphasized the social scientific underpinnings of political communi
cation and scholars' commitment to accumulating a body of empirical knowledge.
Theory, hypotheses, and a host of research methods guide political communication
inquiries. Rigorous tests of hypotheses allow us to advance theory and build a body
of knowledge of political communication effects. There are always limits, a function
of the difficulties of studying ongoing media effects over the course of a campaign,
convincingly establishing causality, wrestling with unreliable measures, and grap
pling with the temptation of overgeneralizing empirical results (Kosicki et al., 2011 ).
Imperfect as methods are, they do yield interesting, scientifically based insights about
Chapter 3 • Study of Political Communication 91
•. al communication. And while our research cannot answer ''ought'' questions,
:~;•;lnrify issues, pinpoint falsehoods, and offer broad insights about the quality of
t mporary democracy.
cone
REFERENCES
-Arceneaux, K. (2010). The benefits of experimental methods for the study of campaign effects.
Political Co1111111111icalion, 27, 199-215.
Babbie, E. (2004). The practice of social research (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
Becker, L.B., McCombs, M.E., & McLeod, J.M. (1975). The development of political cogni
tions. In S. 1-1. Chaffee (Ed.), Po/ilical comm1micatio,r Stralegiesfor research (pp. 2 l--{i3).
Newbul}' Park, CA: Sage.
Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2008). A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of
political communication. Journal of Con111111nicalio11, 58, 707-731.
Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S.(2010). The shilling foundations of political communication: Respond
ing to a defense of the media effects paradigm. Journal ofC011111111nicatio11, 60, 35-39.
Benoit, W.L. (2011). Content analysis in political communication. In E.P. Bucy & R. L. Holbert
(Eds.), The sourcebookfor politico/ co1111mmicalion re:;earch: /1-/ethods, mea.mrcs, and ana
lytical techniques (pp. 268-279). New York: Routledge.
Berelson, B., Laz.arsfeld, P. F., & McPhee, W.N. ( 1954). Voting: A s111dy of opinion formation in
a presidential campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bineham, J.L. (1988). A historical account of the hypodennic model in mass communication.
Comnumication /l/011ographr, 55, 230-246.
Black, L. W., Burklmller, S., Gastil, J., & Stromer-Galley, J. (2011). Methods for analyzing and
measuring group deliberation. In E. P. Bucy & R. L. Holbert (Eds.), 11,e sourcebook for
political comm1111icatio11 research: .Methods, mea.mres, and analytical techniques (pp. 323-
345). New York: Routledge.
Boulianne, S. (2009). Docs Internet use affect engagement? A meta-analysis of research. Politi
cal Communication, 26, 193-211.
Bucy, E. P., & Bradley, S. D. (2011 ). What the body can tell us about politics: The use of psycho
physiological measures in political communication research. In E. P. Bucy & R. L. Holbert
(Eds.), The .mwr:ebookfor political comm1111ication re.rearch: /l/etl10df, measm'l!s, and ana
lytical tech11iq11es (pp. 525-540). New York: Routledge.
Cnmpbell, K.K., & Jamieson, K.H. (2008). Presidellls c1l!ating the presidency: Deedr done in
wonls. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cantril, H., Gaudet, H., & l-lcrzog, H. ( 1940). T'1e inmsio11fi'om Mar.r: A .rlllcly in tl1e psycholoro,
of panic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Carey, J. W. (1995). The press, public opinion, and public discourse. In T.L. Glasser & C.T. Salmon
(Eds.), Public opinion and the com1111111ication of comelll (pp. 373-402). New York: Guilford.
Chaffee, S. H. (Ed.). ( 1975). Political comnumicatio11: Issues and strategies for Research. Bev
erly Hills, CA: Sage.
Chaffee, S. H., & Hochheimer, J. L. ( 1985). The beginnings of political communication research in
the United States: Origins of the "limited effects" model. In M. Gurevitch & M. R. Levy (Eds.),
Mru.r con11111mication re1•iew yearbook (Vol. 5, pp. 75-104), Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
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