The Effects of Political Talk Radio On Political Attitude Formation: Exposure Versus Knowledge

The effects of political news on the mass audience are usually difficult to establish empirically. Recent models of mass communication effects have held that political knowledge is a better indicator of media reception than traditional measures of exposure. This claim is tested in two studies of attitudes toward Democratic and Republican leaders during the 1996 U.S. presidential primary campaigns. The impact of messages from three types of political talk radio (PTR) is examined: Rush Limbaugh, other conservative hosts, and liberal/moderate hosts. Political knowledge and exposure to talk radio are found to be equally good predictors of attitudes toward political leaders when studied separately. However, when tested against one another, exposure is the more effective measure. Agreement between Rush Limbaugh's messages and his audience's attitudes toward political figures is consistent and strong. Biased processing of PTR content by audience members with partisan predispositions contrary to those of the host is also examined.     

Book Review

Theorists have argued that discussion and disagreement are essential components of sound public opinion, and indeed that both are necessary for effective democracy. But their putative benefits have not been well tested. Consequently, this article examines whether disagreement in political conversation contributes to opinion quality--specifically, whether it expands one's understanding of others' perspectives. Data are drawn from a survey of the American public ( N = 1,684) conducted in February and March 2000. Open-ended survey measures of "argument repertoire"--reasons people can give in support of their own opinions, as well as reasons they can offer to support opposing points of view--are examined in light of numerous explanatory variables, including the frequency of political conversation and exposure to disagreement. Results confirm the hypothesis that exposure to disagreement does indeed contribute to people's ability to generate reasons, and in particular reasons why others might disagree with their own views.     

News,Talk, Opinion,Participation: The Part Played by Conversation in Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy can be defined as a political system based on citizens' free discussion of public issues. While most scholars have discussed deliberative democracy normatively, this study attempts to test the validity of a model of deliberative democracy through examining the interrelationships among its four components: newsmedia use, political conversation, opinion formation, and political participation. Sufficient empirical evidence was found to support the hypotheses that (a) news-media use is closely associated with the frequency of political conversation in daily life both at general and issue-specific levels; (b) willingness to argue with those who have different opinions is influenced by majority perceptions and by news-media use and political talk; (c) news-media use and political conversation have positive effects on certain measures of the quality of opinions (argument quality, consideredness, and opinionation) and perhaps on opinion consistency; and (d) news-media use and political conversation are closely associated also with participatory activities, but more so with "campaigning" than "complaining."     

Values,Communication Behavior,and Political Participation

This article examines how communication patterns mediate the influences of values on political participation. We find that the positive effects of postmaterial values on participation are mediated through reading public affairs content in newspapers. In contrast, materialist values negatively affect participation through watching television entertainment. Interpersonal discussion in which disagreement occurs mediates both the positive effect of reading public affairs and the negative effect of materialism on political participation. We also provide what may be a better explanation of the influence of communication patterns on political participation by going beyond acquisition of factual political knowledge. We show that individuals' efforts to think about news and search for additional information and perspectives modify what people "get from" media. Reflecting about news and integrating information from various sources promote better understanding of the political world and may provide a stronger cognitive base for political participation than factual political knowledge.     

From Top-Down to Trickle-Up Influence: Revisiting Assumptions About the Family in Political Socialization

A growing number of theorists are calling for a revival of research on political socialization based on the premise that children are active in their own civic development. We advance this argument a step further by proposing a model of family communication that reverses the roles of parents and children as conventionally understood in political socialization. Adolescent children are not merely receptive to political stimulation; they possess the power to transform patterns of family communication in ways that benefit themselves and their parents. We first challenge a series of interrelated assumptions about the nature and direction of influence in the family. We then document evidence of "trickle-up influence," in which child-initiated discussion--stimulated by a civics curriculum--prompts the parent to increase her civic competence via increased news media use, knowledge gain, and opinion formation. The parent's response reflects her desire to maintain a leadership role in the family, and more important from a theoretical perspective, it reveals the intrinsic forces of family adaptation that can make the home a powerful incubator of citizenship. Political growth occurs when the family system adjusts to reestablish equilibrium in response to exogenous factors or developmental needs that propel change. The ultimate purpose of this essay is to propose a functional model of family political communication. We apply theoretical perspectives from developmental literature to illustrate how political communication serves the family goals of autonomy and cohesion during various stages of the family life cycle.     

Setting the Public Sphere in Motion: The Rhetoric of Political Bumper Stickers in Israel

Most members of the public have little opportunity to express political opinions via a mass medium. Political automobile bumper stickers provide such a possibility and can constitute a revival of Habermas's notion of the public sphere. This article examines how such bumper stickers function in the case of Israel, where political bumper stickers have become a ubiquitous medium of communication, expressing complex national-ideological messages that reflect individual opinions on a mass scale. Four elements have combined to bring about the development of this openly accessible political medium for the expression of public opinion: Israel's volatile political situation, a cultural predisposition to verbal expression on political topics, dramatic changes in the communication climate, and the particular status of cars and attitudes toward driving in the country. This mobile rhetoric has been used to set the public sphere in motion, reflecting five factors that account for the dynamism of the medium: the physical circulation of the messages on cars; the dialogic interaction and renegotiation of previously established ideological premises; the reflection, introduction, and maintenance of topics on the public agenda; the taking of power by the people; and the performative act of public expression.     

Political culture in Turkey: Connections among attitudes toward democracy,the military and Islam

Against the background of Turkey's continuing but unconsolidated democratic transition, this article examines the nature and determinants of attitudes toward democracy held by ordinary Turkish citizens. Using data from the World Values Survey conducted in Turkey in 1997, it seeks to contribute to a growing body of literature concerned with the relationship between political culture and democratization. Although this relationship has not been fully explicated, the authors share the view of those scholars who believe that the existence of democratic attitudes and values among a country's population is no less important than are democratic institutions and procedures for advancing and eventually consolidating a democratic transition. Accordingly, the study seeks to shed light on the following interrelated questions: To what extent does the Turkish population hold attitudes supportive of democracy? What are the most important determinants of popular support for democracy? What factors account for any observed variance in relevant political attitudes? What is the relationship between attitudes toward the military and attitudes toward democracy and governance? What is the relationship between personal religious attachments and attitudes toward democracy and governance?     

Political and ideological aspects in the measurement of democracy: the Freedom House case

While several studies have dealt with methodological aspects of measuring democracy, little attention has been devoted to the political and ideological issues that affect the construction and structure of these measuring instruments. The aim of this study is twofold: in analysing the cultural and economic dimensions of the Freedom House (FH) organization, it seeks to delineate the political background of FH, thus underlining its neoconservative bias. Secondly, by focusing on the changes over time in the checklists used by FH to measure democracy, this study aims to analyse to what extent these changes are ideologically driven, in particular, to what are they linked to the neoliberal paradigm. Indeed, the hypothesis is that the construction of FH's scales has been affected by the neoliberal climate in which they were conceived. In the first part, the work reconstructs the academic debate about FH's scales and the historical and political context which brought to the affirmation of neoliberal democracy. It also provides a discussion regarding the importance of measurement as a political tool. In the second part, the study provides an analysis of FH through the reconstruction of its political-ideological profile, beginning with the formation of FH to its current internal culture. The third part provides an analysis of the checklists used by FH for measuring democracy. Our findings show that because of the changes in methodology and the strict interconnection between methodological and political aspects, FH data do not offer an unbroken and politically neutral time series, such that their use for cross-time analyses both for research and policy is questionable.     

Mauritania: Political Parties,Neo-patrimonialism and Democracy

This article takes issue with those analyses of ‘developmental democracy’ which treat popular participation as a clamorous inconvenience to be managed in the interests of economic efficiency. Instead it asks what follows from prioritizing participation both as a defining feature of democracy, and as an integral part of what is meant by development.

The analysis is developed in two parts. The first contrasts the narratives of popular and of liberal democracy, showing how they come to different conclusions about participation and its role in development. But it also argues there are potential complementarities. These were obscured when socialist ‘people's democracies’ were (misleadingly) seen as popular alternatives to liberal democracy. Since the end of the cold war, however, the focus has been on democratizing liberal democracy, to ensure it is responsive to the needs of citizens, as active participants in development and not just targets of state policy, rather than on whole system alternatives.

The second part reviews the experience of popular democratic experiments in Tanzania and Nicaragua, which sought to extend participation beyond the confines of representative democracy, and to link it to participatory development. It might be read as a requiem for their apparent failure. But their vicissitudes also raise broader questions: about the contradictions between popular participation and ‘people's democracy'as a system of rule; concerning the structures and procedures (elections, political parties, civil society bodies, mass organizations and so on) through which participation is organised; and about the problems of harmonizing participatory development with the management of complex national economies.     

Assessing Americans' Opinions About the News Media's Fairness in 1996 and 1998

This article reports an analysis of Americans' opinions about the news media's fairness in covering public affairs. The data come from the 1996 and 1998 National Election Studies, which contained variables tapping exposure to and opinions about the news media, as well as key political dispositions?partisanship, ideology, and opinion about presidential and congressional job performance?and a plethora of demographic variables. The data show that people who adhere to traditional moral codes and are misanthropic tend not to trust the news media to cover politics fairly. In a presidential election year, opinion about the president's job performance affects perceptions of the press's fairness. In an off-year election, however, opinion about the president's job performance is replaced by opinion about how the Congress has been doing its job. In addition, perception of how the media covered the Lewinsky scandal also influenced opinion about the press's fairness in general.     

Partisan News and Political Participation: Exploring Mediated Relationships

This study examines mediators of the relationship between news consumption and political participation in the contemporary news environment. We test the differential effects exerted by pro- and counter-attitudinal news compared with balanced news on intended participation. Our primary objective is to model three paths that may link news exposure and participation: cognitive (i.e., perceived issue understanding), affective (i.e., emotions evoked by a news story), and attitudinal (i.e., attitude strength). We compare these paths across four issues, testing which is strongest. Relying on a large survey-based experiment on a representative sample of the American population (N = 2,300), we find that pro-attitudinal exposure increases intended participation relative to balanced news exposure, while the effects of counter-attitudinal news do not differ from those exerted by balanced news. Issue understanding, anger, positive emotions, and attitude strength all mediate the relationship between pro-attitudinal exposure and intended participation, with the route via attitude strength being strongest. These effects do not depend on whether exposure is self-selected or experimentally assigned.     

Elections and political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article examines attempts to use electoral politics to promote substantive political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 1990 elections have been a key part of virtually all negotiated agreements to end civil wars. The utility of democracy for building peace is often asserted but rarely backed with long-term commitment and resources on the ground. Bosnia since 1996 is a rare exception. There, international actors sought not only to establish a democratic political system but to use electoral democracy as a tool with which to transform the nature of politics in Bosnia in short order. This article focuses on efforts to shape the development of political parties and the party system, assesses the degree to which it has succeeded and examines the broader implications of Bosnia's experience for other state-building efforts of its kind.     

Investors,turbulence, and transition: Democratic transition and foreign direct investment in nineteen developing countries

Do profit‐seeking foreign direct investors value a country's transition to democracy? If they do, they should vote with their pocketbooks, resulting in a post‐transition increase in foreign direct investment flows. This study attempts to uncover links between transition to democracy and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, In doing so, it addresses existing arguments about connections between democracy and investor behavior. The regions examined have not only experienced democratic transitions, they also account for the majority of the increasing flow of FDI to the developing world. This research employs time‐series cross‐sectional (TSCS) economic and political data, using ordinary least squares with panel corrected standard errors. The central finding is that transition to democracy has a negative effect on FDI. Secondarily, political instability and higher levels of democracy also deter foreign direct investors.     

Civil society and substantive democracy: Governance and the state of law in Belgium

Since the late 1980s, democratic institutions and an active civil society are being prescribed as important ingredients and preconditions to reduce poverty, social exclusion, and violent civil strife. Multi-party systems and elections are seen as the most important expressions of formal democracy. This paper argues that more attention is needed to substantive democracy, which requires a greater understanding of the various legal-political variants within a democratic framework. The paper discusses in some depth the crisis of governance in Belgium. The analysis raises questions about the relationship between 'political' and 'civil society', and between social movements and political parties.     

Why do some Arab citizens see democracy as unsuitable for their country?

Why do some Arab citizens regard democracy favourably but see it as unsuitable for their country? Modernization theory contends that economic development creates modern citizens who demand democracy. Cultural theories see Islam and democracy as incompatible. Government performance theories argue that citizens who perceive the current authoritarian government as acting in a transparent manner will demand greater democracy. I argue that attitudes toward democracy are shaped by beliefs about its political, economic, and religious consequences, including those related to sectarianism. I test this consequence-based theory using Arab Barometer data from six nations. Sixty percent hold favourable views of democracy generally and for their country, while 7% reject democracy. Twenty-seven percent support democracy generally but see it as unsuitable for their country. Beliefs that democracy will have negative consequences and perceptions of poor government performance are the most important predictors of democracy's unsuitability. Modernization theory receives support, but Islamic identity and beliefs do not consistently predict attitudes in the expected direction. These findings offer a more nuanced understanding of Arab public opinion and suggest that concerns about the consequences of free elections affect support for democracy as much as assessments of the political and economic performance of the current authoritarian regime.     

The Limits of Electoral Democracy in Ukraine

In the past two years Ukraine has held new elections for both its parliament and president. Some might claim that these elections are evidence of democratic progress. However, elections are only a necessary, not sufficient component of democracy, and to make judgements about democratic consolidation solely on the basis of elections is to fall victim to the fallacy of 'electoralism'. While it is true that Ukraine does possess an electoral democracy, democratic consolidation remains elusive and is susceptible to a variety of problems. These include a weak civil society and weak political parties, regional divisions, unstable political institutions and a lack of the rule of law. By some measures Ukraine may even have regressed from 1994, as an oligarchy has consolidated itself and authoritarian trends are readily discernible.     

Steven Chaffee and the Future of Political Communication Research

This article discusses four basic characteristics of Steven Chaffee's research: going beyond the "common research wisdom," careful explication of concepts, avoiding unsubstantiated charges against the media, and investigation of the social aspects of communication. The evolution of political socialization research is used as an example of how these characteristics have strengthened Chaffee's contribution to that area and to the larger field of political communication. It is argued that the future of this field would benefit from emulation of these characteristics. Continuing problems of political communication research are noted, and various emerging problems are discussed.     

Politics as Cultural Practice

This essay reflects on the notion of politics and political communication as a form of cultural practice. This requires locating political practice in both space and time and paying close attention to empirical details--"drawing what you see." These precepts are illustrated in a discussion of different practices of voting in American history. The author argues that the study of political communication should include finding and observing people doing, and not just expressing or thinking about, politics.     

Profiling candidate images in televised political spot advertisements for 1984: Roles and realities of presidential jousters at the height of the Reagan Era

Continued growth in the use of televised political spot advertisements in presidential campaigns justifies the increasing attention given to analyzing the role and content of such messages in the larger political system. The 1984 campaign offered a unique opportunity for theorists to investigate the potential for such messages either to reflect accurate images of candidates, or to evoke more dissonant themes between the images of candidates fabricated for the electorate, and the substantive candidates those images are intended to represent. This study analyzed the character attributes presented for ten presidential hopefuls in 201 televised spots, produced for 1984's primary and general election campaigns, and finds that while political spots can offer accurate portrayals of presidential candidates, the role of such messages can be nullified by perceived dissonance in the images they convey about their subjects.     

Democracy assistance and women's political empowerment in post-conflict countries

Democracy promoters around the world cling to the hope that assistance given to civil society organizations decreases the risk of civil war and will lead to democracy in post-conflict societies. A particularly promising segment of civil society in peacebuilding is women. Inspired by Welzel and Inglehart's “human empowerment: path to democracy” this study places democracy assistance to women in a broader mechanism which forms a theoretical foundation of this study. The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the author's insights from the fieldwork demonstrate that in order to assess the impact of democracy assistance on women's political empowerment the comprehensive women's political empowerment mechanism should be employed. The statistical examination, however, reveals that women's political activism is largely the function of legal empowerment and a country's political and socio-economic characteristics. The study also shows the limitations of current impact evaluation methodologies, and suggests better evaluation tools.