Communication, Media & Politics in the Anthropocene

Shifting Ideas, Shifting Opinion, Shifting Policy
Posts tagged "Media Effects"

Online News and the End of Political Disagreement

As our political and media systems rapidly evolve, social scientists are revisiting and updating existing models, theories, and methods for investigating the effects of the media on political attitudes and behavior.  Among topics, understanding the relationship between media and political polarization remains perhaps the most complex and challenging. For the forthcoming 2012 edition of Communication Yearbook, an...

Study Maps the Relationship Between Cable News and Climate Change Perceptions

A new study finds that Fox News tends to feature guests who doubt the reality of climate change and stories that dismiss the need for action, while CNN and MSNBC tend to feature guests who assert the reality of climate change and the need for action.  Interestingly, however, Fox tends to devote more attention to...

Public Opinion and Participation in the Climate Change Debate

Public opinion about climate change, observes the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin, can be compared to “waves in a shallow pan,” easily tipped with “a lot of sloshing but not a lot of depth.” In a recently published chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, I review research that provides several explanations...

Do Our Media Choices Today Simply Reflect Our Political Identities?

-Guest post by Sarah Merritt, American University doctoral student. Do people seek news and information through environments on the Web that strongly align with their political identity? Do we always selectively expose ourselves to ideologically like-minded news coverage and selectively avoid information that does not align with our preexisting attitudes? Understanding the nature of political...