Browsing by Subject "Mass media and public opinion--United States"

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Agenda-setting effects as a mediator of media use and civic engagement : from what the public thinks about to what the public does
(2008-12) Moon, Soo Jung, 1965-; McCombs, Maxwell E.
This study attempts to explain reasons that underlie the positive correlation between media use and increased levels of engagement by relying upon the agenda-setting theory. The models set forth suggest the following sequence: News attention as influenced by several antecedent variables affects agenda-setting effects on the readers/viewers; in turn, agenda-setting effects trigger strong attitudes among the public and, finally, strong attitudes lead to various types of civic behaviors. The individual level of statistical analysis employed in this research is based on the 2004 ANES data along with a content analysis of stories from the New York Times and NBC’s Nightly News. Fit statistics of four models -- specifically, first-level newspaper, first-level TV, second-level newspaper and second-level TV -- indicated that all of the structural models were retainable, meaning that the hypothesized sequence reflects well the data. Especially, every direct effect along the chain - ranging from media use to agenda-setting, from agenda-setting to attitudes strength, and from attitudes strength to engagement - was significant. Indirect and total effects of agenda-setting for political and civic participation were all found to be significant. Agenda-setting effects operated as a mediator between media use and civic engagement, as hypothesized. In sum, the effects of agenda-setting may be viewed as related to both the behavioral and the cognitive levels so that: What the public thinks about something can be extended to what the public does about something.
Culture jamming: ideological struggle and the possibilities for social change
(2008-05) Nomai, Afsheen Joseph, 1969-; Kearney, Mary Celeste, 1962-
This dissertation examines the activities and texts of four groups of activists who use culture jamming as a tactic to challenge dominant ideologies as they advocate for progressive social, cultural and economic change. Culture jamming, as defined here, is a practice whereby texts critical of the status quo are created through the appropriation and/or mimicry of the aesthetics and/or language that are a part of popular, or at least widely experienced, culture. Exploring the work of the Yes Men, the Adbusters Media Foundation, the Billboard Liberation Front and the Illegal Art exhibit, I argue that through their culture jamming these activists take critical theory into practice as a part of their goal is to raise the critical consciousness of the public. Confronting the issues of globalization, consumerism, and the political economy of the media in the United States, these culture jammers aim to highlight aspects of domination and oppression in their view results primarily from the corporate control of culture and politics. Using theories of ideology and hegemony developed by Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams to guide my analysis, I trace how each of these groups develop, present, and promote their critique. I steer clear of discussing the effectiveness of these culture jammers, focusing instead on the actions they take and theorizing some of the possible challenges and limitations they face in light of their own experiences. Differing requirements of cultural capital and deeper contextual information for most, if not all, of these culture jamming activities can make them especially complex forms of activism. What becomes clear is that culture jamming may be a tactic best suited to the maintenance of an activist community of people who already hold a critical position, as the jammer’s challenges to dominant culture and ideologies can be lost because of the form of the critique, or marginalized or otherwise ignored by the mainstream media.
Feeling in the public sphere: a study of emotion, public discourse, and the law in the murders of James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard
(2006) Petersen, Jennifer Anne; Stein, Laura Lynn, 1965-; Downing, John (John Derek Hall)
The dissertation examines the role of affect within the spaces and institutions of democratic politics in the cases of two highly publicized moments of personal and collective trauma: the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, Barbara Koziak and Lauren Berlant as well as scholarship on discourse ethics, feminist political theory, public memory and commemoration, the dissertation traces and analyzes the role of affective discourse in the mediated discussion of each murder. It then analyzes how this affective discourse circulated into legislative publics and processes, looking at the way public feelings became a factor in legislating hate crime measures in the city of Laramie, Wyo. and in the state of Texas. The public mourning surrounding these men is analyzed as a site of political opinion formation and as a factor in the enactments of law. The work seeks to contribute to the tradition of media studies that emphasizes the role of community and ethics in communication, following scholars such as James Carey and John Durham Peters. Through analysis of the discourse and law-making surrounding the two murders, the dissertation argues for a critical analysis of affective discourse as a public, political phenomenon (rather than as an intrusion of the personal and private into the public realm). It seeks to question traditional uses of Habermas’ normative theory of the public sphere within media and communication studies, and to open questions about how normative ideas of democratic communication might better account for the impact of affect in politics.
Polls and voting behavior: the impact of polling information on candidate preference, turnout, and strategic voting
(2004) Giammo, Joseph Donald; Shaw, Daron R., 1966-
Public opinion polls have become an integral part of the coverage of presidential elections. The story of the campaign is often told through the lens of the horse-race; candidates are leading or trailing, gaining or losing ground in their efforts to capture the White House. These polls, which provides important information to the public about the views of their fellow citizens, may also serve to shape the opinions and actions of that public, particularly in determining which candidate to support, whether or not to show up on Election Day, and whether to vote sincerely or strategically. Using both an analysis of a well-established national survey over the past ten elections and the results of a set of experiments done at the University of Texas, this study examines the effects of polling information on those decisions, keeping in mind that not all individuals will to react to the same information in the same way. The results of this study indicate that while polls do have an impact on the opinions and behaviors of those exposed to them, the effects themselves are minimal, and tend to largely reinforce existing predispositions. Those who have already chosen a candidate to support in an election tend to use the poll results to reinforce those preferences. Potential voters who are exposed to information suggesting a close election are more likely to participate, but only marginally so. Individuals who are considering whether or not to vote for a third party candidate do react to the strength of that candidate in the polls, but seem unimpressed by the strategic situation. Overall, this study indicates that the strong emphasis by the media on the relative popularity of the candidates does not seem to make a significant difference in the actions of individuals, and thus in the results of presidential elections.
Rules of the agenda game: president's issue management, media's agenda setting and the public's representation
(2004) Choi, Young Jae; McCombs, Maxwell E.
This dissertation tests interactional agenda setting models of the presidency, the media and the public by examining changes in the president’s issue management, the media’s agenda setting influence and the public’s representation of national issues during the war time presidency of President George W. Bush (February, 2001 – August, 2003). Combining theories of agenda setting and priming strategy, we formulated a macro dynamic model of agenda setting to identify how a set of issues emerges from and circulates among the agendas of the president, the media and the public. vi Employing time series Vector Autoregression (VAR) analysis, we traced four primary issues -- war, economy, domestic and foreign issues -- during the George W. Bush presidency. We also identified determinants that influenced the presidential agenda, media agenda and public agenda. From the interactional agenda setting analysis, our data revealed that President Bush led the war issue, the media led the domestic issues, the public led the economy issue and the president and the media exchanged influences on foreign issue regardless of the public. In the communication strategy analysis, our data revealed that the president gave attention to domestic and economic issues to maintain his popularity, the media raised domestic issues as an alternative issue when presidential popularity declined, and the public persistently held to the economic issue even during wartime. The Cointegration Error Correction model identified the long-term equilibrium relationship between the public’s attention to the economy and presidential popularity. The model indicated that the public sent warning signs to the president when he was not in sync with the preferences of the public. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of this project’s findings from the viewpoint of democratic theory. Overall, American society appears to maintain a check and balance democracy through the media’s vii watchdog-oriented issue coverage and the public’s balanced warning signals toward the president, who increasingly maneuvers issue management to control his own popularity.
Toward an understanding of the cyclical formation of public opinion: presidential approval ratings and public opinion polls
(2005) Hong, Won-sik; Jensen, Robert, 1958-; Whitney, D. Charles (David Charles), 1946-
The goal of this study is to explore the influence of the news media on the cyclical formation process of public opinion with the case of presidential approval rating from the last forty years. To explore this relationship empirically, this study investigates the historical fluctuations of presidential approval ratings, which have been regularly measured since the 1950s, and how the New York Times’ presentation of the ratings has itself influenced public opinion on presidential popularity for the last forty years. To explore the causal relationship between the NYT and a series of presidential approval rates in two-ways, this study suggests two hypotheses of investigating the influence of convergence and change in presidential approval ratings on the NYT and two hypotheses of testing the additive/subtractive effect and volatility effect of the NYT reports on the following approval rating. The analysis of the relationship is conducted by using two statistical methods: First, in order to test the two hypotheses of investigating the influence of convergence and change in presidential approval rates on the NYT’s decision to report the approval rates, this study applies the quadratic regression model. Next, the influence of the NYT reports on the subsequent approval rates is investigated by applying time-series models. The statistical tests confirm that there exists a reciprocal relation between the NYT reports and public evaluation of presidential performance, and the relation results in the intensification of majority opinion and the increased volatility of public opinion. The findings of this study show: first, media sensitivity to a given issue varies over time: the convergence and change in public opinion raise the salience of the given issue; second, news selection does matter: news media provide unambiguous information but they are not an exact sample of the population; third, a simple cue makes a difference in individual statistical sense of the climate of public opinion. This study concludes that public opinion influence media attention, which, in turn, affect public opinion at a later date.