No abstract

Objectives. Few studies fully integrate the interactive effects of political, geographic, and media contexts into studies of public opinion on immigration. We rectify this by utilizing the post-Katrina Latino immigrant migration to Louisiana as an opportunity for study of these relationships. Methods. We utilize survey data and content analysis of news coverage to examine the influence of news exposure on attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. Results. Exposure to immigration news influences the relative importance of immigration to other issues, self-reported personal contact with Spanish-speaking populations, and perceptions of the legal status of immigrant populations. Conclusions. Local news coverage of immigration increases awareness and concern about immigration and heightened news exposure increases perceptions about personal interactions with Spanish-speaking populations. Additionally, local news coverage of immigration influences the importance of key characteristics of immigrant populations, particularly whether immigrants are here illegally. Tone of coverage, as opposed to amount, exerts the more consistent effect on immigrationrelated attitudes.Recent research suggests that media coverage and geography are important moderators of public opinion on immigration (Brader,

No abstract

In February, we published a JAMA Health Forum commentary outlining the role that we thought health care would play in the 2020 election. 1 Relying on our early 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Tracking Poll data and analysis of exit polling data from the Associated Press's AP VoteCast, we anticipated that health care would be a dominant issue of the election season, although not in the way that the debates over Medicare for All or a more incremental public option dominated the Democratic primaries. We expected instead a debate over general approaches to health care and the candidates trying to demonstrate that they best understood the strain that health care costs are having on American families. Other recent JAMA Health Forum posts have outlined views on health care among crucial groups of voters, including Black Americans 2 and rural residents. 3 But 2020 has been nothing if not unpredictable. In a year full of crises, discussions of health care policy have taken a back seat to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic, an

A great deal of scholarly work has explored the motivations behind media consumption and other various communication traits. However, little research has investigated the sources of these motivations and virtually no research considers their potential genetic underpinnings. Drawing on the field of behavior genetics, we use a classical twin design study to examine the genetic and environmental influences on nine communication behaviors. Our findings indicate a substantial portion of the total variance in media habits can be attributed to genes, as much as one-third of the variance in some instances. Mass communication scholars would benefit by paying closer attention to heritability when thinking about the causes as well as the consequences of media traits in contemporary society.Media consumption behaviors, comprised of observable acts of individual media exposure (LaRose, 2010), have been heavily studied in mass communication. Mainly described as the product of a conscious selection process, these behaviors have been understood using a multitude of seminal communication theories including the ''uses and gratifications'' (U&G) paradigm. Developed in the 1940s, U&G sought to address behavior indicated by audiences who seek out content from the media that provide them with specific experiences (Lowery & DeFleur, 1995). This article follows this formative research by examining an area frequently overlooked by media scholars-motivation. Scholars have provided ample evidence of how media use and other communication behaviors gratify a series of different motivations, yet current research is limited in its ability to explain the causes of these motivations. U&G theory has evolved and been applied to a variety of behaviors includingmost recently-Internet use. Throughout this evolution, motivation has remained a basic element of this research, although its sources are largely unexamined. While mass communication researchers develop the paradigm theoretically and broaden its empirical application, we still struggle to explain the origins of motivations underlying communication behaviors. And while scholars have linked media behaviors to specific