Auntie Knows Best? Public Broadcasters and Current Affairs Knowledge

Soroka, Stuart; Andrew, Blake; Aalberg, Toril; Iyengar, Shanto; Curran, James P.; Coen, Sharon; Hayashi, Kaori; Jones, Paul K.; Mazzoleni, Gianpetro; Rhee, June Woong; Rowe, David C.; Tiffen, Rod

doi:10.1017/s0007123412000555

Cited by 104 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…We found a consistent pattern in which publicly owned channels reported more public affairs news than private channels, and after controlling for other influences, A third study, this time based on eleven countries around the globe, again found that public service broadcasting (PSB) fostered higher levels of public affairs knowledge (SOROKA, 2013). Consumption of PSB news, in particular, seemingly gave rise to a mutually reinforcing dynamic of enhanced political knowledge, political interest and sense of political efficacy (CURRAN et al, 2014).…”

Section: Entertaining Democracy In the Era Of Neo-liberalismsupporting

confidence: 57%

Entertaining Democracy in the Era of Neo-Liberalism

Curran

2016

BJR

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INTROUDCTON -James Curran's article "Entertaining democracy in the Era of Neoliberalism" is an essay written from the 13th SBPJor Conference Meeting in Campo Grande in 2015; a conference in which he was the opening speaker. The article was approved for publication in the BJR at the end of 2015, but we have decided to publish it in a special edition of Journalism and Democracy as it deals precisely with this issue. Curran begins the article by questioning the current state of democracy as it pertains to the decline of the nation state and the emergence of transnational institutions of deliberation which he calls "multilevel governance" but "is not matched by the development of a multilevel sense of citizenship". As almost a prelude to the Brexit, Curran draws attention to the fact that the English do not consider themselves European despite being a part of the European Union. He tied this nationalist ideal not only to the British, but to other country populations in general. In a world dominated by transnational corporations and the presence and constancy of national media "supporting a national identity" he predicted that "Attempts at new institutional building are out of step with media development". His analysis highlights several problems that are weakening modern democracy like "the increasing centralization of power by political leaders" and the "increasingly unrepresentative nature of the political class rendering them in some countries almost a 'separate caste'". Reading Curran's text allows us to reflect on the situation in Brazil. At first, it is pessimistic and places meanings that we have lobbied for outside of our borders: "Governments are less able to govern; political power is becoming more centralized; and the unelected influence of big business is becoming greater". The media also has a hand in contributing towards a "growing sense of disconnection from politics", making reference to politics as a linear universe dominated by the elite. After further analysis of the contrasting possibilities that the Internet brings as well as its role in constructing news in public systems, Curran offers a slightly more positive outlook: "liberal democracy is in disrepair, and the media are implicated in its malaise. The rise of the internet offers some relief, as does an enduring political experiment -public service broadcasting." Once more, there is no way to not compare his perspective with what is happening in Brazil nowadays; we are fighting for the hope of building an effective and autonomous public system. Lastly, Curran places importance on starting to think about politics from new vantage points, especially for creating policies and media entertainment. Once again, we can see similarities in Brazil. This understanding is common among our researchers, such as the numerous research spaces which work on this correlation. But, after tracing a series of inferences on specific materials, Curran puts forth a direct and definite conclusion: "A healthy democracy needs to be informed as well as entertained". *By ...

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Section: Entertaining Democracy In the Era Of Neo-liberalismsupporting

confidence: 57%

Entertaining Democracy in the Era of Neo-Liberalism

Curran

2016

BJR

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“…Such scheduling strategies have major implications for the ease to which people find news on the most important and most widely watched channels. The strength of public service broadcasting also varies across countries (Tambini, 2015), which several comparative studies show has implications for the supply and the use of news and public affairs as well as for political knowledge Cushion, 2012;Fraile & Iyengar, 2014;Shehata, Hopmann, Nord, & Höijer, 2015;Soroka et al, 2013). Important to note is also that there is limited research on how the amount of political news has developed in individual media.…”

Section: Concern 1: Declining Amount Of Political Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aside from longitudinal studies, several comparative studies argue that the impact of choice and the commercialization of media on news media use and knowledge can be studied by investigating countries with different types of media system and political information environments, and thereby how levels of commercialization influence knowledge gaps Banducci et al, 2016;Curran et al, 2009;Fraile & Iyengar, 2014;Soroka et al, 2013). In addition, several studies investigate how exposure to commercial versus public service news may influence learning and knowledge gaps (Aarts & Semetko, 2003;Shehata et al, 2015;Strömbäck, 2016).…”

Section: Concern 6: Towards Increasing Inequalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is limited evidence suggesting that viewers learn from soft news and entertainment (Hahn, Iyengar, van Aelst, & Curran, 2012;Kim & Vishak, 2008), though some studies suggest that exposure to conflict and human interest frames, often associated with soft news, may increase learning among groups less interested in politics (Albaek et al, 2014). Several studies also show that public service news has stronger knowledge effects than commercial TV news Eveland & Scheufele, 2000;Fraile & Iyengar, 2014;Liu & Eveland, 2005;Shehata et al, 2015;Soroka et al, 2013;Strömbäck, 2016;Tewksbury, Weaver, & Maddex, 2001).…”

Section: Concern 6: Towards Increasing Inequalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

Aelst

Strömbäck

Aalberg

et al. 2017

Annals of the International Communication Association

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639

347

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During the last decennia media environments and political communication systems have changed fundamentally. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to review research on key changes and trends in political information environments and assess their democratic implications. We will focus on advanced postindustrial democracies and six concerns that are all closely linked to the dissemination and acquisition of political knowledge: (1) declining supply of political information, (2) declining quality of news, (3) increasing media concentration and declining diversity of news, (4) increasing fragmentation and polarization, (5) increasing relativism and (6) increasing inequality in political knowledge. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…First, media usage is not randomly distributed. This implies that high and low 5 media users (even of the same outlet) are likely to be different on factors, often unobserved, other than media usage (on this point see Levendusky, 2011;Soroka et al, 2013). If relevant variables are omitted in the empirical analysis, the purported relationship between media exposure and the dependent variable is likely to be biased (Morgan & Winship, 2007;Pearl, 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Model Choices in Observational Media Effects Research: A Systematic Review and Validation

Banducci¹,

Schoonvelde²,

Stevens³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Media effects research has produced mixed findings about the size and direction of the relationship between media consumption and public attitudes (e.g., Bartels, 1993). We investigate the extent to which model choices contribute to these inconsistent findings. Taking a comparative approach, we first review the use of different models in contemporary studies and their main findings. In order to extend and validate this review, we consider the implications for national election studies attempting to measure media effects in election campaigns and recreate these models with the British Election Study 2005-10 panel data. We compare the direction and size of effects of media content on attitude change across: between-subjects, withinelections models, in which the effects of individual-level variance in media exposure and content are assessed; within-subjects, within-elections models, which compare the effects of variance in media content for the same individual; and within-subjects, between-elections models that allow us to analyze the links between media content and exposure with attitude change over time. Our review shows some notable differences between models in terms of significance of effects (but not effect sizes). We corroborate this finding in the British campaign analysis. We conclude that to check the robustness of claims of media effects in observational data, where possible researchers should examine different model choices when evaluating media effects.Keywords : media exposure, media effects, within-subjects models, between-subjects models, between-elections models 1 Corresponding Author: mschoonvelde@gmail.com. 1For decades, researchers viewed the media as having a minimal effect on opinion and behavior (e.g., Klapper, 1960). Although more recent work has revised those conclusions the empirical record is still remarkably mixed, ranging from claims of "minimal effects" to "massive effects" (Barabas et al., 2015;Mondak, 1995;Zaller, 1996) to an apparent return to "minimal effects" (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008). With such heterogeneity in mind, Bartels described the body of research on media effects as "one of the most notable embarrassments of modern social science" (Bartels, 1993, p. 267), a state of affairs he attributed primarily to a combination of measurement error and the absence of longitudinal research designs capable of detecting media effects (see also Mondak, 1995). Zaller (2002) later raised an additional problem of research designs: the lack of attention to sample size, and in particular the power of different sample sizes to pick up even medium to large media effects on shifts in voting preferences. Research on media effects in observational studies since then has responded to these seminal critiques in paying close attention 2 This research has generally been focused on the US case but we draw on a range of country specific and cross-national studies which are increasing in number, with 2 Citation counts suggest that media effects researchers have focused more on Bartels' criticisms:...

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Auntie Knows Best? Public Broadcasters and Current Affairs Knowledge

Cited by 104 publications

References 64 publications

Entertaining Democracy in the Era of Neo-Liberalism

Entertaining Democracy in the Era of Neo-Liberalism

Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

Model Choices in Observational Media Effects Research: A Systematic Review and Validation

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