News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout

[dkf]

@jmartNYT: More on technology and self-selection of information > http://t.co/vZ4mQiyEzE WARNING: if read in one sitting, material can be...depressing

Markus Prior Princeton University

Despite dramatic increases in available political information through cable television and the Internet, political knowledge and turnout have not changed noticeably. To explain this seeming paradox, I argue that greater media choice makes it easier for people to find their preferred content. People who like news take advantage of abundant political information to become more knowledgeable and more likely to turn out. In contrast, people who prefer entertainment abandon the news and become less likely to learn about politics and go to the polls. To test this proposition, I develop a measure of people’s media content preference and include it in a representative opinion survey of 2,358 U.S. residents. Results show that content preference indeed becomes a better predictor of political knowledge and turnout as media choice increases. Cable TV and the Internet increase gaps in knowledge and turnout between people who prefer news and people who prefer entertainment.

http://www.princeton.edu/~mprior/Prior2005.News%20v%20Entertainment.AJPS.pdf

[Uncle Joe]

1. This seems to suggest that the assumptions from the Princeton Study are incorrect regarding

the diversification of information having an adverse effect on voter turnout.

The drop in Presidential voter turnout actually peaks in 1960 and begins dropping from that point onward, long before cable television grew to any sizable impact.

Furthermore voter turnout starts spiking upward again during the 90s as the Internet came in to being and from the last year of the graph has continually increased upward until 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections

Thanks for the thread, dkf.