Media Effects: Public Information & Knowledge

Question 1

What is the first thing in the media ecosystem, and what is it followed by?

Answer 1

• Party identification (via socialisation)
  
  • ‘Stickiness’ of family
  • ‘Cognitive mobilisation’
    
    • As we get smarter, family matters less (in our identification)
    • So do parties
• Followed by the media

Question 2

What is the virtuous cycle?

Answer 2

• Why should we find a positive link between civic engagement and attention to news media?
• Selection effects
• Media effects
• Virtuous circle effects
  
  • If the disengaged do catch the news, they are likely to pay little attention. If they do, they are more likely to mistrust media sources of information

Question 3

What are the institutional-level predictors?

Answer 3

• Elections are ‘habit-building’
  
  • Compulsory voting
  • Frequency of elections
• Transaction costs of learning
  
  • How accessible is information?
  • Do parties have an incentive to inform?
• Regulatory environment
  
  • How hard is it to start/operate a media company?
  • Freedom on information

Question 4

What has a higher % of hard and international news?

Answer 4

Public broadcast

Question 5

Entertainment vs news?

Answer 5

• Incidental knowledge
  
  • Public service broadcasting norms taken seriously: higher frequency of hard news
  • News sources are primarily market driven: acquisition of hard news harder
• Role of preferences
  
  • Motivation, not ability, is the main obstacle that stands between and abundance of political information and a well to evenly informed public

Question 6

What are the choice paradoxes?

Answer 6

• More information = better information?
• Dyadic choices
  
  • Cable news vs ‘hard’ news
  • Entertainment vs any news
• Media ecology
  
  • Too many ‘media’?
  • Cognitive requirement to sort and assess competing information

Question 7

What is information curation?

Answer 7

• “Information galleries’
• Empowering vs unenlightening?
• Depends: incidental or preferential/purposeful learning

Question 8

What are the empirical findings of public information and knowledge?

Answer 8

• The interest reinforces the advantages of the most knowledgeable and fails to draw in the most politically uninterested: exacerbates current particapatory bias
• People select both hard and soft news sources on anticipated agreement
  
  • Selective Exposure
    
    • Rational, but perpetuates opinions
      
      • Only so many hours in the day
    • Leads to polarisation?
      
      • Intuitive, but near impossible to prove

Question 9

What are the democratic implications of public information and knowledge?

Answer 9

• Evidence suggests trend in media ‘reinforcement’ of knowledge
• What happens when citizens stop knowing or caring about politics?
• The ‘epistocratic’ alternative (be a Vulcan), or is apathy/ignorance a good thing?

Question 10

What are the implications of new me3dia for public info and knowledge?

Answer 10

• Continued/increased selective exposure
• Reinforeced gaps between ‘know lots’ and ‘know nothings’
• Potential for political polarisation