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Flashcards in Media Effects: Public Information & Knowledge Deck (10)
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1
Q

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

A
  • 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
2
Q

What is the virtuous cycle?

A
  • 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
3
Q

What are the institutional-level predictors?

A
  • 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
4
Q

What has a higher % of hard and international news?

A

Public broadcast

5
Q

Entertainment vs news?

A
  • 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
6
Q

What are the choice paradoxes?

A
  • 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
7
Q

What is information curation?

A
  • “Information galleries’
  • Empowering vs unenlightening?
  • Depends: incidental or preferential/purposeful learning
8
Q

What are the empirical findings of public information and knowledge?

A
  • 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
9
Q

What are the democratic implications of public information and knowledge?

A
  • 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?
10
Q

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

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