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We live in an age of media saturation, where with a few clicks of
the remote - or mouse - we can tune in to programming where the
facts fit our ideological predispositions. But what are the
political consequences of this vast landscape of media choice?
Partisan news has been roundly castigated for reinforcing prior
beliefs and contributing to the highly polarized political
environment we have today, but there is little evidence to support
this claim, and much of what we know about the impact of news media
come from studies that were conducted at a time when viewers chose
from among six channels rather than scores. Through a series of
innovative experiments, Kevin Arceneaux and Martin Johnson show
that such criticism is unfounded. Americans who watch cable news
are already polarized, and their exposure to partisan programming
of their choice does not significantly change their initial
position. In fact, the opposite is true: viewers become more
polarized when forced to watch programming that opposes their
beliefs. A much more troubling consequence of the ever-expanding
media environment, the authors show, is that it has allowed people
to tune out the news: the four top-rated partisan news programs
draw a mere three percent of the total number of people watching
television. Overturning much of the conventional wisdom, Changing
Minds or Changing Channels? demonstrates that the strong effects of
media exposure found in past research are simply not applicable in
today's more saturated media landscape.
We live in an age of media saturation, where with a few clicks of
the remote - or mouse - we can tune in to programming where the
facts fit our ideological predispositions. But what are the
political consequences of this vast landscape of media choice?
Partisan news has been roundly castigated for reinforcing prior
beliefs and contributing to the highly polarized political
environment we have today, but there is little evidence to support
this claim, and much of what we know about the impact of news media
come from studies that were conducted at a time when viewers chose
from among six channels rather than scores. Through a series of
innovative experiments, Kevin Arceneaux and Martin Johnson show
that such criticism is unfounded. Americans who watch cable news
are already polarized, and their exposure to partisan programming
of their choice does not significantly change their initial
position. In fact, the opposite is true: viewers become more
polarized when forced to watch programming that opposes their
beliefs. A much more troubling consequence of the ever-expanding
media environment, the authors show, is that it has allowed people
to tune out the news: the four top-rated partisan news programs
draw a mere three percent of the total number of people watching
television. Overturning much of the conventional wisdom, Changing
Minds or Changing Channels? demonstrates that the strong effects of
media exposure found in past research are simply not applicable in
today's more saturated media landscape.
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