News and Public Opinion

Fall Trimester 2001

Instructor: Dr. Susan Banducci

Study Questions for Take Home Midterm Exam

 

Use the following questions to prepare for the take home exam. Questions on the exam may not be exactly as they appear on this sheet; the actual exam questions may be rearranged, cut down or merged with other questions from the list. The take-home exam will be available on 7 November in class or at the course web page.

The length of your answer does matter but good answers will answer all of the sub-questions covered in the broader question, will refer to the required readings and provide critical analysis of the issues addressed. In answering questions you should consider the entire list of required readings. Some questions will point obviously to a set of readings from a particular day but most will require consideration of a much wider range of readings. Also refer to your notes. In other words, the more readings that you can reference in your answer the better. Also, assertions that are presented as statements of fact must be referenced. Statements that are clearly your evaluations of other’s research do not need to be referenced. For example, if you claim that most people learn more from newspapers than television (or people who read newspapers are more knowledgable), you should refer to Chaffee and Kanihan 1996 and Newton 1999. If your evaluation is that these findings may suffer from the problem of self-selection (more knowledgable people turn to newspapers rather than newspapers making people smarter) and can only be addressed with experiments or survey panel data, you do not need a reference for this.

  1. What are the different meanings of public opinion? Illustrate the different meanings with examples from the list of readings.
  2. There are many different methods for measuring and studying public opinion such as content analysis, survey research, focus groups and experiments. Within survey research there are many different designs that are used such as cross-sections and panel surveys. Describe the different methods for measuring public opinion and illustrate the advantages/disadvantages of each method by referring to the readings. For example, is it impossible to measure opinions because of the problem of non-attitudes (lack of meaningful opinions) and measurement error (question effects). Discuss how each method or design can help our understanding of how the news media can affect public opinion.
  3. Discuss the role of political knowledge/awareness in the formation of public opinion. What media factors (such as news watching, public service broadcasting preference, etc.) influence levels of political knowledge and how does knowledge influence public opinion? How can knowledge or awareness influence the relationship between the news and public opinion?
  4. Define frames and framing effects. Why are framing effect important? How does framing differ from agenda-setting and priming effects? What frames are dominant in coverage of European political issues such as the Euro? According to the required reading, does the frame used depend on the medium (television vs. newspapers) or the issue covered?
  5. There are many different indicators of civic engagement, social capital and malaise. Describe how these are measured (the indicators or variables used) and then discuss how television and other media can influence these indicators of social capital, civic engagement and malaise. What is the evidence that TV erodes social capital or causes malaise? Does newspaper reading contribute to malaise? Do tabloids contribute to malaise? Are we seeing declining civic engagement in European countries? If social capital is declining, should we be concerned?
  6. A lot of the readings discuss the "minimal effects" model of media effects on public opinion (for example see pages 4-6 and 99-102 in On Message and Iyengar, Peters and Kinder p. 848). Describe what is meant by "minimal effects". Would you agree that the media have only a minimal effect on public opinion? What is the evidence for a minimal effect? What is the evidence for a not so minimal effect? Do you agree or disagree that media have minimal effects on public opinion? Why or why not?
  7. Describe the two-message model of opinion formation? In your answer pay attention to the role of values, political awareness (knowledge), exposure to media, elite opinion and media in the formation of public opinion. Consider why people with different values and different levels of political awareness may respond differently to news media messages.
  8. Consider the following public opinion trend:

    9. [source: Gallup Poll News Service, downloaded 1 November 2001 (www.gallup.com)]

    This graph shows the percent of people approving (top line) and the percent disapproving of George W. Bush (the current president of the U.S.) from February 1-4, 2001 until October 19-21, 2001. What accounts for the dramatic increase in approval decrease in disapproval (see September 14-15)? Obviously, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon happened between the measurement of approval on September 7-10 and the measurement of approval on September 14-15. However, as political communication scholars we should seek to explain this phenomenal shift in support for the president among U.S. citizens. Apply the spiral of silence (Noelle-Nuemann), two-message model (Zaller) and even priming (Iyengar, Peters and Kinder) theories to the change in distributions of opinions in the above figures. Are there any other theories we could apply? Do any of these theories adequately explain the shift in opinion?

  9. Describe agenda-setting theory (focus on the agenda of the media and the agenda of the public). Compare Table 8.1 from On Message (p. 119) to Tables 1 and 2 (p. 852) in Iyengar, Peter and Kinder’s article "Experimental Demonstrations of the ‘Not-so-minimal’ Effects of Television News Programs." Both are results for experiments testing agenda setting effects. What is the evidence in favor or against agenda-setting effects in each of the studies? On Message concludes that the "public followed its own agenda" (p. 128) while Iyengar, Peters and Kinder write, "We have shown that by ignoring some problems and attending to others, television news programs profoundly affect which problems viewers take seriously" (p. 855). By examining the design, issues, etc., explain why the results from the two studies may differ.