News and Public Opinion

Fall Trimester 2001

Instructor: Dr. Susan Banducci

Take Home Midterm Exam

 

Please read the instructions and questions carefully:

ANSWER ONLY THREE QUESTIONS. Answers must be typed and doubled spaced with at least a 2.54 cm margin (all around the page). Do not write more than 3 pages for each answer (do not exceed 9 pages for the entire exam).  Answers are due by 17.00, 9 November (Friday) in the instructor’s mailbox (OIH) or via e-mail (banducci@pscw.uva.nl, put “news and po exam” in subject and attach exam answers as a document). This take home exam counts 30% towards your final grade for this course.

Your grade for the exam will be based on whether you answer all parts of the question, reference to the required reading and class discussion, and analysis and synthesis of readings. 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 knowledgeable), 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 knowledgeable 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.

Answer only 2 of the following 4 questions:

  1. 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?
  2. What are the different meanings of public opinion? Illustrate the  different meanings with examples from the list of readings. What are the criticisms of “modern” opinion polls?    
  3. 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?
  4. There are many different indicators of civic engagement, social capital and malaise. Describe how these concepts (engagement, social capital and malaise) 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? Does tabloid reading contribute to malaise?

Answer only 1 of the following 2 questions:

  1. 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". What is the evidence for the minimal effects of   news on public opinion? What is the evidence for more than a minimal effect of news on opinion? Do you agree or disagree that media have minimal effects on public opinion? Why or why not?
  2. 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 report results from agenda setting 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). What is the evidence in favor or against agenda-setting effects in each of the studies? By examining the design, issues, etc., explain why the results from the two studies may differ.