Media reach, media influence? The effects of local, national, and internet news on public opinion inferences

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 84, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 315-334

  Christen, Cindy T ^a   Huberty, Kelli E ^b  

^a Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences   (United States)

^b IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INTERNET; MASS MEDIA; PERCEPTION;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 34848869419     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900708400208     Document Type: Article

References (84)

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2. "Arctic Drilling Would Set Bad Precedent," USA Today, October 16, 2003.
3. "230 Scientists Oppose Wolf Delisting," The Associated Press, May 14, 2007.
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9. Douglas M. McLeod and James K. Hertog, "The Manufacture of 'Public Opinion' by Reporters: Informal Cues for Public Perceptions of Protest Groups," Discourse and Society 3 (3, 1992): 259-75.
10. Albert C. Gunther, "The Persuasive Press Inference: Effects of Mass Media on Perceived Public Opinion," Communication Research 25 (October 1998): 486-504.
11. Cindy T. Christen, Prathana Kannaovakun, and Albert C. Gunther, "Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public During the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike," Political Communication 19 (October 2002): 423-36; Gunther, "The Persuasive Press Inference";
12. Albert C. Gunther and Cindy T. Christen, "Effects of News Slant and Base Rate Information on Perceived Public Opinion," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 76 (summer 1999): 277-92;
13. Albert C. Gunther, Cindy T. Christen, Janice L. Liebhart, and Stella C. Chia, "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion," Public Opinion Quarterly 65 (fall 2001): 295-320.
14. Richard M. Perloff, "Ego-involvement and the Third-person Effect of Televised News Coverage," Communication Research 16 (April 1989): 236-62.
15. Christen, Kannaovakun, and Gunther, "Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public During the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike"; Roger Giner-Sorolla and Shelly Chaiken, "The Causes of Hostile Media Judgments," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 30 (March 1994): 165-80;
16. Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion"; Albert C. Gunther and Kathleen M. Schmitt, "Mapping Boundaries of the Hostile Media Effect," Journal of Communication 54 (March 2004): 55-70;
17. Perloff, "Ego-involvement and the Third-person Effect"; Kathleen M. Schmitt, Albert C. Gunther, and Janice L. Liebhart, "Why Partisans See Mass Media as Biased," Communication Research 31 (December 2004): 623-41;
18. Robert Vallone, Lee D. Ross, and Mark R. Lepper, "The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased Perception of Media Bias in Coverage of the Beirut Massacre," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49 (3, 1985): 577-85.
19. Christen, Kannaovakun, and Gunther, "Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public During the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike"; Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion."
20. See, e.g., Christen, Kannaovakun, and Gunther, "Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public During the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike"; Gunther, "The Persuasive Press Inference"; Gunther and Christen, "Effects of News Slant"; Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion."
21. See, e.g., Brian G. Southwell, Carlin H. Barmada, Robert C. Hornik, and David M. Maklan, "Can We Measure Encoded Exposure? Validation Evidence from a National Campaign," Journal of Health Communication 7 (October-December 2002): 445-53.
22. Paul Freedman and Ken Goldstein, "Measuring Media Exposure and the Effects of Negative Campaign Ads," American Journal of Political Science 43 (October 1999): 1189-1208;
23. Shanto Iyengar and Simon Jackman, "Can Information Technology Energize Voters? Experimental Evidence from the 2000 and 2002 Campaigns" (paper presented to the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, 2003).
24. Daniel Agliata and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, "The Impact of Media Exposure on Males' Body Image," Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 23 (February 2004): 7-22;
25. Kimberly L. Bissell and Peiqin Zhou, "Must-see TV or ESPN: Entertainment and Sports Media Exposure and Body-image Distortion in College Women," Journal of Communication 54 (March 2004): 5-21.
26. M. Mazharul Islam and A. H. M. Saidul Hasan, "Mass Media Exposure and Its Impact on Family Planning in Bangladesh," Journal of Biosocial Science 32 (October 2000): 513-26.
27. Michael D. Slater and Kathleen J. Kelly, "Testing Alternative Explanations for Exposure Effect in Media Campaigns: The Case of a Community-based, In-school Media Drug Prevention Project," Communication Research 29 (August 2002): 367-89.
28. Jan van Cuilenburg, "On Competition, Access and Diversity in Media, Old and New: Some Remarks for Communications Policy in the Information Age," New Media & Society 1 (August 1999): 183-208.
29. John E. Newhagen and Erik P. Bucy, "Routes to Media Access," in Media Access: Social and Psychological Dimensions of New Technology Use, ed. Erik P. Bucy and John E. Newhagen (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 3-26.
30. See also Cloy Tobola, "Bucy and Newhagen Hammer Out a Media Access Baseline," Review of Communication 5 (January 2005): 63-67;
31. Erik P. Bucy and John E. Newhagen, "Author Response to Cheryl Brown's Review of Media Access," Resource Center for Cybernetic Studies, downloaded June 13, 2007, from http://rccs.usfca.edu /bookinfo.asp? BookID=344&AuthorID=107.
32. Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion."
33. Gunther and Schmidt, "Mapping Boundaries of the Hostile Media Effect"; Schmidt, Gunther, and Liebhart, "Why Partisans See Mass Media as Biased."
34. Perloff, "Ego-involvement and the Third-person Effect"; Vallone, Ross and Lepper, "The Hostile Media Phenomenon."
35. Christen, Kannaovakun, and Gunther, "Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public During the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike"; Gunther, "The Persuasive Press Inference"; Gunther and Christen, "Effects of News Slant"; Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion."
36. Merrill Morris and Christine Ogan, "The Internet as Mass Medium," Journal of Communication 46 (winter 1996): 39-50.
37. To facilitate interpretation of results, this article reports numbers of Internet users and percentages of households having access to various media at the time the two experiments were conducted in 2002. See, e.g., Ann Light, "Europe has Highest Number of Internet Users in the World," Nua Analysis, 10 September 2002.
38. Morris and Ogan, "The Internet as Mass Medium."
39. M. David Arant and Janna Q. Anderson, "Newspaper Online Editors Support Traditional Standards," Newspaper Research Journal 22 (September 2001): 57-69.
40. Morris and Ogan, "The Internet as Mass Medium."
41. Diana C. Mutz and Paul M. Martin, "Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media," American Political Science Review 95 (March 2001): 97-114.
42. Steven H. Chaffee and Miriam J. Metzger, "The End of Mass Communication?" Mass Communication and Society 4 (fall 2001): 365-79;
43. Elihu Katz, "And Deliver Us From Segmentation," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Society Science 546 (July 1996): 22-33.
44. David Tewksbury, "What Do Americans Really Want to Know? Tracking the Behavior of News Readers on the Internet," Journal of Communication 53 (December 2003): 694-710.
45. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Internet Election News Audience Seeks Convenience, Familiar Names (Washington, DC: 2000); Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Online Newcomers More Middle Brow, Less Work-oriented: The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary (Washington, DC: 1999).
46. M=2.17 for newspapers versus M=2.09 for online news on the 4-point channel credibility scale; see Spiro Kiousis, "Public Trust or Mistrust? Perceptions of Media Credibility in the Information Age," Mass Communication & Society 4 (fall 2001): 381-403. The perceived credibility of the source (as distinct from the channel) presumably would be similar, as the same national news organization would be publishing both print and online editions.
47. Jane B. Singer, "The Metro Wide Web: Changes in Newspapers' Gate-keeping Role Online," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (spring 2001): 65-80.
48. Kevin G. Barnhurst, "News Geography and Monopoly: The Form of Reports on U.S. Newspaper Internet Sites," Journalism Studies 3 (November 2002): 477-89.
49. David Tewksbury and Scott Althaus, "Differences in Knowledge Acquisition Among Readers of the Paper and Online Versions of a National Newspaper," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (autumn 2000): 457-79.
50. David Tewksbury, "Specialization in the Use of Online News Sites" (paper presented to the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL, 2002).
51. Foo Y. Peng, Naphtali I. Tham, and Hao Xiaoming, "Trends in Online Newspapers: A Look at the U.S. Web," Newspaper Research Journal 20 (spring 1999): 52-63.
52. Hsiang I. Chyi and Dominic L. Lasorsa, "Access, Use and Preferences for Online Newspapers," Newspaper Research Journal 20 (fall 1999): 2-13.
53. Tewksbury, "Specialization in the Use of Online News Sites."
54. Mediamark Research, Inc., Multimedia Audiences (spring 2000).
55. U.S. Department of Commerce, Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide (National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce: 2000).
56. Kevin Featherly, "Youth Dismisses TV, Flocks to Net for News-Industry Trend or Event," Newsbytes (June 12, 2000).
57. U.S. Department of Commerce, Falling Through the Net.
58. Perloff, "Ego-involvement and the Third-person Effect."
59. Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion." Ten-percent increments were used, as measuring reach using single digits had proven somewhat unreliable in earlier persuasive press inference research.
60. Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion."
61. Albert C. Gunther and Cindy T. Christen, "Projection or Persuasive Press? Contrary Effects of Personal Opinion and Perceived News Coverage on Estimates of Public Opinion," Journal of Communication 52 (March 2002): 177-95.
62. Christen, Kannaovakun, and Gunther, "Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public During the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike"; Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion."
63. As noted previously, items assessing attitudes toward Bush and the Republican Party were reverse coded prior to analysis. An 11-point attitudinal index was constructed, with negative scores signifying favorable attitudes toward Bush and the Republican Party, and unfavorable attitudes toward environmental advocates and the Democratic Party. Positive scores indicate the reverse.
64. Gunther, "The Persuasive Press Inference"; Gunther and Christen, "Effects of News Slant."
65. U.S. Department of Commerce, Falling Through the Net.
66. Participants also judged that significantly higher percentages of Americans had access to radio (M=84.1%) and television (M=81.9%) than to other mass media (p<.001). Mean scores for broadcast media (radio, t=20.46, p<.001; television, t=20.10, p<.001) were significantly higher than for Internet access.
67. See, e.g., James M. Fields and Howard Schuman, "Public Beliefs about the Beliefs of the Public," Public Opinion Quarterly 40 (winter 1976): 427-48;
68. Gary Marks and Norman Miller, "Ten Years of Research on the False-consensus Effect: An Empirical and Theoretical Review," Psychological Bulletin 102 (1, 1987): 72-90;
69. Lee Ross, David Green, and Pamela House, "The 'False Consensus Effect': An Egocentric Bias in Social Perception and Attribution Processes," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 13 (May 1977): 279-301.
70. Christen, Kannaovakun, and Gunther, "Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public During the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike"; Gunther et al., "Congenial Public, Contrary Press and Biased Estimates of the Climate of Opinion."
71. Kiousis, "Public Trust or Mistrust?"
72. Peng, Tham, and Xiaoming, "Trends in Online Newspapers."
73. Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Demographics of Internet Users, February 15-March 2, 2007 Tracking Survey," downloaded June 13, 2007, from http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_6.11.07. htm.
74. Mediamark Research, Inc., Multimedia Audiences; U.S. Department of Commerce, Falling Through the Net.
75. Newhagen and Bucy, "Routes to Media Access;" Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Demographics of Internet Users."
76. Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Demographics of Internet Users." See also Internet World Stats, "Internet Usage Statistics - The Big Picture," downloaded June 13, 2007, from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.
77. However, the degree of involvement is reduced, and information exposure unplanned, among those users who are merely browsing or surfing the Web without seeking to fulfill a specific information need; see Mohan J. Dutta-Bergman, "The Impact of Completeness and Web Use Motivation on the Credibility of e-Health Information," Journal of Communication 54 (June 2004): 253-69.
78. Mutz and Martin, "Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Difference."
79. Chaffee and Metzger, "The End of Mass Communication?"; Katz, "And Deliver Us From Segmentation."
80. Newhagen and Bucy, "Routes to Media Access."
81. This suggestion applies similarly to television news. Perceived exposure to televised news reports appearing on cable news networks such as CNN, Fox, and MSNBC may be lower relative to those aired in the evening by the major broadcast networks ABC, NBC, and CBS. As the number of U.S. households having access to cable news networks increases, a more pronounced effect of perceived access on public opinion estimates may emerge. Conversely, the recent imposition of paid subscriptions for premium online content by major newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and New York Times may fuel perceptions that fewer people are being exposed to online news reports, should the paid-subscription model become a trend among metropolitan dailies. At the same time, readership of local print weeklies is growing, due in part to the fact that such papers are typically free to readers. [See Columbia Journalism Review, "Online Update: New Looks for the Old Guard," 44 (September/October 2006), 12;
82. Robert Kuttner, "The Race: Newspapers Can Make It to a Bright Future After All - But Only If They Run Fast and Dodge Wall Street," Columbia Journalism Review 45 (March/April 2007), 24-32.] Such trends, taken together, raise the interesting possibility that perceived exposure to local, national, and online news reports may at some point converge, due to decreases in perceived access to the latter media brought about by the lack of affordability.
83. William P. Eveland, Jr., Krisztina Marton, and Mihye Seo, "Moving Beyond 'Just the Facts': The Influence of Online News on the Content and Structure of Public Affairs Knowledge," Communication Research 31 (February 2004): 82-108.
84. Han Woo Park and Mike Thelwall, "Hyperlink Analyses of the World Wide Web: A Review," Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 8 (July 2003).