Tuning out or tuning elsewhere? Partisanship, polarization, and media migration from 1998 to 2006

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 85, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 23-40

  Hollander, Barry A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR; FRAGMENTATION; MASS MEDIA; MEDIA ROLE;

EID: 48749089711     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900808500103     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. James G. Webster, "Beneath the Veneer of Fragmentation: Television Audience Polarization in a Multichannel World," Journal of Communication 55 (June 2005): 366-82;
2. David Tewksbury, "The Seeds of Audience Fragmentation: Specialization in the Use of Online News Sites," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 49 (March 2005): 332-48;
3. Barry A. Hollander, "Patterns in the Exposure and Influence of Old News and New News," Mass Comm Review 21 (1994): 144-55.
4. Markus Prior, "News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout," American Journal of Political Science 49 (July 2005): 557-92;
5. Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
6. Diana C. Mutz, Hearing the Other Side (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
7. Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy.
8. Webster, "Beneath the Veneer of Fragmentation: Television Audience Polarization in a Multichannel World."
9. Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy;
10. Webster, "Beneath the Veneer of Fragmentation: Television Audience Polarization in a Multichannel World."
11. Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997);
12. Cass R. Sunstein, Republic.com (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
13. Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy, 19.
14. Prior Post-Broadcast Democracy;
15. Prior, "News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout."
16. W. Russell Neuman, "Political Communication Infrastructure," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 546 (July 1996), 19;
17. Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy, 256.
18. Gary Bowman, "Consumer Choice and Television," Applied Economics 7 (September 1975): 175-84;
19. Donald R. Lehmann, "Television Show Preference: Applications of a Choice Model." Journal of Marketing Research 8 (February 1971): 47-55, Matthew A. Baum, "Sex, Lies and War: How Soft News Brings Foreign Policy to the Inattentive Public," American Political Science Review 96 (March 2002): 91-110;
20. Alan M. Rubin, "Ritualized and Instrumental Television Viewing," Journal of Communication 34 (September 1984): 67-77.
21. Martin Gilens, Lynn Vavreck, and Martin Cohen, "The Mass Media and the Public's Assessments of Presidential Candidates, 1952-2000," The Journal of Politics 69 (November 2007): 1160-75.
22. Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957). For a review of the selective exposure concept, its history, and research, see Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant, Selective Exposure to Communication (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1985).
23. David O. Sears, "The Paradox of De Facto Selective Exposure Without Preferences for Supportive Information," in Theories of Cognitive Consistency: A Sourcebook, ed. Robert P. Abelson, Elliot Aronson, William J. McGuire, Theodore M. Newcomb, Milton J. Rosenbert, and Percy H. Tannenbaum (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), 777-87. See also Jonathan L. Freedman and David O. Sears, "Selective Exposure," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Volume 2, ed. Leonard Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press), 58-98;
24. and William J. McGuire, "Selective Exposure: A Summing Up," in Theories of Cognitive Consistency, ed. Abelson et al., 797-800.
25. Elihu Katz, "On Reopening the Question of Selectivity in Exposure to Mass Communications," in Theories of Cognitive Consistency, ed. Abelson et al., 788-96;
26. Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant, "Affect, Mood, and Emotion as Determinants of Selective Exposure," in Selective Exposure, ed. Zillmann and Bryant, 157-90.
27. See, for example, Stephanie L. Sargent, "Image Effects on Selective Exposure to Computer-Mediated Stories," Computers in Human Behavior 23 (January 2007): 705-26;
28. and Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick and Matthias R. Hastall, "Comparisons with News Personae: Selective Exposure to News Portrayals of Same-Sex and Same-Age Characters," Communication Research 33 (August 2006): 262-84.
29. Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (New York: Basic Books, 2003);
30. Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (New York: Penguin, 2003).
31. Kenneth Flemming, Christopher Beaudoin, and Esther Thorson, "The Impact of Foxification of the War in Iraq on American Attitudes and Perceptions of the War: A Media Bias Perspective" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, New Orleans, 2004).
32. Jonathan S. Morris, "The Fox News Factor," Harvard International Journal for Press/Politics 10 (summer 2005): 56-79.
33. Sean Aday, Steven Livingston, and Maeve Hebert, "Embedding the Truth: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Objectivity and Television Coverage of the Iraq War," Harvard International Journal of Press /Politics 10 (winter 2005): 3-21;
34. Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay, and Evan Lewis, "Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War," Political Science Quarterly 118 (winter 2003-2004): 569-98;
35. Morris, "The Fox News Factor";
36. Jonathan S. Morris and Peter I. Francia, "From Network News to Cable Commentary: The Evolution of Television Coverage of Party Conventions" (paper presented at the State of the Parties Conference, Akron, OH, 2005).
37. Samuel J. Best, Brian Chmielewski, and Brian S. Krueger, "Selective Exposure to Online Foreign News During the Conflict with Iraq," The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 10 (fall 2005): 52-70.
38. Morris, "The Fox News Factor."
39. For two recent books that address each side of the media bias issue, see Alterman, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News, or Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Washington, DC: Regency Publishing, 2002).
40. Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo, "A Measure of Media Bias," Quarterly Journal of Economics 120 (November 2005): 1191-1237.
41. Edward J. Rickert, "Authoritarianism and Economic Threat: Implications for Political Behavior," Political Psychology 19 (December 1998): 707-20;
42. Howard Lavine, Milton Lodge, James Polichak, and Charles Taber, " Explicating the Black Box Through Experimentation: Studies of Authoritarianism and Threat," Political Analysis 10 (autumn 2002): 342-60.
43. Howard Lavine, Milton Lodge and Kate Freitas, "Threat, Authoritarianism, and Selective Exposure to Information," Political Psychology 26 (April 2005): 219-44. See also Stanley Feldman and Karen Stenner, "Perceived Threat and Authoritarianism," Political Psychology 18 (December 1997): 741-70.
44. David Paietz, "Selective Exposure: The Potential Boomerang Effect," Journal of Communication 22 (March 1972): 48-53.
45. Charles K. Atkin, "Informational Utility and Selective Exposure to Entertainment Media," in Selective Exposure, ed. Zillmann and Bryant, 63-91.
46. Tien-Tsung Lee, "The Liberal Media Myth Revisited: An Examination of Factors Influencing Perceptions of Media Bias," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 49 (March 2005): 43-64.
47. John Newhagen and Clifford Nass, "Differential Criteria for Evaluating Credibility of Newspapers and TV News," Journalism Quarterly 65 (summer 1989): 567-74, 588;
48. Cecilie Gaziano and Kristin McGrath, "Measuring the Concept of Credibility," Journalism Quarterly 63 (autumn 1986): 451-572;
49. Spiro Kiousis, "Public Trust or Mistrust? Perceptions of Media Credibility in the Information Age," Mass Communication & Society 4 (fall 2001): 381-403.
50. John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
51. Charles S. Taber and Milton Lodge, "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs," American Journal of Political Science 50 (July 2006): 755-69;
52. Matthew Rabin and Joel I. Schrag, "First Impressions Matter: A Model of Confirmatory Bias," Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (June 1999): 37-82.
53. Albert C. Gunther, "Biased Press or Biased Public? Attitudes Toward Media Coverage," Public Opinion Quarterly 56 (spring 1992): 147-67.
54. Stella C. Chia, Shing Yew Joel Yong, Zi Wen Diana Wong, and Wei Ling Koh, "Personal Bias or Governmental Bias? Testing the Hostile Media Effect in a Regulated Press System," International Journal of Public Opinion Research 19 (June 2007): 313-30.
55. Steven H. Chaffee, "Mass Media and Interpersonal Channels: Competitive, Convergent, or Complementary?" in Inter/Media: Interpersonal Communication in a Media World, ed. Gary Gumpert and Robert Cathcart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 62-80;
56. Wayne Wanta, The Public and the National Agenda: How People Learn About Important Issues (Mahawah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997).
57. Sunstein, Republic.com;
58. and Turow, Breaking up America: Advertisers and the New Media World.
59. See, for example, Spiro Kiousis and Max McCombs, "Agenda-Setting Effects and Attitude Strength," Communication Research 31 (February 2004): 36-57.
60. Diana C. Mutz and Paul S. Martin, "Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media," American Political Science Review 95 (March 2001): 97-114;
61. Diana C. Mutz, "Cross-Cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice," American Political Science Review 96 (March 2002): 111-26.
62. Reports based on these data and downloading of the data is available from the Pew Center for the People and the Press Web site (www.people-press.org). I thank the Pew Center for making these data available. All analyses and interpretations presented here are my own and not the staff or administration of the Pew Center.
63. The exceptions were newspaper reading, measured on a yes-no dichotomy, and reading the news on the Internet, which was a 6-point scale based on a series of contingency questions on computer and Internet use. The newspaper item is included with other items in analysis to simplify presentation.
64. In some years the Pew Center randomly asked respondents different versions of the questionnaire to broaden the number of media questions used; thus, some media exposure items may have been presented to approximately half the sample in a given year.
65. Asked all years were broadcast television, business magazines, CNN, CSPAN, Fox News, ESPN, Entertainment Tonight, the Internet, MSNBC, NPR, news magazines, newspapers, PBS News Hour, talk radio, television and magazine shows. Local television news and tabloids were asked in all years but 1998. Rush Limbaugh's radio program and religious radio were asked every year but 2000. Asked in 2002-2006 were The O'Reilly Factor. A question on personality magazines was asked in 2000, 2004, and 2006. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and late night television programs exposure were asked in 2002 to 2006.
66. This method, although standard in political studies, obviously fails to capture "partisans" of other parties, such as Libertarians. These numbers, however, are relatively small and unlikely to seriously affect analysis.
67. 2=53.2, df = 16, p<.001), but the results shift from year to year.
68. A list of comparisons across the three partisan groups and the twenty-three media exposure items is available from the author.
69. There are notable exceptions. Fox News, for example, was positively associated with all media items except for a non-significant correlation with use of The Daily Show. Use of NPR was positively associated with all items except use of personality and tabloid magazines. A complete set of intercorrelations among the media variables is available from the author.
70. An attempt to create a mainstream or alternative media measure proved unsuccessful, with Cronbach's alpha at approximately .52 depending on which items were included, thus each medium, network, program, or publication is considered individually. A factor analysis of the twenty media items using a mean substitution procedure resulted in a 7-factor solution that explained 53.2% of the variance. Although some items loaded on multiple factors, these can best be described as one for cable television-based news (CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and C-Span); a traditional broadcast factor (major networks, local TV news, and television magazines); a specialty news factor (NPR, PBS News Hour, and talk radio); a hard news factor (business magazines, news magazines, Internet news, and newspapers); a factor with conservative content (programs by O'Reilly and Limbaugh along with religious radio); a tabloid factor (personality and tabloid magazines); and in a factor by itself, The Daily Show.
71. In this analysis, 1998 was coded as "1" through 2006, which was coded as "5". Recall, however, that not every question was asked every year, so correlations between time and The Daily Show would be only from 2002 to 2006.
72. Indeed, if one examines within years, being identified as a "partisan" is significantly associated with use of various news media.
73. The results for broadcast network television news are similar. Both Democrats and Republicans were relatively the same in percent who reported watching network news "regularly" in 1998. By 2006, 43.7% of Democrats reported watching the broadcast network news programs regularly but only 32.3% of Republicans did so. Given the criticism of a "liberal bias" in network television news, this supports the notion that Republicans and conservatives have shifted to other sources of news as compared to liberals and Democrats.
74. These media items were selected in part because of their interest (CNN and broadcast news versus Fox News), because the items were asked in all years studied, or because they represent theoretically interesting tests of significance.
75. The seven items were broadcast television news, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, News Hour, National Public Radio, newspapers, and print news magazines. The Cronbach's alpha for the index was a modest .62. The Internet and other factors were excluded after examination of factor analyses and the lowering of Cronbach's alpha with their inclusion. Leaner (beta = .10, p<.01) and Partisan (beta = .13, p<.01) both offered unique contributions to the model even after socio-demographic controls, but neither of the interaction terms achieved statistical significance.
76. An alternative analysis strategy would be to simply use the party identification variable that ranges from strong Democrat to strong Republican. The strategy here allows examination of any differences that might exist between Democrats and Republicans, with leaners and independents as the contrast group.
77. Exposure to The Daily Show and National Public Radio for Democrats both neared the traditional level of statistical significance (betas = .05 and .02, respectively, both p<.10).
78. Taber and Lodge, "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs."
79. Prior, "News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout."
80. Mutz and Martin, "Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media";
81. Mutz, Hearing the Other Side.
82. Craig Calhoun, "Populist Politics, Communication Media and Large Scale Societal Integration," Sociological Theory 6 (fall 1988): 219-4l, 225.
83. Time as a predictor is often a statistically significant contributor to the respective models until entry of the interaction terms.
84. Time as a predictor is often a statistically significant contributor to the respective models until entry of the interaction terms.