Exposure, Attention, or “Use” of News? Assessing Aspects of the Reliability and Validity of a Central Concept in Political Communication Research

Abstract

The concept of news media use1 has been at the center of political communication research during the past several decades. Historically, scholars have employed measures of exposure to news (Atkin, Galloway, & Nayman, 1976), attention to news (Chaffee & Schleuder, 1986; McLeod & McDonald, 1985), and reliance on news (Culbertson & Stempel, 1986) to tap this concept. Moreover, they have been interested in determining the influence of the use of news on various political outcomes, including political knowledge, political participation, and public opinion. Despite a massive accumulation of literature on these topics, what is missing is a consistent and validated survey measure of news use (Chaffee, 2001). 1Although others have used the broader term “media orientations” (McLeod & McDonald, 1985), we employ the term “use” as a superordinate label that can subsume exposure, attention, or some combination of the two. More than 20 studies since 2004 have employed this term in their titles or abstracts alone, and it seems to us a useful shorthand for both the behavioral (exposure) and cognitive (attention) components of experiencing news. Given the centrality of this concept and its measurement to the field, it seems appropriate that efforts to better understand the implication of various conceptualizations and measurement approaches be undertaken. Some research on this topic, with an exclusive emphasis on exposure measures, has appeared in recent years (e.g., Althaus & Tewksbury, 2007; Chang & Krosnick, 2003), but more is needed, particularly given the heavy use of both exposure and attention measures in the extant literature. In this study, we focus on the internal consistency, dimensional structure, and some aspects of validity of measures of frequency of exposure and attention to various news media sources as predictors of political knowledge. We also address analysis issues that follow from the measurement issues. Following prior research (e.g., Price & Zaller, 1993), we focus on political knowledge as an important validity criterion, although we certainly acknowledge that other criteria, such as political participation, may be equally important.