Abstract
Although recent research suggests that the selective nature of new media helps foster issue specialists, little empirical evidence has been documented, mostly due to theoretical and methodological limitations. Extending the concept of issue publics, the present study proposes a method to estimate the degree to which an individual is a specialist- or a generalist-type citizen. Applying the method to the 2008 American National Election Studies data, the study reveals various characteristics of specialists and generalists. The results indicate that specialist-type citizens are positively associated with online news use, but negatively associated with conventional news media, such as television, newspaper, and radio. The implications of the growth of specialists as well as the validity of the proposed method are discussed.
Highlights
The question of whether the American public consists mostly of specialists or generalists in public affairs has never been effectively resolved
The study hypothesized that new media relate with specialists while traditional media relate with generalists
The categorization of specialists and generalists are theorized in the original issue publics literature, the concept has not been firmly grounded in empirical research
Summary
The question of whether the American public consists mostly of specialists or generalists in public affairs has never been effectively resolved. The dominant view in the literature posits that citizens tend to be generalists who are relatively evenly interested in a wide range of public affairs, others have supported an alternative view that citizens tend to be specialists, who care only about a few Future Internet 2013, 5 particular issues and are generally indifferent to all others [1,2,3,4,5]. The premise is that since new media allow users to selectively seek information of interest, and avoid media content of little interest efficiently, individuals tend to become specialist-type citizens than generalist-type citizens [8,9]. The lack of empirical support is mostly due to inadequate instrumentation of the concept of the specialist and generalist
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