The role of communication in the formation of an issue-based citizenry

Abstract

Citizens can gain a better understanding of the important issues of a campaign and where candidates stand on those issues from three primary sources: direct candidate-to-citizen mass media messages (e.g., political advertisements, debates), news (e.g., newspapers, television news), or discussion with fellow citizens. The current study conducted a secondary analysis of 1996 American National Election Study (ANES) data to replicate Brians and Wattenberg's (1996) findings concerning the relative influence of political advertisements, television news use, and newspaper use on voter issue knowledge and salience in the 1992 United States presidential campaign. We also analyzed two additional communication information sources, general political discussion and debate viewing. The effects of political advertisement recall, television news viewing, and newspaper use replicated across election studies. General political discussion was found to affect both issue knowledge and salience, and when introduced into the regression analyses nullifies the predictive power of political advertisement recall for knowledge. Talk's influence on salience wanes in subsequent analyses. Viewing the first debate was a strong predictor of issue knowledge, but was not associated with issue salience. Advertisement recall maintained predictive power for issue salience even after taking into account the other four information sources, and watching the second debate also predicted salience. The combination of results presents evidence that candidate-to-citizen and citizen-to-citizen communication play unique roles in determining levels of issue knowledge and salience.