Delli Carpini Research Articles

What Americans Know About Statehouse Democracy

AbstractPolitical scientists have largely come to a consensus that “most citizens are politically uninformed” (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1997), but even with increased attention to state-level representation and electoral behavior, political scientists know surprisingly little themselves regarding what Americans know about state politics. Past studies of state political knowledge examine narrow domains of knowledge and make few comparisons between individuals’ understanding of national and state politics. To provide a more comprehensive account of Americans’ state political knowledge, I conducted a novel national survey that included over 30 political knowledge questions. In a descriptive and exploratory analysis, I show Americans demonstrated more knowledge about who their Governor is but less knowledge about who represents them in the state legislature, state government institutions, and the state economy, particularly compared to their knowledge of federal politics. The different levels of political knowledge across different domains and levels of government raise concerns for statehouse democracy and should be considered before testing theories at the state level. To guide future research and surveys, I identify political knowledge questions that discriminate well between those who know little, some, and a lot about state politics across different domains of political knowledge.

The next media regime: The pursuit of ‘audience engagement’ in journalism

As news organizations struggle to overcome losses in revenue and relevance, academics and professionals have pinned their hopes for salvation on increasing ‘audience engagement’. Yet few agree on what audience engagement means, why it will make journalism more successful, or what ‘success’ in journalism should even look like. This article uses Williams and Delli Carpini’s ‘media regimes’ as a theoretical framework to argue that studying the current open-arms approach to the news audience – and the ambiguity surrounding it – is vital to understanding journalism’s transition from one rapidly disappearing model to one that is yet to fully emerge. In doing so, it offers a definition of audience engagement that synthesizes prior literature and contributes an important distinction between reception-oriented and production-oriented engagement. It concludes with a call for more research into audience engagement efforts to better understand what journalism is and what it might become.

Is It Simply Gender? Content, Format, and Time in Political Knowledge Measures

Theories of democracy commonly assume that citizens must have a certain degree of information and factual knowledge to be able to understand the functioning of institutions, the performance of the incumbent government, and the actions of the main political actors. Political knowledge helps people to better assess their interest as individuals and as members of groups (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). Moreover, governments have more incentives to be responsive when they can be held accountable, but citizens are able to hold governments accountable for their actions only when they know what governments are actually doing.

Mapping Political Attitudes: The Impact of Concept Mapping on Ideological Constraint

People with more political knowledge tend to have more coherent ideologies (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Judd & Krosnick, 1989; Stimson, 1975; Zaller, 1992). Drawing on prominent theories of attitude structure (e.g., Dinauer & Fink, 2005; Hunter, Levine & Sayers, 1976), we propose an explanation for this relationship, testing whether people who spend time thinking about how political concepts relate to one another are more likely to exhibit ideologically coherent attitudes (Judd & Krosnick, 1989). We find that participants who are instructed to participate in an exercise that requires them to think about how political concepts are related exhibit greater correlations between social- and economic-policy attitudes than nonparticipants and find some evidence that participants’ policy attitudes are more consistent over time. Contrary to expectations, there was no evidence of greater consistency between policy attitudes and underlying values, including party identification.

Media and Voting

Perhaps only one thing has united candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign: have treated them unfairly whether it be biased coverage, superficial coverage, or not enough coverage. For instance, while Bernie Sanders complained about the wild disparities in network coverage between himself and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio charged that the were biased against all Republican candidates. The Democrats have the ultimate super PAC. It's called the mainstream media (Farhi, 2016).Complaints from candidates, political observers, and academicians that the are not serving the public interest in election coverage are troubling because scholars note that the fundamental role of the is to create an information environment that allows citizens to be able to learn about the important issues and be able to follow the actions of elected and government officials to make reasoned, intelligent voting decisions. Failure to provide such an environment has been identified as a primary reason democratic practices fall short of normative ideals (Delli Carpini, 2008).This essay, however, is not designed to debate the quality of election coverage, but to explore the effects of on voting, a focus of some of more seminal works in the field (e.g., Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944) and a continuing interest in this journal.This special virtual theme issue compiles 10 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ) articles that have explored how affect intent to vote. studies will be organized under three main areas: How do traditional media, specifically newspapers and television news, influence intent to vote? How has intent to vote been impacted by non-traditional media, particularly television talk shows and the Internet? What are theories and models that can explain and intent to vote?Traditional Media and Voting IntentionsEarly studies of newspaper's influence on voting examined the effects of a very particular type of newspaper content, newspaper endorsements, because newspaper endorsements offered a clear, unequivocal message about who citizens should cast their ballots for and why (Robinson, 1974). Consequently, endorsements had an influence on who citizens voted for (McCombs, 1967; Robinson, 1972; St. Dizier, 1985). Robinson (1974) explored newspaper endorsement effects over five presidential elections (1956-1972) and found independents were more likely to vote for the endorsed candidates, even after controlling for party identification and other factors. In the three landslide elections (1956, 1964, and 1972), newspapers also caused party loyalists to abandon the losing candidate.Studies have consistently found that newspaper use predicts intent to vote because they contain both depth of information and mobilizing information, Not surprisingly, newspaper use proved a consistent predictor of intention to vote in the studies examined for this issue (Hyun & Moon, 2014; Kennamer, 1990; McLeod et al., 1996). Drew and Weaver (2006) failed to find a significant relationship, but newspaper use proved to be the sole predictor in earlier studies (Drew & Weaver, 1998; Weaver & Drew, 2001).In contrast, results have been split on the relationship between television use and voting intention. Studies that have used either attention to or reliance on TV news content tend to find a stronger link between television news and voting than ones with television exposure because one can watch television without paying attention to it. Results from the studies included in this virtual issue were split with some finding a positive relationship (Elliott & Sothirajah, 1993; Hyun & Moon, 2014) and other ones did not (Drew & Weaver, 2006; McLeod et al., 1996). Furthermore, differences were not because of measurement issues. Drew and Weaver (2006) included both attention and use measures, and McLeod et al. (1996) combined both exposure and attention. …

Citizen Oversight of Presidential Performance

The of citizens as agents of presidential accountability is both important and understudied. The people are arbiters of access to and retention of presidential power. They are de facto anchor of complex, multiagent presidential accountability system whose members (e.g., Congress, courts, and news media, among others) are also dependent on public support (Buchanan 2013, 33-59). Moreover, citizen judgments underlie presidential job approval, most-watched statistic in American politics and a proxy for chief executive's power to persuade lawmakers, capacity to win re-election and ability to help or hurt in mid-term elections (Harwood 2010, A15). It therefore matters how, and how well, citizens oversee presidents. Although there has been significant ongoing effort to assess general civic competence of voters (e.g., Borgida, Federico, and Sullivan 2009; Campbell et al. 1960; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996) and some research attention to citizen conceptions of presidential prototypes (Kinder et al. 1980) and to presidential greatness (e.g., Simonton 2008), specific work on how Americans judge presidential is comparatively rare. The largest group of studies relies primarily on correlations between presidential events and public support scores to explain why presidential approval rises and falls (e.g., Kernell 1978; Mueller 1970, 1973; Ostrom and Simon 1985; Stimson 1976). Ostrom and Simon (1985, 354), for example, find that presidential approval depends upon the quality of social, economic and international outcomes experienced by public. One of most important of these studies is Brody (1991). Building on earlier work, Brody found that news reports of presidential policy successes and failures were correlated with higher and lower levels, respectively, of Gallup Poll-tested public approval of presidential performance. Brody (1991, 174) also found that the clearer results and more news devoted to particular topic less likely it is that public reactions will differ along lines of partisanship. These findings convinced him that citizen oversight of presidential was adequate. By basing rewards and punishments on performance and by resisting partisan blandishments (t)he American people--despite minimal attention to politics, despite lack of information, and because of peculiar institutions of American politics--appear to have stumbled on (Brody 1991, 175). Brody's work is foundation on which present study builds. Below I update and extend Brody by presenting cross-time interview evidence to show that, while results still matter and citizen partisanship is on rise, aggregate complexity of citizen assessments of presidential is greater than Brody or his predecessors could discern from inferential evidence alone. Assessing Citizen Competence: A Framework To use interviews to gauge citizen competence, strategy is required. That used here is theoretically grounded framework for classifying and interpreting citizen judgments of presidential expressed in interviews. The framework is nine-cell classification scheme, Values and Targets (VT) matrix, depicted in Table 1. It is derived from historical and political science research literature cited below. The matrix is intended as comprehensive template for organizing, classifying, and interpreting substance of citizens' evaluative commentary. Do selected values and targets used to create nine categories for classifying how Americans judge presidents create most meaningful categories? Substantively answer is yes. Effectiveness at problem solving has historically been core test of presidential competence. And as shown below, presidential traits and acts seen as helping or hurting presidential efforts to get results have (at infrequent but key moments) been subject to popular approval not just on effectiveness grounds but also on morality and prudence grounds. …

Electoral Consequences of Political Rumors: Motivated Reasoning, Candidate Rumors, and Vote Choice during the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

Using national telephone survey data collected immediately after the 2008 U.S. presidential election (N1⁄4 600), this study examines real-world consequences of inaccurate political rumors. First, individuals more willingly believe negative rumors about a candidate from the opposing party than from their party. However, rumor rebuttals are uniformly effective and do not produce backfire effects. Second, the probability of voting for a candidate decreases when rumors about that candidate are believed, and believing rumors about an opposed candidate reinforces a vote for the preferred candidate. This belief-vote link is not a result of the spurious influence of party affiliation, as rumor belief uniquely contributes to vote choice. The evidence suggests political rumoring is not innocuous chatter but rather can have important electoral consequences. When citizens base political decisions on inaccurate beliefs, democracy suffers. Effective deliberation is premised on a factually informed citizenry (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Luskin, Fishkin, & Jowell, 2002), and misinformed citizens often exhibit different political preferences than those holding more accurate information (Gilens, 2001; Kuklinski, Quirk, Jerit, Schwieder, & Rich, 2000). Political rumors, characterized as unsubstantiated claims about candidates and issues that are often false, are a potentially important source of misperception that may threaten democratic outcomes. Although political rumors are not new, their prevalence during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign raises concerns about their influence on citizens’ beliefs, and, more importantly, their potential impact on voting behavior. In 2008, news All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Brian E. Weeks, School of Communication, The Ohio State University, 3016 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. E-mail: beweeks@gmail.com organizations devoted considerable coverage to political rumors, especially those about Barack Obama (Weeks & Southwell, 2010), and rumors circulated widely online (Garrett, 2011). An overwhelming majority of the public was exposed to these claims (Hargrove & Stempel, 2008), but despite widespread awareness it remains an open question whether false rumors about the candidates relate to citizens’ voting behavior during the 2008 election. Perhaps this rumoring, though extensive, was just idle chatter—inaccurate but essentially harmless. This article advances our understanding of political rumors and their association to citizens’ votes by making two complementary contributions. First, it examines whether partisan motivated information processing strategies that have been demonstrated in laboratory settings, including both motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990; Taber & Lodge, 2006) and the backfire effect (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010), are also evident in citizens’ responses to political rumors in the real world. Second, it extends survey research establishing a link between misperceptions and public opinion to a uniquely important form of political behavior: Vote choice. We argue, and our data affirm, that rumoring is not harmless talk but instead is a form of political expression that is associated with real negative consequences on citizens’ voting behavior.

Implicit Political Knowledge

Political knowledge today is studied primarily at the explicit level. Measures of political knowledge often rely on testing whether voters are aware of various “facts” about political life, such as the names and offices of prominent political actors, the institutional structures of the political system, and the ideological or policy differences between the major political parties (e.g., Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). These various kinds of political information are considered to be important by political scientists and other social scientists because they facilitate the informed voting decisions that are needed to hold elected leaders accountable (e.g., Lau and Redlawsk 2006; Pande 2011).

Ability Matters: Testing the Differential Effects of Political News and Late-Night Political Comedy on Cognitive Responses and the Role of Ability in Micro-Level Opinion Formation

Entertainment-oriented media are a staple in today’s political media environment (Prior, 2007), ranging from fictional narratives (e.g., Iron Lady, Ides of March) to entertainment-infused news programming (e.g., Fox and Friends, Rock Center). Amidst the rapidly changing media environment, media producers are packaging political content in a variety of entertaining formats known to engage audiences and increase message receptivity (e.g., Holbert, Hmielowski, Jain, Lather, & Morey, 2011; Holbert, Pillion, Tschida, Armfield, Kinder, & Cherry 2003; LaMarre & Landreville, 2009). Although the primary goal of political entertainment media content is to entertain, some forms are developed with secondary goals aimed at influencing political attitudes and opinions (Holbert, 2005). Comedian Steve Martin noted this in his recent autobiography, revealing that while performing on Saturday Night Live he intentionally used parody and satire to influence attitudes about political issues and public officials (Martin, 2007). Much of what the public consumes as popular entertainment media includes a secondary emphasis on real-world political issues, potentially influencing public opinion (Delli Carpini & Williams, 1994; Holbert, 2005). As such, there is an increasing interest in how individuals cognitively process and form opinions in response to political entertainment media consumption. To this end, the present study examines cognitive responses to different forms of political media: Political news and late-night political comedy.

Interacting or Just Acting? -A Case Study of European, Korean, and American Politicians' Interactions with the Public on Twitter

New media optimists have claimed that social technologies, such as the micro-blogging service, Twitter, stand to change political communication in positive ways. Many hope that new technologies can help level the playing field between political elites, who enjoy a number of resources to their advantage, including access to traditional media channels, and non-elites, who struggle to get their messages out (e.g., Bimber 1998; Rheingold 1993). Likewise, there is optimism that new technologies might be harnessed and used to reverse the trend of increasing apathy among citizens in liberal democracies, and particularly among youth (Delli Carpini 2000). In this study, we explore how elected officials use Twitter to interact with the public. Twitter touts itself as a technology used around the globe that is being rapidly adopted by users in almost every country. Therefore, to observe a wide variety of ways in which officials use Twitter, we have conducted a study of officials in three regions with liberal democratic governments. Particularly, we draw upon datasets used in our ongoing research (Hemphill, Otterbacher and Shapiro 2013), in which we follow the tweets of Members of the European Parliament, Korean National Assembly Members, and United States Members of Congress. The goals here, however, are to examine qualitatively the types of vertical communication taking place between elected officials and the citizens they represent and to develop a framework for analysis that can facilitate future work. Our analysis suggests that, while Twitter provides the infrastructure to facilitate a high level of interactivity between political officials and constituents, not everyone takes advantage of these affordances. We illustrate that Twitter is being used in a variety of ways, from an essentially one-

After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment. By Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 376p. $99.00 cloth, $32.99 paper.

After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment. By Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 376p. $99.00 cloth, $32.99 paper.

Book Review: Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini, After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment

Book Review: Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini, <i>After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment</i>

Book Review: After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment by Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini

Book Review: After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment by Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini

Book Review: Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy and the New Information Environment

Book Review: Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini <i>After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy and the New Information Environment</i>

Book Review: After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy and the New Media Environment

Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy and the New Media Environment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 361 pp.Walter Lippmann's theory of democracy called on professional elites, including journalists, to shape and furnish the citizenry with information because of the public's limited interest and intelligence (p. 46) to fully make sense of the political world. In contrast, Williams and Delli Carpini argue that given the current new environment and reconfigurations of the mediated public sphere, it is impossible for journalists to continue to exercise monopoly over politically relevant information. Williams is a professor of studies at the University of Virginia, and Delli Carpini is a professor of communication and the Walter H. Annenberg Dean at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. These authors call for a popular democracy in which professional journalists and citizens have the same responsibilities in the sphere.While a few decades ago, newspapers, radio, and television were the veritable sources of public information and avenues for popular expression, the reality today is that younger people are relying on unorthodox sources of political information such as prime-time television dramas, late night shows, and comedies-often seen by elites in the old model of political communication as blurring of the lines between news and entertainment and online news sources. This book examines what Williams and Delli Carpini refer to asthe precipitous decline in the power of journalists to control, for better or worse, the narrative and an increase, again for better or worse, in the importance of other forms of communication, some new, and some old, to influence and/or dictate coverage of politics. (p. 6)A major strength of After Broadcast News lies in the authors' ability to powerfully and seamlessly blend a theoretical and historical approach in a very practical way. Williams and Delli Carpini take us back into history and walk us through the different milestones in and democracy in the American society. The book shows how different media regimes are associated with somewhat different notions of free press, democratic engagement, civic engagement, responsibility participation, and free speech, among others (pp. 16-50). The authors not only offer useful insights into historical junctures in history in the United States but also begin, or at least take up, the debate about the role of professional journalists, citizen journalists, and cultural producers such as filmmakers in the shaping of public discourse in a democratic society.This book problematizes the arbitrariness of the news-entertainment dichotomy and hegemonic notions of politically relevant information. A key question raised in this book was, Can journalism/journalists continue to claim to be the purveyor of public opinion in a world where comedians, satirists, ordinary citizens, and actors have become very important conduits of politically relevant and democratically useful information? …

Local Political Knowledge and Assessments of Citizen Competence

Local Political Knowledge and Assessments of Citizen Competence

Talking Together: Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America – By Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini

Talking Together: Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America – By Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini

Talking Together: Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America. By Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. (University of Chicago Press, 2009.)

<i>Talking Together: Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America</i>. By Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. (University of Chicago Press, 2009.)

Talking Together: Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America. By Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 224p. $21.00.

Talking Together: Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America. By Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 224p. $21.00. - Volume 8 Issue 3

Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases as Biomarkers of Hypertension or Cardiac Pressure Overload

In hypertension, left ventricular hypertrophy is initially a useful compensatory process that represents an adaptation to increased ventricular wall stress. It is also one of the first steps toward overt clinical disease. Several changes in myocardial structure characterize hypertensive or pressure-overload heart disease that induces myocardial remodeling (eg, enhanced cardiomyocyte growth, excessive cardiomyocyte necrosis/apoptosis, accumulation of interstitial and perivascular collagen fibers, or disruption of the endomysial and perimysial collagen network).1 In the long term, these cellular changes, if untreated, will deteriorate left ventricular function and facilitate the development of heart failure. The growth and survival of adult cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle cells, and macrophages are regulated by extracellular ligands, growth factors, and cytokines that bind to cell-surface receptors and activate intracellular signal transduction cascades. These signaling pathways control essential processes in all eukaryotic cells, including gene transcription, protein translation, cytoskeletal remodeling, endocytosis, cell metabolism, cell proliferation, and survival.2 One of the best-described signal transmission systems activated by pressure overload involves multiple cascades of protein phosphorylation by the mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) family, with diverse roles in a broad range of physiological functions.3 The MAPK signaling pathway sequences ultimately result in the dual phosphorylation and activation of terminal kinases, such as p38, c-Jun N-terminal kinases (JNKs), and extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK1/2 and ERK5), which are involved in different cellular responses, including pressure-overload–induced cardiac hypertrophy.4 MAPK cascades are triple-kinase pathways that include an MAPK kinase kinase, an MAPK kinase, and a terminal MAPK. MAPK cascades may be …