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"Communication and Citizenship: Differential Political Effects in an Evolving Media Landscape"
by Patricia Moy
Complacency is unlikely to plague political communication scholars. Shifting conceptions of communication, including a spate of technological changes and the proliferation of media outlets, have led researchers in our field to revisit long-standing media effects and the conditions under which these effects emerge. Whether one takes the 10,000-foot perspective, looking at how society has changed over the last half-century with the advent of television and new media technologies, or focuses on more recent changes within a given medium—for example, the recent rise of political blogs—the upshot remains the same: communication matters, but how it matters and to whom it matters vary.
Situated at the intersection of communication and citizenship, my research focuses on how various forms of communication influence how people engage in the world around them—how they think about and perceive issues, how they come to hold the attitudes they hold, and how they behave as citizens. Regardless of whether these worlds span a local community or are virtual systems, and regardless of the communication form under scrutiny, various processes of effects and mechanisms of influence emerge.
For instance, when a cadre of former graduate students and I studied the political correlates of local media use, often ignored at the expense of national media (Moy, McCluskey, McCoy, & Spratt, 2004), our results both echoed long-standing findings and brought new questions to the fore. Like others before us, our survey data showed that attention to news on television and in newspapers enhanced perceptions of knowledge, but it was only attention to newspaper local news that promoted political participation. Particularly interesting, however, was the fact that both positive and negative evaluations led to participation. That is, perceptions of journalists as overly negative and media organizations as profit-driven might instill in citizens the belief that they need to be active to overcome the influence of an untrustworthy media. At the same time, citizens who trust the media might engage in participation by proxy, letting journalists and the news media participate on their behalf.
What about the effects of other forms of communication often overlooked? My research on nontraditional media has its roots in early work with Michael Pfau (Oklahoma) on media use and trust in democratic institutions. Our work in the mid- to late-1990s, appearing in several journal articles and culminating in With Malice Toward All? (Moy & Pfau, 2000), included extensive content analyses and survey data related to numerous media modalities. Little did I know then that television entertainment talk shows, the focus of half a chapter, would become the political player they are today. (David Letterman did claim, after all, that the road to the White House ran through him!) My research in this area, with former graduate students Michael Xenos (now at Wisconsin) and Verena Hess (Microsoft), shows that watching late-night talk shows is associated with campaign participation, intent to vote, and political discussion. Sometimes these effects are main effects, controlling for demographics, political predispositions, and use of traditional media; other times, interaction effects emerged, with stronger effects found among those more politically sophisticated (Moy, Xenos, & Hess, 2005). Also, watching politicians on late-night talk shows can have major effects. For instance, late-night viewers, who tend to be more liberal, were significantly more likely to think favorably of George W. Bush after he appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman (Moy, Xenos, & Hess, 2006). More importantly, analyses showed that these evaluations were grounded in persona-based perceptions. Political communication scholars clearly recognize the significance of late-night television talk shows and soft news in general (e.g., Baum, 2006), but as I argue in a forthcoming chapter in Jonathan Morris and Jody Baumgartner’s edited volume, Laughing Matters: Humor and American Politics in the Media Age, the field needs to take steps to synthesize these infotainment-based effects into the larger media landscape.
Communication matters as a phenomenon that influences not only our thoughts and behaviors, but also how we communicate. Building on a model of deliberation developed with Jack McLeod and Dietram Scheufele while in graduate school (McLeod, Scheufele, & Moy, 1999), my colleague John Gastil and I have shown that politically-oriented media use and discussion have mixed effects (Moy & Gastil, 2006). More is not necessarily better. In general, newspaper reading can spur deliberative conversation, typically characterized by openness to conflict, the use of logic and reasoning, clear expression of opinions, and understanding of others’ views. But television news viewing can erode people’s comprehension of opposing views. And although larger discussion networks tend to generate deliberative conversation, the heterogeneity of those networks can produce greater receptiveness to divergent views, while reducing the use of logic among those already more politically active. Relying on survey data, we hope to validate these findings with analyses of observational data.
Fortunately, the underlying questions that confront political communication scholars can be answered with numerous methods and across different contexts and levels of analysis. Irrespective of our focus on content analyses or experiments, an interest in the production of messages or the processing of these messages, or a tendency to look at entire populations or subgroups, it won’t be long before another phenomenon arises that allows us to move the field ahead.
Patricia Moy is the Christy Cressey Associate Professor of Communication and Adjunct Faculty in Political Science.
REFERENCES
Baum, M., & Jamison, A. (2006). "The Oprah effect: How soft news helps inattentive citizens vote consistently." Journal of Politics, 68, 946-959.
McLeod, J. M., Scheufele, D. A., & Moy, P. (1999). "Community, communication, and participation: The role of mass media and interpersonal discussion in local political participation." Political Communication, 16, 315-336.
Moy, P. (forthcoming). "Late-night comedy, talk shows, and politics: It’s not just all laughs." In J. S. Morris and J. C Baumgartner (Eds.), Laughing Matters: Humor and American Politics in the Media Age. New York: Routledge.
Moy, P., & Gastil, J. (2006). "Predicting deliberative conversation: The impact of discussion networks, media use, and political cognitions." Political Communication, 23, 443-460.
Moy, P., McCluskey, M. R., McCoy, K., & Spratt, M. (2004). "Political correlates of local news media use." Journal of Communication, 54, 532-546.
Moy, P., & Pfau, M. (2000). With malice toward all? The media and public confidence in democratic institutions. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Moy, P., Xenos, M. A., & Hess, V. K. (2005). "Communication and citizenship: Mapping the political effects of infotainment." Mass Communication & Society, 8, 111-131.
Moy, P. and Xenos, M.A. & Hess, V.K. (2006). "Priming effects of late-night comedy." International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 18, 198-210.
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