Dynamics of political information transmission : How media coverage informs public judgments about politics Elenbaas

Representative democracy requires that citizens know the facts about political performance, and if more such facts are available in the media, citizens have more opportunity to acquire them. In view of increasing media choice, such opportunity may vary from one individual media environment to another. However, it remains unclear how differences in information acquisition correspond with differences in the information available specifically in those sources that citizens choose to use on a routine basis. Drawing on data from a two-wave panel survey and media content analysis, this article examines if greater availability of performancerelevant information in the media facilitates acquisition of such information among those reliant on these media. It also examines when and how strongly this effect differs for people with different levels of learning motivation. Using a multilevel model, we find that citizens are more likely to learn facts about political performance when their preferred sources offer a greater quantity of performance-relevant information. We also find that motivation moderates the influence of availability, such that strongly motivated individuals gain comparatively the most from a greater supply of information. The implications of our findings for representative democracy are considered. 48 The Impact of Media Coverage and Motivation Regardless of whether one holds that keeping up with current political affairs is normatively desirable by itself, citizens necessarily need relevant factual information in order to monitor the performance of political institutions and hold political elites accountable for their actions (e.g., Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Wlezien, 1995). Information about what government does, or performance-relevant information, enables citizens to form, re-evaluate, and articulate opinions about government action or inaction. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that acquisition of such information alters citizen’s political judgments and policy preferences in various domains of government (see Chapter 1; Gilens, 2001). The consequential nature of performance-relevant information, then, provides a clear rationale for studying the sources of that information as well as the conditions that facilitate, or impede, reception of it (Druckman, 2005a). Few would disagree that the media are an indispensable source of political information for most citizens. And yet, much of the existing literature has come to the counterintuitive conclusion that the media are a surprisingly modest force in equipping citizens with higher levels of factual information about the world of politics and policy (e.g., Price & Zaller, 1993). Primarily, the media effects reported in this literature are based on citizens’ propensity to attend to the news media, but as Delli Carpini and Keeter (1996) point out, “the consequences of actual use of media depend not only on the individual but on what information is available” (p. 347). Indeed, the availability of the information studied as outcome variable is, as Druckman (2005b) notes, a necessary but “rarely recognized” factor in media learning research: “[l]earning from a given medium requires that the medium include that information” (p. 466). And to assume, as most prior research has, that all media sources are equally efficient distributors of certain types of political information seems at least questionable, and at worst untenable. Innovative research that combines data from surveys and media content analyses is now emerging (e.g., Barabas & Jerit, 2009; Iyengar, Hahn, Bonfadelli, & Marr, 2009). But as we discuss below, missing in most studies is a specification of the media environment – and the available information in it – at the level of the individual news consumer faced with increasing media choice (Baum, 2002; Prior, 2005). As a result, it remains unclear how closely variation in information acquisition corresponds with the amount of information available specifically in those sources that individual citizens are actually using on a routine basis. Furthermore, the impact of political information supply possibly varies according to citizens’ demand for such information (Iyengar et al., 2010), suggesting that low intrinsic motivation may pose an obstacle to learning even when information is more easily encountered. Yet this Dynamics of Political Information Transmission 49 hypothesis has hardly been formally tested or further specified to indicate when a moderation effect of motivation is particularly likely to emerge. Drawing on data from a two-wave panel survey and media content analysis, the present article asks if greater availability of performance-relevant information in individual media sources facilitates acquisition of such information among individuals reliant on these sources. It also asks when and how strongly this effect differs for people with different levels of learning motivation. We examine the presence of such effects in the wake of a naturally occurring major decision-making event in European politics: the EU summit in Brussels of 11 and 12 December 2008 (see also Chapter 1). Broadening the focus of learning research, this study presents findings from a European case, where market forces are gradually transforming a public service-oriented media system and its news supply (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). Information Availability in Individual Media Environments Most would agree that the media provide an important, if not the most important, opportunity to acquire information about politics. Opportunity, which is determined by the availability of information, “affects how easily a citizen can learn, given his or her ability and motivation” (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996, p. 179). All else equal, citizens should be more likely to encounter and, by extension, absorb a given piece of information if the media they rely on actually carry that information. Repeated encounters with information enhances recognition and recall, and thereby retention of the information (Graber, 1984). “When the media present the same or similar stories over a period of time,” write Tewksbury, Weaver and Maddex (2001), “they are giving the audience a chance to mentally rehearse the information,” which “allows individuals to retain the information, even in cases of passive learning” (p. 534). There is indeed strong evidence to suggest a link between learning and the mere availability of information, suggesting that citizens are better informed, irrespective of their motivation, when the supply of political information in the media environment in which they are situated is relatively high (e.g., Delli Carpini, Keeter, & Kennamer, 1994; Zukin & Snyder, 1984). For example, a study comparing the U.S. and Switzerland by Iyengar and his colleagues (2009) shows that Swiss media provide considerably more international news than U.S. media, and that Swiss respondents are also noticeably better informed about international affairs than American respondents. In another recent and well-designed study, Barabas and Jerit (2009) compare different policy-specific facts at a single point in time as well as identi50 The Impact of Media Coverage and Motivation cal facts over time within the U.S. national media environment, and find that respondents learn significantly more under conditions of relatively high levels of media coverage (see also Jerit, Barabas, & Bolsen, 2006). Typically, studies focusing on the effects of information supply do not examine the possibility of variation in information availability across the individual media sources that constitute a given information environment. Put differently, it is often assumed that individual sources convey roughly the same information in roughly similar quantities, such that the opportunity to acquire the information does not vary much among individual citizens nested within a particular geographical unit. But in “post-broadcast democracies” (Prior, 2007) with strong diversification of news formats and rapid fragmentation of the news audience (Baum, 2003), this assumption is, as Prior (2009a) states, “increasingly implausible” (p. 139). Under such conditions, the probability that people encounter and absorb certain types of political information becomes, at least in part, a matter of news media choice. That is, relevant information salient to some individuals might go largely unseen by others, depending on the media sources that individuals choose to primarily rely on for their news. To the extent that individual opportunities for information acquisition vary as a function of media choice, analyzing effects of political learning requires examining “individual media environments” (Prior, 2007, p. 10), which comprise the media sources that are routinely available to – and accessed by – each citizen individually. Such an examination calls for content analytical data revealing which news outlets included the relevant information as well as survey data identifying which news outlets determine an individual’s structural information diet (Slater, 2004). Content analysis and specificity in measurement of source reliance are increasingly recommended in the literature (e.g., Druckman, 2005a) but so far rarely incorporated, let alone blended, in analyses of political learning. One exception is a recent study by Barabas and Jerit (2010), who distinguish differential learning opportunities among American respondents using media sources that either did or did not include the information of interest. The researchers find that respondents whose primary consulted news source carried the information were significantly more likely to acquire that information. This finding from the American case is evidence – thus far rarely replicated – in support of the proposition that different individual media environments offer different opportunities to encounter political information, and that such differences can cause substantial gaps in information acquisition.