Abstract
This book, written by leading scholars in public opinion research, is of primary interest to undergraduate students seeking a comprehensive and straightforward account of research, both historical and contemporary, on the relationship between news and public opinion. As well as introducing students to historical trends in research, the authors review considerable quantities of recent research findings (sometimes a little too superficially even for an undergraduate textbook) and discuss how changing media environments, both technological and sociological, affect the formation of public opinion. As such the book is also of interest to scholars who, while not specialists, wish to get a quick overview of work in the area. However, it relies too heavily on US scholarship and discusses primarily US cases.
The book is divided into three sections. In the first section the authors look at the changing communication environment (changes in particular media such as newspapers and television, the rise of entertainment-based public affairs such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the development of new channels for news such as Twitter, the decline of trust in news sources and the rise of civically minded public journalism in contrast to the ‘objectivity’ of traditional [US] journalism). Part 2 switches attention to audiences and what they make of the news as a resource for forming opinions and public engagement. Here a discussion of audience segmentation leads on to a discussion of agenda-setting and salience, which in turn leads to a more detailed account of opinion formation. Subsequent chapters discuss the effect of media on political behaviour and how the characteristics of audiences affect opinion formation, starting out from recapping the uses and gratifications approach before moving swiftly on to more recent research on the consequences of selective behaviour such as polarization. Part 3 is composed of a final chapter that seeks to provide answers to decisively important questions: to what extent do news media make citizens appropriately knowledgeable about politics? Do news media lead to plural views being held? Do they aid political participation? Or polarization? Or disenfranchisement? In summary, the authors argue that while there is clear support for the argument that exposure to news does increase public engagement, news media could and should do a far better job in regaining trust and providing citizens with accurate and detailed information that can be used as a resource for citizenship.