Myiah J. Hutchens

Exposure, Attention, or “Use” of News? Assessing Aspects of the Reliability and Validity of a Central Concept in Political Communication Research

The concept of news media use 1 has been at the center of political communication research during the past several decades. Historically, scholars have employed measures of exposure to news (Atkin, Galloway, & Nayman, 1976), attention to news (Chaffee & Schleuder, 1986; McLeod & McDonald, 1985), and reliance on news (Culbertson & Stempel, 1986) to tap this concept. Moreover, they have been interested in determining the influence of the use of news on various political outcomes, including political knowledge, political participation, and public opinion. Despite a massive accumulation of literature on these topics, what is missing is a consistent and validated survey measure of news use (Chaffee, 2001). 1Although others have used the broader term “media orientations” (McLeod & McDonald, 1985), we employ the term “use” as a superordinate label that can subsume exposure, attention, or some combination of the two. More than 20 studies since 2004 have employed this term in their titles or abstracts alone, and it seems to us a useful shorthand for both the behavioral (exposure) and cognitive (attention) components of experiencing news. Given the centrality of this concept and its measurement to the field, it seems appropriate that efforts to better understand the implication of various conceptualizations and measurement approaches be undertaken. Some research on this topic, with an exclusive emphasis on exposure measures, has appeared in recent years (e.g., Althaus & Tewksbury, 2007; Chang & Krosnick, 2003), but more is needed, particularly given the heavy use of both exposure and attention measures in the extant literature. In this study, we focus on the internal consistency, dimensional structure, and some aspects of validity of measures of frequency of exposure and attention to various news media sources as predictors of political knowledge. We also address analysis issues that follow from the measurement issues. Following prior research (e.g., Price & Zaller, 1993), we focus on political knowledge as an important validity criterion, although we certainly acknowledge that other criteria, such as political participation, may be equally important.

The “Who” Matters: Types of Interpersonal Relationships and Avoidance of Political Disagreement

Research consistently finds that we discuss politics most often with our strong ties (i.e., our close, intimate others). As our strong ties tend to be more politically similar to us than not, the conclusion is that everyday political discussions are overwhelmingly characterized by real or perceived political agreement. However, this scenario may paint only a partial portrait of everyday political discussion. Neglected is the distinction between politically similar discussion partners, on the one hand, and similarity of views expressed during conversation, on the other. Although our strong ties may be more politically similar to us than not, they may, paradoxically, be just the people with whom we are likely to express disagreement. Indeed, this study illustrates that although discussion with strong ties increases the probability of agreement, it simultaneously increases the likelihood of discussing disagreement.

How could you think that?!?!: Understanding intentions to engage in political flaming

Communication scholars have both lauded and questioned the Internet’s role in facilitating democracy. However, few studies have examined aggressive communication behavior in online political discussion spaces. Two studies were conducted to examine use of aggressive discussion behaviors online, otherwise known as flaming. Study one utilized a survey of 289 undergraduate students at a large public university. Study two utilized a survey of 305 individuals who frequent political blogs. Results from both studies suggest that individuals are more likely to engage in political flaming when their beliefs are directly challenged. In addition, results indicate that whether an individual’s identity is known or unknown did not influence their intention to flame within the student sample. In the blog-user sample, we found that direct challenges when identities were not known increased intention to flame. Finally, we examine the relationship between political flaming and several individual-level variables.

Political Network Size and Its Antecedents and Consequences

Recent evidence supports the important political role that political network size and distribution plays at both the individual and system levels. However, we argue that the evidence is likely stronger than the current literature suggests due to network size measurement limitations in the extant literature. The most common approach to measuring political network size in sample surveys—the “name generator” approach—normally constrains network size measurement to three to six individuals. Because of this constraint, research often undercounts individual network size and also leads to a misrepresentation of the distribution of the underlying variable. Using multiple data sets and alternative measurement approaches, we reveal that political network hubs—individuals with inordinately large network sizes not captured by name generators—exist and can be identified with a simple summary network measure. We also demonstrate that the summary network size measure reveals the expected differences in communicative, personality, and political variables across network size better than name generator measures. This suggests that not only has prior research failed to identify network hubs, but it has likely underestimated the influence of political network size at the individual level.

Living in an age of online incivility: examining the conditional indirect effects of online discussion on political flaming

Communication scholars have examined the potential pitfalls and rewards associated with the ability to communicate in online spaces. We continue in that line of research by proposing a mediated moderated communication process model focused on what conditions lead people to engage in aggressive online communication behaviors, otherwise known as flaming. Specifically, we argue that online political discussion socializes individuals to see flaming as an acceptable behavior. This increase in perceived acceptability in turn increases intention to flame. Results demonstrate that this increase in intention to flame is greater among those with high levels of verbal aggression. To test our model, we conducted two surveys that asked students and blog users questions about their online media behaviors. Results replicate across both surveys.

Clicking vs. sharing

Online news and social media are transforming the process of news production and reading. While research has shown that news media play an important role in providing information to the public in democratic societies, research investigating the impact of sharing news online on the process of public opinion formation is in a nascent stage. This study examines the impact of viewing and sharing online news on two dimensions of political knowledge: factual knowledge and structural knowledge. Results from survey data collected over 3-waves during the 2012 US Presidential Election from an online panel of 403 US adult Internet users show that reading online news is positively related to factual political knowledge. Sharing online news, in contrast, is related to structural knowledge. We discuss these findings and their implications for future research investigating the role of online news. We examined the relationship between online news behaviors and political knowledge.We collected three-wave survey data from 403 adults during the 2012 US election.People who share news online are also reading news online.Online news reading was positively related to factual political knowledge.Online news sharing was positively related to political knowledge structure density.

Rush, Rachel, and Rx: Modeling Partisan Media's Influence on Structural Knowledge of Healthcare Policy

Examining the impact of various media sources on knowledge has a long tradition in political communication. Although much of the extant research focuses on the impact of traditional media on factual knowledge, research is expanding to include a variety of media sources and multiple dimensions of knowledge, in addition to understanding processes that better explain these relationships. Using a nationwide, opt-in online survey (n = 993), we examine the relationship between partisan media and structural knowledge, which assess how interconnected people see political concepts. Utilizing understanding of the Affordable Care Act as the content area of interest, we examine whether exposure to partisan media has differential effects on attitudinal ambivalence—holding both positive and negative attitudes toward an object—based on the political ideology of the respondent, and whether this impact of ambivalence influenced structural knowledge. Our results show that exposure to attitude-consistent media decreased attitudinal ambivalence. This exposure to attitude-consistent media results in a positive indirect effect on structural knowledge through this decrease in ambivalence. We find the reverse effect for use of attitude-inconsistent media.

A Spiral of Skepticism? The Relationship Between Citizens’ Involvement With Campaign Information to Their Skepticism and Political Knowledge:

Scholars have emphasized the importance of an informed citizenry for a healthy democracy. As a result, research has examined whether campaign information fosters positive or negative democratic outcomes. This article examines the relationship between information seeking and skepticism. We also examine whether skepticism leads to democratically beneficial outcomes. We examine these relationships using survey data collected during the course of the 2012 Presidential Election. We found an over-time relationship between campaign information seeking and skepticism. We also found that skepticism leads to increased knowledge at the end of the election through information seeking.

Context collapse and privacy management: Diversity in Facebook friends increases online news reading and sharing:

Social media users are able to read, share, and discuss news online with other people coming from diverse contexts in their lives, including family members, co-workers, and friends. Past research has indicated that “context collapse” occurs when people must imagine and negotiate interacting with a large and diverse online audience. Using survey data from 771 US Internet users, we find that more context collapse in people’s Facebook friends is positively related to both sharing and reading news. Furthermore, reading news on Facebook mediates the relationship between context collapse and news sharing. Finally, privacy management moderates the relationship between reading and sharing news on Facebook, where people who are more open in their privacy management practices share more news.

The mainstreaming of verbally aggressive online political behaviors

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the relationship between verbal aggression and uncivil media attention on political flaming. More specifically, this paper examines whether the use of uncivil media programming is associated with the perceived acceptability and intention to engage in aggressive online discussions (i.e., online political flaming) and whether this relationship varies by verbal aggression. The results show that individuals less inclined to engage in aggressive communication tactics (i.e., low in verbal aggression) become more accepting of flaming and show greater intention to flame as their attention to uncivil media increases. By contrast, those with comparatively higher levels of verbal aggression show a decrease in acceptance and intention to flame as their attention to these same media increases.