S. Robert Lichter

Elite Ideology and Risk Perception in Nuclear Energy Policy

Changing U.S. attitudes toward new technologies are examined, as are explanations of such changes. We hypothesize that increased concern with the risks of new technologies by certain elite groups is partly a surrogate for underlying ideological criticisms of U.S. society. The question of risk is examined within the framework of the debate over nuclear energy. Studies of various leadership groups are used to demonstrate the ideological component of risk assessment. Studies of scientists and journalists attitudes, media coverage of nuclear energy, and public perception of scientists views suggest both that journalists ideologies influence their coverage of nuclear energy and that media coverage of the issue is partly responsible for public misperceptions of the views of scientists. We conclude with a discussion of the historical development of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s and the relation of this movement to the publics declining support for nuclear energy.

The Political Content of Late Night Comedy

During the 2000 national election season, there was unprecedented attention paid by the media, and by presidential campaigns, to the political content of late night comedy shows such as the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Late Show with David Letterman. Focusing on the more than thirteen thousand jokes about U.S. political figures from 1996 to 2000 on late night comedy talk shows, this study explores the choice of targets and subjects of political humor. The authors find that late night humor is heavily centered on the president and top presidential contenders, that the various late night shows tend to exhibit the same patterns in their choice of targets, and that the humor is generally devoid of issue content.

Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty

This article first examines the ideological composition of American university faculty and then tests whether ideological homogeneity has become self-reinforcing. A randomly based national survey of 1643 faculty members from 183 four-year colleges and universities finds that liberals and Democrats outnumber conservatives and Republicans by large margins, and the differences are not limited to elite universities or to the social sciences and humanities. A multivariate analysis finds that, even after taking into account the effects of professional accomplishment, along with many other individual characteristics, conservatives and Republicans teach at lower quality schools than do liberals and Democrats. This suggests that complaints of ideologically-based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study. The analysis finds similar effects based on gender and religiosity, i.e., women and practicing Christians teach at lower quality schools than their professional accomplishments would predict.

The 2004 New Hampshire Democratic Primary and Network News

Content-coded network newscasts are used to examine the relationship between news coverage and the daily New Hampshire poll standings of the four major Democratic presidential candidates in the weeks before the 2004 primary. The study finds powerful network news effects, particularly with respect to horse-race reports on which candidate was gaining or losing ground, for John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, and John Edwards. The influence of network news coverage on New Hampshire tracking poll standings casts doubt on claims by those who support New Hampshire’s status as the first primary because the state is thought to differ from the media-dominated electoral contests found elsewhere in American politics.

The 2000 New Hampshire Democratic Primary and Network News

Content-coded network newscasts were used to examine the relationship between news coverage and the daily New Hampshire poll standings of Al Gore and Bill Bradley, the two major Democratic presidential candidates, in the weeks before the primary. The study found powerful network news effects, particularly with respect to “horse race” reports on which candidate gained and fell back but also with respect to televised evaluations of more substantive matters such as character and issue positions. The results cast doubt on claims by those who support New Hampshire’s status as the nation’s first primary because the state is thought to differ from the media-dominated electoral contests found elsewhere in American politics.

Personality, Ideology and World View: A Comparison of Media and Business Elites

For some time we have been engaged in a large scale study of various leadership strata in the United States. Our goal is to clarify similarities and differences in background, ideology and personality among members of such strata. We are also interested in the relationship between these variables and the manner in which members of different leadership groups perceive ‘reality’. This article reports preliminary findings on two groups – leading business executives and top level journalists. Our work has been partly informed by hypotheses developed by social scientists as diverse as Max Weber, Harold Lasswell, Joseph Schumpeter, S. M. Lipset, Alvin Gouldner, Jurgen Habermas, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell and others.

Increasing Candidate-Centered Televised Discourse Evaluating Local News Coverage of Campaign 2000

Content analysis of local television newscasts during Election 2000 showed marked differences between stations participating in two news improvement projects and those stations that did not participate in the “5/30” and “Best Practices” initiatives. Stations participating in those projects offered more news coverage overall and more candidate-centered coverage than did their in-market competitors. Stations enrolling in either of those programs also provided candidates with longer sound bites than did stations not participating in the programs.

THE RADICAL PERSONALITY: Social Psychological Correlates of New Left Ideology

This paper describes and tests a model of radical personality based upon social psychological correlates of New Left ideology. Following methodological criticism of studies that portrayed radicals as psychologically “liberated,” a model of psychopolitical rebellion is described as an inverted form of authoritarian personality. This model was tested by administering projective psychological instruments to a large sample of American college students during 1971–73. As hypothesized, radicalism was associated with measures of power motivation, narcissim, self-assertive psychosocial orientation, lack of affiliative motivation, and perceptions of protest and militancy as sources of power. The developmental sources of rebellion are also examined, and the implications for studies of personality and politics are discussed.

Jewish Ethnicity and Radical Culture: A Social Psychological Study of Political Activists

looks and employed permissive or democratic child-rearing techniques. By the late 1960s, these findings coalesced into a coherent psychopolitical explanation of student radicalism: New Leftists were psychologically liberated by their socially and culturally privileged family backgrounds. Their protest represented a struggle between what Hampden-Turner (1971, p. 364) has called the developmental and humanist themes of the affluent intelligentsia and the repressive themes of the capitalist economic and political system. The most influential statement of this position was presented by sociologist Flacks (1967, p. 63), who argued that the adoption of a childcentered ... democratic and egalitarian family style has produced a liberated generation of radical youth.

Is Opposition to Nuclear Energy an Ideological Critique

In the June 1987 issue of this Review, Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter offered evidence to support their argument that “the new environmental movement in the United States is partly a symbolic issue,” that elites in the news media and in public interest groups misrepresent the dangers of nuclear energy as a surrogate for more direct criticism of liberal capitalism in the United States. In this controversy, Charles J. Helm expresses skeptictem about the Rothman-Lichter line of argument; and they respond .