Samuel L. Popkin

Changing Media, Changing Politics

All the News Thats Fit to Sell. By James Hamilton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 264 pages.

A Model of a Communication System

37.95 cloth.

Changing Media and Changing Political Organization: Delegation, Representation and News

18.95 paper. Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age. By Matthew Baum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 291 pages.

The factual basis of “belief systems”: A reassessment

39.95 cloth.

A Postscript on the 1964 Election

19.95 paper. The way we think about news should be changed by two recent books: James Hamiltons All the News Thats Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News and Matthew Baums Soft News Goes to War. Both present surprising findings that challenge conventional wisdom. And, read together, they presage a new line of research into how entrepreneurial politicians, all over the world, are changing politics through their responses to changing media. Samuel L Popkin is Professor of Political Science at University of California, San Diego (spopkin@ucsd.edu). This essay was inspired by Elizabeth Eisensteins pioneering research on the effects of the printing press and Ithiel Pools analyses of the discrepancies between the expected and actual effect of new communications technologies from the printing press through the digital revolution. It was written during a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I am indebted to Gerald Gamm, Delynn Kaufman, Gary Jacobson, Arthur Lupia, Samuel Kernell, Michael Schudson and Bob Kaiser for their comments.

Introduction: Changing Media, Changing Politics

aggregate data can be utilized in order to obtain tlie complex information about individuals that is required for the simulation of a mass media system. Project Comcom (for Communist Communication) a t the M.I.T. Center for International Studies has developed, as part of a study of Communist mass media systems, a general computer model for simulating mass media systems. I t is an application of the basic idea earlier developed as the Simulmatics Corporation Media-hiis Simulation. A prerequisite was the development of a set of tecliniques for collating demographic, attitudinal, and media data from diverse sources in order to obtain a reasonable representation of a sample population because the estensivc survey data needed for a media simulation was not available. Ideally, the input to the simulation model would be demographic, attitudinal, and media data about individuals from a panel survey. To make tlie model workable in the absence of such data, it is necessary to utilize aggregate data tables and some basic theoretical assumptions to produce a reasonable representation of an individual population. The simulation, then, is divided into two passes. Pass 2, tlie actual media simulation, is determined by the inputs which, briefly, consist of two main sets of records. One is a hypothetical description of the individuals who constitute a sample of tlie relevant population, and is created by Pass 1. The other input is a description of a series of messages which constitute the mass media flow. Each individual has a set of characteristics, such as age, sex, party membership, occupation, and location of residence, as well as certain predispositions, such as attitude towards the regime and trustfulness or distrustfulness regarding messages. Each individual also has a probability of being esposed to each of the different media or message types. Each message type is described by the source in which it occurs, by certain credibility characteristics, by volume (e.g., space in the newspaper), and by the time and place of its appearance. The basic exposure for each individual for each message is determined by a hionte Carlo method. In the simplest case, the probability used to determine exposure

Chief of Staff@@@Chief of Staff, Twenty Five Years of Managing the Presidency

This article examines the ways that new communications technologies change the organization of politics as well as the content of news. Changes in the media lead to changes in the mediators, the persons who choose and interpret the news for the public. When new mediators convey different news stories or offer different interpretations from the previous regime, they redistribute control of politics and culture. As media get cheaper, faster and harder to control, state regulation of content becomes less effective. This provides new opportunities for citizens to monitor their leaders and alters the ways that leaders – whether they are democratic or authoritarian – demonstrate accountability. Political leaders are always trying to control the agenda by limiting information available to the public and convincing the public that they know more and know best. New forms of media, such as the commercial television, cable and satellite television, and the internet change political competition by providing new opportunities for insurgent politicians to challenge their elders. I consider these changes within the context of past innovations, including the rise of the printing press, the telegraph, the newspaper, and radio.

The Rational Peasant. The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam

Abstract Converse contended that the ideological disorganization, attitudi‐nal inconsistency, and limited information of American voters make them a politically disengaged mass, not a responsible electorate. I illustrate the shortcomings of Converses line of reasoning by showing that he misread his two most prominent examples of the electoral consequences of his theory: voting on the Vietnam War in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, and public opinion about the 1948 Taft‐Hartley Act. In both cases, voters were better able to sort candidates and policies than Converse reported, despite their lack of ideological sophistication or their knowledge of specific legislation. Converses interpretive errors here stem from mistaken assumptions about information processing and recall, and from questionable normative standards about what constitute meaningful and competent political orientation. His criteria underestimate the publics ability to make responsible choices, and the effect of campaigns on the choosing process.

The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam

The present paper will appear in the new edition of country. Such elections are few and far between. With the book, “Candidates, Issues and Strategies: A Computer the election of Jefferson in 1800, the Federalist Party Simulation of the 1960 and 1964 Elections,” by pool, disappeared; with the election of 1860, the IVliigs disAbelson, and Popkin, to be Publislled by the R1.I.T. appeared; in the election of 1936, the majority Republican Press. The book first appeared half a year before the Party became the minority party as it remains to this day. elections of 1964, but soon there was another election to The of 1 9 ~ could turn out to be another suc~l report, another opportunity to test the methods and conlandmark election. clusions that we had offered previously. This paper, then, I t is premature to assume that after its bruising defeat is an addendum, reporting on a second trial done during the Republican Party, captured by an extreme wing, will the 1964 election campaign. hisvanish from the American political scene. hlore likely the torian every election is n novel rearrangement of perG.0.P. ill experience a painful purging and recoverysistent elements of national life. TO the politician every But whatever l lap~ens, it will never be the same party election is another risky play in a continuing game. TO that it \ V ~ S before Barry Goldwater launched his crusade the political scientist every election is a fresh experiment to prove that he would rather be right than President. against wllich to test his theories. The 1964 election Seldom before has a national major party candidate put campaign, SO different from that of 1960-indeed so difSo high a value on upholding moral and ideological prinferent from that of any other in American history--was ciples rather than representing his PeoPle. The standard a challenge. How would our methods work in a second strategy Of candidates in the American two-party system election and what would they show about the dynamics is to seize the \Vell-PeoPled middle ground. The candiof the vote? date in some sense holds captive those followers who are As we write this chapter just two weeks after election extremists Of his OWn Wing Of Opinion; they have little day, three conclusions stand out. choice but to vote for him even if he is more moderate than they are. To win, however, he must demonstrate

The myth of the vanishing voter

In 2003 Ikuo Kabashima and Samuel Popkin invited Professors Masaki Taniguchi, Gill Steel, Susan Shirk, Jay Hamilton and Matthew Baum to join with them in charting a new path for research on the ways changing media are changing politics. In the last two decades, media studies have moved beyond claims of minimal effects by demonstrating how various characteristics of news stories–point of view (framing), connection to political offices (priming), emotional content, or causal implications– affect public opinion and voting. (Iyengar and Kinder 1987; Iyengar 1991; Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock 1991) Here we examine the ways in which changing communications technologies change the issue content of news consumed by the public and political competition within and between parties.