Staci L. Rhine

Registration Reform and Turnout Change in the American States

This article seeks to analyze the relationship between turnout change and reform in the American states. Using pooled cross sections of state-level data, turnout and turnout change over time are compared to registration provisions at the same level. The registration closing date and motor-voter registration show a clear relationship to higher turnout, whereas mail registration and eased purge procedures do not. As a result, turnout gains because of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 are likely, but they will be modest.

An analysis of the impact of registration factors on turnout in 1992

In 1993 Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The law contained provisions for uniform mail registration, changes in purge procedures, and changes in some forms of agency registration including motor-voter registration. Using the 1992 National Election Study, I estimate the impact of several of these changes in addition to same-day registration. Same-day registration and motor-voter registration both show strong, positive relationships to turnout, while the results are mixed for mail registration and changed purge procedures.

Gaps in Americans' Knowledge About the Bosnian Civil War

This study applies the knowledge gap theory to the American publics knowledge of the Bosnian civil war between September 1992—when the conflict was in its early days—through June 1995. Our goal was to determine if a knowledge gap existed in the case of the Bosnian civil war, and if so, whether it increased or decreased over time. Times Mirror Center polls clearly establish that the better educated knew more about Bosnia from September 1992 through June 1995. But people from all educational levels showed dramatic improvements in knowledge. The so-called knowledge gap declined rather than increased. Our surprising results may be due to the changing context and duration of the conflict. Attention to the Bosnia crisis increased over these 3 years, with people from all backgrounds more motivated to pay attention. In addition, the nightly network news provided frequent coverage of Bosnia. Thus, all segments of the American public learned more about the crisis.

The Things They Cared About Change and Continuity in Americans’ Attention to Different News Stories, 1989–2002

Pew Research Center polls in 1989, 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002 show that Americans pay more attention to media accounts of nonpolitical stories than those about national, international, and local politics. Although Americans’ attentiveness to political news rose between 2000 and 2002, attention to media accounts of politics remained below where it had been in 1989. For the most part, the relative rankings of attentiveness to different kinds of news stories remained the same. The authors also explore the factors that predict attention to political news.Finally,heed paid to media stories about politics appears to affect two important facets of democratic citizenship: political knowledge and participation.

American Public Opinion and the Civil War in Bosnia Attention, Knowledge, and the Media

The Bosnian civil war offers an opportunity to examine the American publics attitudes toward foreign policy problems in the post-cold war era. We use polls conducted for the Times Mirror/Pew Research Center for the People and the Press from 1992 to 1996 and indicators of media coverage of Bosnia to analyze trends in public attention to and knowledge of the conflict. As expected, events, media coverage, public attention to that coverage, and knowledge of the conflict are related. Knowledge rises over time, but the increase is greatest among the most educated. Greater knowledge also produced differing policy preferences. The more knowledgeable Americans were, the more they sympathized with the Bosnian Muslims. The relationship between knowledge and support for more aggressive U.S. options, however, was mixed. The data on Bosnia suggest that the public can become interested in foreign policy in the post-cold war era, but we cannot predict the duration of that interest.

TELEVISION “NEWS GRAZERS”: WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY (DON’T) KNOW

ABSTRACT Between 1998 and 2006, a new style of television news consumption was born: “news grazing.” With remote control devices in hand, “grazers” flip through TV news channels in order to find interesting news stories. Approximately three‐fifths of the public graze, and this group tends to be younger than non‐grazers. Grazers are less likely than the rest of the public to follow “hard” news about politics and economics, and, not surprisingly, they are even less knowledgeable about public affairs than most people are.