Timothy E. Cook

The News Media as a Political Institution: Looking Backward and Looking Forward

This article presents a new institutionalism approach to news grounded in sociological and historical approaches to new institutionalism and argues that this approach to news production has several advantages. Among them are that it encourages analysts to see the news as an outcome of interaction between journalists and other political actors, that it allows for variance in news coverage around a general tendency toward homogeneity in the news, and, finally, that it encourages scholars to examine the full range of news outlets in the media universe rather than to concentrate their attention on the narrow world of mainstream elite media. This approach is compared and contrasted with that offered by Sparrow elsewhere in this issue, and future directions for research are offered.

The Bear Market in Political Socialization and the Costs of Misunderstood Psychological Theories

Not so long ago, political scientists were enthusiastically proclaiming that political socialization was a growth stock. But interest in the subfield has slackened, and the bull market has turned bearish. This article argues that a central cause of this recent scholarly neglect is a lack of theoretical confidence. Political socialization has been branded as less worthy of study largely because it is difficult to study and to understand in the absence of an explicit psychological model of learning. A strong theoretical rationale must be developed to return the subfield to its deserved place of priority. Such an endeavor is also Justified by the new popularity of the Piagetian model, which is inappropriate for understanding political learning because it emphasizes the foremost growth of logical operations and the individual as the prime motivating force. Another model, that of L. S. Vygotsky, is more useful, incorporating many of Piagets insights without his unrealistic expectations. I outline Vygotskys cognitive-developmental model, indicate its applicability to the small body of defensible research on the process of political learning, and conclude with a research agenda suggested by the model.

Afterword: Political values and production values

This afterword to this issue suggests that our deep knowledge of the patterns of news content that are consistent across organizations and over time now should be followed by a greater awareness of how news organizations and newspersons come up with that content. In particular, while the preceding studies, as well as a wealth of others, conclude that the news is “indexed” to elite opinion, they also display considerable individual discretion for journalists. I suggest that news norms are not closely connected to news content and that journalistic routines cannot explain the consensual pictures presented in the news. If it is the case that newspersons are less preoccupied with reflecting a legitimized elite than with generating a predictable stream of nonfiction stories about the world, we may comprehend their work better by thinking of them as not so much “following the trail of power” as seeking to find ways to craft a continuing and compelling saga.

The Psychological Theory of Political Socialization and the Political Theory of Child Development:The Dangers of Normal Science

The relationship between psychological theory and political theory has long been precarious in the study of political socialization. Political scientists often skirt problems of psychological models,