W. Russell Neuman

Differentiation and Integration: Two Dimensions of Political Thinking.

Conceptual differentiation refers to the number of discrete elements of political information individuals utilize in their evaluation of political issues. In contrast with the more commonly used textbookish political knowledge indices, this measure corresponds more closely to knowledge-in-use. Conceptual integration is defined as the spontaneous and explicit organization of ideas and information in terms of abstract or ideological constructs and represents an expansion of Philip Converses research on levels of ideological thinking in mass publics. These two related dimensions of political information processing emerge from a detailed content analysis of depth interview transcripts. The analysis reveals substantial variation in the way citizens relate the condition of their own lives to those of their fellow citizens and to political authorities. As expected, education plays a central role in explaning these patterns, but there are some surprising interactive linkages between education and patterns of political thought. One specially intriguing finding is that conservatives have significantly lower scores than liberals on indices of differentiation and integration. The ramifications of these findings for survey research methodology and theories of mass political behavior are discussed.

Big Data, Digital Media, and Computational Social Science Possibilities and Perils

We live life in the network. We check our e-mails regularly, make mobile phone calls from almost any location ... make purchases with credit cards ... [and] maintain friendships through online social networks. ... These transactions leave digital traces that can be compiled into comprehensive pictures of both individual and group behavior, with the potential to transform our understanding of our lives, organizations, and societies.

Taming the Information Tide: Perceptions of Information Overload in the American Home

This study reports on new media adopters’ perceptions of and reactions to the shift from push broadcasting and headlines to the pull dynamics of online search. From a series of focus groups with adults from around the United States we find three dominant themes: (1) Most feel empowered and enthusiastic, not overloaded; (2) evolving forms of social networking represent a new manifestation of the two-step flow of communication; and (3) although critical of partisan “yellers” in the media, individuals do not report cocooning with the like-minded or avoiding the voices of those with whom they disagree. We also find that skills in using digital media matter when it comes to peoples attitudes and uses of the new opportunities afforded by them.

The Dynamics of Issue Frame Competition in Traditional and Social Media

This study examines the dynamics of the framing of mass shooting incidences in the U.S. occurring in the traditional commercial online news media and Twitter. We demonstrate that there is a dynamic, reciprocal relationship between the attention paid to different aspects of mass shootings in online news and in Twitter: tweets tend to be responsive to traditional media reporting, but traditional media framing of these incidents also seems to resonate from public framing in the Twitterverse. We also explore how different frames become prominent as they compete among media as time passes after shooting events. Finally, we find that key differences emerge between norms of journalistic routine and how users rely on Twitter to express their reactions to these tragic shooting incidents.

Political Communications Infrastructure

Major American corporate and political forces are currently battling for control of a new digital communications network that marks the convergence of what were until recently separate industries of publishing, broadcasting, telecommunications, and computers. So far the debate over the National Information Infrastructure has been dominated by questions of who gains and who loses economically. This article attempts to redirect attention to the issue of political communication—how technical developments in mass and interpersonal communications may influence how citizens learn about the political world around them, how political support is mobilized for issues and candidates, and how citizens signal preferences to their representatives.

The politics of a paradigm shift: Telecommunications regulation and the communications revolution

Abstract As a result of the convergence of telecommunications and mass communications technologies, American policymakers face a series of critical decisions about infrastructural investment, technical architecture, and regulation that will determine the character of the U.S. electronic industrial base. This article develops the argument that the current policy trajectory will likely lead to some awkward choices. Powerful vested interests have distorted the communications policy process. Regulatory inertia has come to tie the hands of the regulators as well as the hands of industry leaders. We argue that there exists a critical opportunity for independent communications policy research to make a difference and to anticipate and facilitate a paradigm shift in telecommunications regulation.

Doris Graber’s Insights on Taming the Information Tide

In the 1960s University of Michigan political scientist Philip Converse famously proposed that despite the routine dependence of politicians, pundits, and journalists on the “liberal-conservative continuum” to make sense of politics, most citizens ignore it. The Converse Conundrum became a focal point for research on American political behavior for much of the last half of the 20th century. Among the most thoughtful and solidly researched responses to this puzzle was Doris Graber’s Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide (1984). It is not the case, she argues, that citizens simply missed the point about ideological perspectives. They have active, purposeful, and diverse strategies for making sense of the news. She draws on schema theory and the psychology of selective attention to more richly probe the complexities of political communication in mass politics In the tradition of Robert Lane and William Gamson she conducted over-time depth interviews with a small panel of residents (in this case, in Evanston, Illinois) exploring the reasoning, motivations, and informational strategies of her active audience. This work (especially in the second edition [Graber, 1988]) was among the first of her seminal explorations of how visual imagery in print and broadcasting influence political perceptions. Few scholars had explored the visual component of political learning, but Doris Graber demonstrated that, in fact, visual recall of political stories is dramatically higher than recall of verbally conveyed themes. She found that avoidance of information that might be cognitively dissonant, despite the intuitive attractiveness of this theoretical tradition, was not a prominent strategy among her respondents. That surprising finding would echo through a number of experimental and field studies to explore polarized information filtering in online media. Professor Graber conducted this work in the 1970s and 1980s when newspapers and television were still the dominating forces of political media. She saw the significance of the digital revolution and was among the first to address it in her scholarship. But she did not return to the field for extended depth interviews to replicate this important work and explore how taming the tide has evolved in the

Broadcasting and Bandwidth

This chapter will briefly review eight spectrum skirmishes that precede and parallel the 1996 American DTV spectrum decision. We outline the general political and economic contours of these battles and conclude that regulators and lawmakers are at a distinct disadvantage in trying to promote competition, flexibility and a digital paradigm shift against the arrayed forces of incumbent spectrum users. In response we propose some models and concepts loosely drawn from computer science and political economics that might provide a resource to outgunned and well-intended policymakers. The first is the Consumer Value Integral, a theoretical and generalized model of spectrum valuation. One of the conservatizing factors in the spectrum wars is that incumbents can clearly and precisely identify financial gains and potential losses based on current business practices while challengers can identify only potential demand and usage. Furthermore, these valuations struggle to compare public good and private good components. Then drawing on Moore’s Law from computer science we speculate on some historical patterns of the next few decades and predict first an increase and then a decline in incumbent-challenger spectrum battles