Young Mie Kim

The Correspondent, the Comic, and the Combatant The Consequences of Host Style in Political Talk Shows

Tailored within the increasingly competitive news environment, political talk shows have adopted a range of styles, heralding a rise in “combatant” and “comic” hosts to complement the conventional “correspondent.” Using an experimental design to rule out self-selection biases, this study isolates the impact of host style on media judgments. In comparison to the other styles, the correspondent host increases perceptions of informational value, enhances host and program credibility, and reduces erosion of media trust, while a comic host mitigates some of the negative impact compared to a combatant host. Implications for media accountability and democratic functioning are discussed.

The Shifting Sands of Citizenship Toward a Model of the Citizenry in Life Politics

Identifying the emerging trends in contemporary politics as life politics, this article revisits the notion of issue publics (an auxiliary concept developed to explain variability in attitudes and behavior within the public) and extends its theoretical concept in the context of life politics (a term relating to the choices people make every day and the politics of personal interests). It argues that publics consist of pluralistic groups of people who consider particular issues personally important based on self-interest, collective identity, and values. This article pays particular attention to how the new media environment, characterized by the development of digital media and the adoption of entertainment-oriented, personalized media in politics, contributes to the facilitation of issue publics in life politics.

Communication, Consumers, and Citizens Revisiting the Politics of Consumption

The year 2011 was defined by the intersection of politics and economics: the Wisconsin protests, the Occupy Movement, anti-austerity demonstrations, the Buffett Rule, and so on. These events drew attention to the role of politics in the erosion of labor power, the rise of inequality, and the excesses of overconsumption. Moving beyond periodic and dutiful action directed at an increasingly unresponsive government, citizens tested the boundaries of what we consider civic engagement by embracing personalized forms of “lifestyle politics” enacted in everyday life and often directed at the market. These issues are the focus of this volume, which we divide into four sections. The first section attempts both to situate consumption in politics as a contemporary phenomenon and to view it through a wider historical lens. The second section advances the notion of sustainable citizenship at the individual/group level and the societal/institutional level, and understands consumption as socially situated and structured. Extending this thinking, the third section explores various forms of conscious consumption and relates them to emerging modes of activism and engagement. The fourth section questions assumptions about the effectiveness of the citizen-consumer and the underlying value of political consumerism and conscious consumption. We conclude by distilling six core themes from this collection for future work.

Moderatism or Polarization? Representation of Advocacy Groups’ Ideology in Newspapers

Scholars and commentators argue that the United States has become politically polarized in recent years, with news content itself favoring polarized views. If true, this represents a radical shift from Gans’s enduring news value of moderatism. By examining 208 advocacy groups’ ideology and their representation in 118 newspapers, this study revisits Gans’s moderatism argument and investigates polarization in news content. Analysis demonstrates that moderate groups had less prominence within articles, with no differences in tone. Polarization may offer a higher news value by presenting inherent conflict and a means for journalistic balance.

Ambivalence Reduction and Polarization in the Campaign Information Environment: The Interaction Between Individual- and Contextual-Level Influences

This study examines how the campaign information environment influences individuals’ ambivalence reduction and polarization. Based on the 2008 presidential television campaign advertising data and individuals’ electoral behavior data in 208 designated market areas nationwide, this study utilizes multilevel modeling to better understand the interactions between the effects of individual-level predispositions and that of the contextual-level campaign information environment. The findings of the study indicate that the campaign information environment does matter in ambivalence reduction and polarization. Individuals living in a media market where the volume of campaign advertising is relatively high are less ambivalent and more polarized in candidate evaluations. The patterns appear to be amplified among partisans, suggesting the campaign information environment functions as a “motivator.” The partisan bias of the ads in a media market, however, exerts only limited influence. The implications for the functioning of democracy are discussed.

Choosing the Right Media for Mobilization: Issue Advocacy Groups' Media Niches in the Competitive Media Environment

Issue advocacy groups play a central role in todays political system, and the choices they make concerning media and communication have lately been a scholarly concern. This study investigates how issue advocacy groups choose media and communication technologies from the perspective of uses and gratifications approach and the niche theory. Drawing upon a national telephone survey of 209 randomly chosen advocacy groups in the United States, the findings suggest that new communication technologies (including e-mail and websites) are perceived to be competitively superior to traditional media and provide more gratifications when it comes to extending public mobilization. Grassroots-oriented advocacy groups in particular more actively utilize new technologies in public mobilization than do professional associations.

Navigational Structures and Information Selection Goals: A Closer Look at Online Selectivity

Using an experimental design coupled with Web-tracking technology, this study explores 2 factors that influence levels of congruent information gathering online. The first factor compares the navigational structure of 2 distinct Web pages—the more open, user-directed search engine versus the organized, assembled structure of a portal Web page. The second factor tests the role of goals for information seeking—telling subjects they will soon engage in a discussion with another person who either disagrees with their viewpoint, agrees, is undecided, or no discussion treatment. Results indicate both experimental factors independently contribute to selectivity in online information seeking.

The DC factor? Advocacy groups in the news

This study examines dynamics among organized interests’ characteristics, the organizations’ strategic activities, and news coverage of organizations’ activities by incorporating theoretical perspectives from group politics and journalism. To examine the relationship among groups’ characteristics, strategic efforts, and news coverage (visibility and prominence), the study combines three large data sets: group profile data (208 US organizations based on the Internal Revenue Service data collected by the National Center for Charitable Statistics), telephone interviews with groups’ executive members (208 randomly sampled organizations nationwide), and content coding of newspaper articles that covered the same organizations (548 newspaper articles). Findings from this study show that the ‘DC factor’, that is, being located in Washington, DC, is consistently a significant factor in explaining the presence of groups in newspapers, even after controlling for group resources, including total revenue. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Equalization or normalization? Voter–candidate engagement on Twitter in the 2010 U.S. midterm elections

ABSTRACT This study assesses the engagement between voters and political candidates on Twitter and examines its relationship with offline electoral factors such as campaign finances and election outcomes. An analysis of more than 5 million tweets from 302 candidates and their followers in the 2010 U.S. midterm elections reveals that there are large disparities in voter–candidate engagement across the candidates. The prominent candidates from bigger races have more followers, the candidates who have more followers get more @mentions and retweets, and a small number of prominent candidates dominate the political Twitterverse. Despite this, the findings also suggest that indicators of voter–candidate engagement are not solely determined by candidates’ campaign resources, suggesting the potential power-leveling effects of Twitter. Little evidence, however, supports voter–candidate engagement on Twitter as influential to an election outcome. The implications of the findings for future democracy are discussed.

When women attack.

Abstract. The common assumption that female candidates on the campaign trail should not go on the attack, because such tactics contradict gender stereotypes, has not received consistent support. We argue that in some circumstances gender stereotypes will favor female politicians going negative. To test this proposition, this study examines how gender cues affect voter reactions to negative ads in the context of a political sex scandal, a context that should prime gender stereotypes that favor females. Using an online experiment involving a national sample of U.S. adults (N = 599), we manipulate the gender and partisan affiliation of a politician who attacks a male opponent caught in a sex scandal involving sexually suggestive texting to a female intern. Results show that in the context of a sex scandal, a female candidate going on the attack is evaluated more positively than a male. Moreover, while female participants viewed the female sponsor more favorably, sponsor gender had no effect on male participants. Partisanship also influenced candidate evaluations: the Democratic female candidate was evaluated more favorably than her Republican female counterpart.