Crucial News -- Television and American Public Opinion: Television and American Public Opinion

Author: Santo Ango
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Crucial News: Television and American Public Opinion, conceived 23 years ago at the Department of Political Science of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. For political communication research, the 21st century is an exciting era. This field has shifted from primarily relying on surveys to a flourishing landscape of diverse research methods. This book presents an empirical study by two renowned American political figures on the "agenda-setting" theory in the field of communication. Every weekend night, 5 million Americans sit in front of the television, ready to be occupied, informed, and influenced by TV news. Due to the extraordinary reach and credibility of TV news, it possesses the power to set the public's political agenda. This book explicitly highlights for the first time that TV news programs play a significant role in telling audiences what issues to prioritize, how to think about them, and shaping the way most Americans engage in political life. Santo Ango and Donald R. Kinder used advanced and innovative experimental methods to subtly alter the order and emphasis of selected network news broadcasts without the audience's awareness, testing the reactions of randomly selected "typical" Americans. Combined with a meticulous analysis of national public opinion polls, they show readers how events prominently covered in national news become more important in the audience's minds, while neglected news loses attention. Additionally, prominent news in the news stream significantly influences viewers' criteria for evaluating the president and political candidates.