Jason Barabas

Media exposure is one of the most important concepts in the social sciences, and yet scholars have struggled with how to operationalize it for decades. Some researchers have focused on the effects of variously worded self-report measures. Others advocate the use of aggregate and/or behavioral data that does not rely on a person’s ability to accurately recall exposure. Our study illustrates how an experimental design can be used to improve measures of exposure. In particular, we show how an experimental benchmark can be employed to (1) compare actual (i.e., manipulated) and self-reported values of news exposure; (2) assess how closely the self-reported items approximate the performance of “true” exposure in an empirical application; and (3) investigate whether a variation in question wording improves the accuracy of self-reported exposure measures.

In a democracy, knowledge is power. Research explaining the determinants of knowledge focuses on unchanging demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. This study combines data on the public's knowledge of nearly 50 political issues with media coverage of those topics. In a two‐part analysis, we demonstrate how education, the strongest and most consistent predictor of political knowledge, has a more nuanced connection to learning than is commonly recognized. Sometimes education is positively related to knowledge. In other instances its effect is negligible. A substantial part of the variation in the education‐knowledge relationship is due to the amount of information available in the mass media. This study is among the first to distinguish the short‐term, aggregate‐level influences on political knowledge from the largely static individual‐level predictors and to empirically demonstrate the importance of the information environment.

Theorists argue that deliberation promotes enlightenment and consensus, but scholars do not know how deliberation affects policy opinions. Using the deliberative democracy and public opinion literatures as a guide, I develop a theory of opinion updating where citizens who deliberate revise their prior beliefs, particularly when they encounter consensual messages. A key aspect of this model is that opinion strength moderates the deliberative opinion change process. In two separate propensity score analyses using panel survey data from a deliberative forum and cross-sectional surveys, I show how deliberation and discussion both affect opinions toward Social Security reform. However, deliberation differs from ordinary discussion in that participants soften strongly held views, encounter different perspectives, and learn readily. Thus, deliberation increases knowledge and alters opinions, but it does so selectively based on the quality and diversity of the messages as well as the willingness of participants to keep an open mind.