Deck 7: The Reach of the Partisan Media: How Choice Affects the Political Influence of Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow; Kevin Arceneaux and Martin Johnson

Question 1

When did a partisan media first emerge in the United States?

A) In the late 18th century, just after the founding.
B) In the mid-19th century, just before the Civil War.
C) In the early 20th century, during World War I.
D) In the late 20th century, with the expansion of cable news.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

If Arceneaux and Johnson are studying political communication, why do they allow people to watch entertainment shows like The Dog Whisperer in addition to political talk shows?

Answer 2

No Answer

Question 3

How is oppositional media hostility different from the hostile media effect?

Answer 3

No Answer

Question 4

If mass media rarely persuades people to change their minds, what effects does it have on public opinion? Explain one of the three major types of media effects Arceneaux and Johnson identify.

Question 5

What implications does selective exposure have for the effects of partisan news media on public opinion?

Question 6

In the mid-20th century, what did scholars discover about campaigns and voter decision-making?

A) Campaigns have a profound "hypodermic" influence on voters.
B) Campaigns have less influence on voters than many anticipate because they are guided by their identification with a political party and social groups.
C) Campaigns caused voters to pay more attention to partisan talk shows on cable television.
D) Campaigns incited dangerous sedition against the government.

Question 7

Which cable news network is more likely to feature liberal or progressive political viewpoints?

A) CNN
B) Fox News Channel
C) MSNBC
D) ESPN

Question 8

What aspect of experimental research design allows scholars like Arceneaux and Johnson to assume that the people in their treatment groups are similar to each other and that differences between them after exposure to different treatments are attributable to those treatments rather than underlying social and demographic differences?

A) Selective exposure
B) Control group
C) Choice condition
D) Random assignment

Question 9

In their study, Arceneaux and Johnson find that people who were allowed to choose to watch whatever they wanted were likely to perceive news media in what way?

A) As more hostile than people exposed only to like-minded or oppositional televisions shows.
B) As less hostile than people exposed only to oppositional shows, but more hostile than people exposed to like-minded shows.
C) As more hostile than people exposed only to oppositional shows, but less hostile than people exposed to like-minded shows.
D) About the same as people exposed to either like-minded or oppositional shows.

Question 10

Which of these observers has expressed concerns about the increasingly partisan nature of cable television news?

A) President Barack Obama and broadcast journalist Ted Koppel
B) Federalist judge Alexander Addison
C) Talk show hosts Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity
D) Media researcher Joseph Klapper

Question 11

Between 1990 and 2008, how did the availability of television channels in the average household change?

A) It roughly doubled, from 15 to 33 channels.
B) It increased almost ten-fold, from 15 to 130 channels.
C) It increased four-fold, from 33 to 130 channels.
D) It stayed about the same in most places, with about 20 channels available.

Question 12

What do researchers call the phenomenon that people think objective news stories are biased against their personal point of view?

A) Lame-stream media bias
B) Third-person effect
C) Hostile media effect
D) Hypodermic model

Question 13

A research design that uses a public opinion survey to identify the effects of the news media possesses _______.

A) weak external validity
B) weak internal validity
C) strong causal inference
D) split-sample reliability

Question 14

The earliest understanding of potential media effects during the 20th century is best described by what term?

A) Era of minimal effects
B) Selective exposure
C) Conditional effects paradigm
D) Hypodermic model

Question 15

Explain the selective exposure research design Arceneaux and Johnson use. How does it address concerns about internal and external validity of political communication experiments?