Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections

Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology

by Markus Prior

The media environment is changing. Today in the United States, the average viewer can choose from hundreds of channels, including several twenty-four hour news channels. News is on cell phones, on iPods, and online; it has become a ubiquitous and unavoidable reality in modern society. The purpose of this book is to examine systematically, how these differences in access and form of media affect political behaviour. Using experiments and new survey data, it shows how changes in the media environment reverberate through the political system, affecting news exposure, political learning, turnout, and voting behavior.

Genres: Politics, Journalism, Nonfiction, Academic

338 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2007

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an expansion of the writer's PhD thesis. He makes a marvelous case of illustrating why less has proven more, when it comes to the correlation between media outlets, content choices and people's knowledge and intelligence. I teach a high school seminar class in Media and Politics and found this a great resource for me and the students, recommended by a former professor at Tufts. Highly recommend this for anyone wanting data and analysis on how the increase in media choices has been detrimental to our democracy and society as a whole. While a scholarly work, it's very readable.

[Emily Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only gave this one star because I had to read it for school so I had to read fast. But this book has some very interesting ideas, theories, and hypotheses and I think that if I read it at my own speed I would have enjoyed it more.