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

This 2007 book studies the impact of the media on politics in the United States during the last half-century.

Markus Prior (Author)

9780521858724, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 April 2007

340 pages, 22 tables
23.7 x 16 x 2.6 cm, 0.573 kg

'… a generally convincing and thought provoking explantory account of the political repercussions wrought by changes in the media environment in the last 70 years … the book is essential reading for political scientists interested in individual political behaviour and the broader implications for democratic competition.' Journal of Politics

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 2007 book is to examine systematically, how these differences in access and form of media affect political behaviour. Using experiments and survey data, it shows how changes in the media environment reverberate through the political system, affecting news exposure, political learning, turnout, and voting behaviour.

1. Introduction
2. Conditional political learning
Part I. The Participatory Effects of Media Choice: 3. Broadcast television, political knowledge, and turnout
4. From low choice to high choice: the impact of cable tv and internet on news exposure, political knowledge, and turnout
5. From low choice to high choice: does greater media choice affect total news consumption and average turnout?
Part II. The Political Effects of Media Choice: 6. Broadcast television, partisanship, and the incumbency advantage
7. Partisan polarization in the high-choice media environment
8. Divided by choice: audience fragmentation and political inequality in the post-broadcast media environment.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH], Media studies [JFD], Popular culture [JFCA]