How to measure exposure to information in the media is highly disputed, primarily due to the difficulties of obtaining accurate self-reports. The growing supply of outlets and proliferation of information sources have added an additional level of complexity to these problems. Reflecting on old and new approaches for measuring exposure to political information, it is argued that both the specific source and the frequency of exposure must be taken into account. The validity of this so-called "list-frequency technique" is tested using a two-wave panel survey as well as a split sample experiment from the survey pre-test to enable comparison with the "list technique." The results support the list-frequency technique in being a good solution, since it provides the same aggregate estimates of media use as the already validated list technique, and may give more detailed effect estimates and increase the explained variance when predicting political knowledge.
Abstract. Today, citizens have the possibility to use many different types of news media and participate politically in various ways. This study examines how use of different news types (hard and soft TV news as well as printed and online versions of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers) indirectly affects changes in offline and online political participation through current affairs knowledge and internal efficacy during nonelection and election time. We use a four-wave national panel survey from Denmark (N = 2,649) and show that use of hard TV news and broadsheets as well as online tabloids positively affects changes in both offline and online political participation through current affairs knowledge and internal efficacy. Use of soft TV news and printed tabloids has a negative indirect effect. These results are more pronounced for online political participation and during election time. However, use of soft TV news also has a positive direct effect on changes in political participation, which suggests a positive impact via other processes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.