The Influence of Political Talk Radio on Confidence in Democratic Institutions

Abstract

This study compares people's use of political talk radio to that of other mass communication sources and to their confidence in democratic institutions. The paper argues that communication modalities (e.g., political talk radio) serve as important sources of secondary socialization: negative depictions of democratic institutions by specific sources cultivate negative perceptions of those institutions among users of these modalities. In order to test this position, the investigation employs a broad interconnected approach, combining a content analysis of references to specific democratic institutions across mass communication sources with a survey of people's media use patterns and their confidence in institutions. The results indicate that political talk radio depicts most institutions negatively, and that listeners manifest reduced confidence in those institutions. The implications of these findings for this nation's “crisis of confidence” in political institutions are explored.

Television Doctors: An Analysis of Physicians in Fictional and Non-Fictional Television Programs

“…This method was used by Pfau et al (1 995) to assess intercoder reliability in their content analysis of television physicians. It has also been used to assess intercoder reliability in other content analyses (Bordia, DiFonzo, & Chang, 1999;Daly, Vangelisti, & Weber, 1995;Pfau, Moy, Holbert, Szabo, Lin, & Zhang, 1998;Pfau, Moy, Radler, & Bridgeman, 1998;Pfau, Tusing, Koerner, Lee, Codbold, Penaloza, Yang, & Hong, 1997). Because coding the television physicians' sex and race involved classifying characters into nominal categories, a version of Cohen's kappa (Potter & Levine-Donnerstein, 1999) appropriate for situations with more than two coders was employed as the index of interrater reliability for these variables.…”

Killing the Messenger: an exploration of presidential newspaper coverage and public confidence in the press

“…Pfau et al, 1998;Pfau et al, 1995). For example, Lau and colleagues (1999) found that negative political advertising in the media often generates negative evaluations of ad sponsors.…”

“…Iyengar and Kinder, 1987;Entman, 1993). However, the connection between political news coverage and public opinion of the press is not as well de ned-at least theoretically-but certainly is implied by researchers (Bennett, 1992;Patterson, 1994;and Pfau et al, 1998). Lasorsa (1997), for instance, elucidates that examining the types of issues stressed in the news can ultimately help us to evaluate press performance in democracies.…”

Partisan "New Media" and Opinion Change, 2002-2004

“…Talk radio messages thus may have a greater potential to reinforce existing predispositions rather than persuade listeners to change their minds (Lee and Cappella 2001;Owen 1997;Yanovitsky and Cappella 2001). Furthermore, the anti-government messages that prevail on talk radio may deepen listeners' negative attitudes toward government institutions (Pfau et al 1998). Even though attitude reinforcement is sometimes portrayed as a "minimal effect" (Zaller 1996), it can be consequential, especially if members of the audience are becoming more conservative over time (Barker 2002;Barker 2000;Jones 2004).…”