Page 224 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Theoretical Considerations
to citizens with greater sophistication and prior knowledge, because pa-
pers provide control and permit greater purposiveness. 26 That desire
for control and purposiveness are particularly associated with greater
knowledge, and are less important for citizens who are less politically
sophisticated or knowledgeable. As Scott Althaus and David Tewksbury
argue, this finding suggests that the new information environment cre-
ated by information technology is likely to appeal differentially to those
withmoresophistication,becauseitprovidesandrequiresanevengreater
degree of control and intentionality. 27
The second tenet of the psychological approach is that the acquisi-
tion of new information does not necessarily make citizens better informed
in a rational or objective sense. This apparent paradox turns on the fact
that citizens acquire and learn information in ways that are biased to-
ward reinforcing previously held beliefs and mental constructs. In other
words, research in political psychology shows that citizens tend to search
for information that reinforces what they already believe about political
choices, and they tend to avoid information that conflicts with existing
beliefs. When confronted with balanced information that both supports
and undermines their prior beliefs, experimental research has shown that
citizens are likely to judge information that is consistent with their prior
beliefs to be stronger or better than information that is inconsistent. 28
Research on selective exposure shows that a complex body of factors
shape which messages individuals attend to in an information-rich
environment, and uncertainty is not among the most important. The
rational model predicts that those with more uncertainty would be
more solicitous of new information than those with less uncertainty;
however, empirical research shows this to be false. Dolf Zillman and
Jennings Bryant illustrate the fallacy in that prediction with an analogy
from the study of television effects. If one posits that watching comedy
on television reduces anger and hostility in viewers, does it follow that
the presence of a large volume of television comedies reduces societal

Ann N. Crigler, and Marion R. Just, Common Knowledge: News and the Construction
of Political Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
26
Chaffee and Kanihan, “Learning about Politics from the Mass Media,” pp. 421–430.
27
Scott L. Althaus and David Tewksbury, “Patterns of Internet and Traditional News
Media Use in a Networked Community,” Political Communication 17, no. 1 (2000):
21–45.
28
Milton Lodge, Charles Tabor, and Aron Chase Galonsky, “The Political Consequences
of Motivated Reasoning: Partisan Bias in Information Processing,” paper prepared
for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Ga.,
Sept. 2–5, 1999.
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