Page 232 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

9. POLITICAL COMMUNICATION EFFECTS 221

Candidates learn to speak in brief sound bites, and advertisements are
increasingly limited in length. Neither affords the opportunity for any
sustained political reasoning, even if the candidates were inclined to rea-
son. Political ads make sophisticated use of music, symbols, and imagery,
particularly to impute negative qualities to opponents. Fear of attacks
increasingly dictates that political decisions of all kinds be directed by
considerations of how easy a course of action is to explain.
From the demands of the new styles of campaigning, a new set of pro-
fessional roles have emerged—image managers, spin doctors, photo
opportunists, opinion poll readers, media pundits, and so on (Blumler,
1990). A large part of the communicator’s job is to design visually com-
pelling scenes that journalists will find irresistible (Altheide & Snow,
1991). Such factors contribute to the increasing complexity of the media
environment.
Perhaps no other factor has contributed more to the growing complex-
ity of the media environment than the Internet. Its impact has been far too
profound to adequately address in this chapter. It provides access to an
extremely wide array of information content. The user plays a much
greater role in selecting information, and exposure is much more special-
ized and individualized. The flow of information in the system is much
more difficult to trace than for previous media, as information passes
through many hands. Consequently, the original source and the accuracy
and credibility of the information are also more difficult to assess. Never-
theless, the benefits of the technology are marked, both in terms of access
to information and in terms of the potential for individuals to contribute
to the discourse. The Internet allows like-minded individuals to find each
other and permits groups to organize for action.
However, as with most other forms of mass media, access and uses of
the Internet are asymmetric across class, racial, and generational bound-
aries (Jung, Qiu, & Kim, 2001; Loges & Jung, 2001). Interestingly, heavier
use of the Internet among younger adults may offset age-related differ-
ences in the opposite direction when it comes to newspapers. Although
there are economic factors related to class, race, and age that constrain
access to the Internet and other media (Roberts, 2000; Shah, Kwak, &
Schmierbach, 2000), what is more important is the nature of the preferred
content and the way that it is used. For instance, entertainment television
viewing and playing computer games may be associated with lower lev-
els of knowledge and participation (Niemi & Junn, 1998; Shah, 1998).
Effects are very different when those media are used for accessing infor-
mation about current affairs. In other words, the consequences of infor-
mation versus recreational uses of any media are very different (Shah,
McLeod, & Yoon, 2001). Sociocultural differences may in fact interact with
differences in usage patterns, in part tied to differences in the perceived