Collaborative Research: Choice, Attention, and Reception: The Effects of Agency on Persuasion and Media Effects

20世纪初，人们担心大众媒体覆盖面的扩大可能会为精英操纵公众提供便利。他们的恐惧基于一种隐含的观点，即媒体的影响就像用皮下注射针给病人注射药物：信息的影响将是直接和剧烈的。然而，早期的研究发现，几乎没有证据支持这一观点，相反，研究发现，人们倾向于避免和抵制大众媒体上与他们的政治倾向相冲突的信息。到本世纪中叶，许多研究人员得出结论，大众媒体对公众舆论的影响充其量是微乎其微的。然而，随后的研究发现了媒体间接影响公众舆论的具体条件。虽然当代实验性政治传播研究接受了大众媒体的效果取决于谁接收信息的观点，但研究设计往往使用了一种可操作的“皮下针头”，将刺激传递给参与者。这造成了我们对媒体效应的认识上的差距。特别是，如果接触政治节目与抵制节目影响的能力呈正相关，那么大众媒体对政治态度的影响可能比现有的实验证据所显示的更为有限。这个项目调查了选择性曝光如何影响大众媒体中的政治节目的影响，开发了一个理论框架来理解选择性曝光的过程，并利用它来确定假设。这些假设是通过实验来检验的，这些实验允许受控实验室中的一些参与者在他们的行为受到监控的同时切换电视频道。该项目假设，目前的研究夸大了新闻媒体对公民对政府和政客的信任程度、对政治人物的评价以及态度两极分化的程度。除了测试政治传播学者对媒体影响力的当代解释在现实世界中的适用性外，该项目还对社会产生了更广泛的影响，涉及政治电视节目在日益碎片化的媒体环境中所扮演的角色，在这个环境中，公民可以很容易地避开带有公开政治内容的电视节目。这项研究就以下问题提供了指导：不文明的政治辩论节目真的“伤害”了美国吗？电视新闻是否会影响公众在评价政治家时认为哪些问题是重要的？政治节目的碎片化和有线电视对新闻来源的更多选择是否导致了一个更分裂、更极端的政治？该项目还为研究生提供社会科学方法论方面的培训，并让本科生接触社会科学研究的过程。

At the beginning of the 20th century, people worried that the expanding reach of mass media threatened to facilitate elite manipulation of the public. Their fears rested on the implicit view that media influence operated like administering a drug to a patient using a hypodermic needle: The influence of the message would be immediate and drastic. However, early research found little evidence to support this view, and instead found that people tend to avoid and resist messages in the mass media that conflict with their political predispositions. By mid-century many researchers concluded that the effects of mass media on public opinion were minimal at best. Subsequent research, however, found specific conditions under which the media indirectly influence public opinion. While contemporary experimental political communication research accepts the view that the effects of mass media depend on who receives the message, more often than not the research designs employ an operational "hypodermic needle" delivery of stimuli to participants. This has produced a gap in our knowledge of media effects. In particular, if exposure to political programming is positively correlated with the ability to resist influence from that programming, then the effects of the mass media on political attitudes may be more limited than extant experimental evidence suggests. This project investigates how selective exposure affects the influence of political programming found in the mass media, develops a theoretical framework to understand the process of selective exposure, and uses it to identify hypotheses. These hypotheses are tested using experiments that allow some participants in a controlled laboratory setting to change television channels while their behavior is monitored. The project hypothesizes that current research overstates the extent to which the news media influence citizens' levels of trust in government and politicians, evaluations of political figures, and attitude polarization. In addition to testing the real-world applicability of political communications scholars' contemporary explanations of media influence, the project has broader impacts for society concerning the role that political television programming plays in an increasingly fragmented media environment in which citizens can easily avoid television shows with overt political content. The study offers guidance on the following questions: Are uncivil political debate shows really "hurting" America? Does the television news affect what issues the public think is important when they are evaluating politicians? Is the fragmentation of political programming and expanded choice over news sources on cable television leading to a more divided and more extreme polity? The project also provides training to graduate students in social science methodologies and exposes undergraduate students to processes of social scientific inquiry.