to many, however, it constantly appears as an instructional problem. The final two chapters serve as excellent summary statements. Chapter 13 emphasizes the application of previous text material to the classroom situation. Of great significance is the author's discussion of commonly defined independent, dependent, and moderator variables. The final chapter focuses on evaluation in the overall sense, particularly as it relates to programs of study. The principles of measurement and research design are applied to the evaluation process through several ex-

Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application:

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; (iii) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and (iv) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.

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Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

Social psychological research has taught us a lot about why people protest. This article provides a theoretical and empirical overview. Discussed are grievances, efficacy, identification, emotions ...

/pdf/the-social-psychology-of-protest-1ib9wofd6j.pdf

The social psychology of protest

Recently, scholars tested how digital media use for informational purposes similarly contributes to foster democratic processes and the creation of social capital. Nevertheless, in the context of today's socially-networked-society and the rise of social media applications (i.e., Facebook) new perspectives need to be considered. Based on U.S. national data, results show that after controlling for demographic variables, traditional media use offline and online, political constructs (knowledge and efficacy), and frequency and size of political discussion networks, seeking information via social network sites is a positive and significant predictor of people's social capital and civic and political participatory behaviors, online and offline. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01574.x

Social Media Use for News and Individuals' Social Capital, Civic Engagement and Political Participation

This paper examines the bases of opposition to immigrant minorities in Western Europe, focusing on The Netherlands. The specific aim of this study is to test the validity of predictions derived from two theories—realistic conflict, which emphasizes considerations of economic well-being, and social identity, which emphasizes considerations of identity based on group membership. The larger aim of this study is to investigate the interplay of predisposing factors and situational triggers in evoking political responses. The analysis is based on a series of three experiments embedded in a public opinion survey carried out in The Netherlands (n = 2007) in 1997‐98. The experiments, combined with parallel individual-level measures, allow measurement of the comparative impact of both dispositionally based and situationally triggered threats to economic well-being and to national identity at work. The results show, first, that considerations of national identity dominate those of economic advantage in evoking exclusionary reactions to immigrant minorities and, second, that the effect of situational triggers is to mobilize support for exclusionary policies above and beyond the core constituency already predisposed to support them.

Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities

1. Introduction 2. Conditional political learning Part I. The Participatory Effects of Media Choice: 3. Broadcast television, political knowledge, and turnout 4. From low choice to high choice: the impact of cable tv and internet on news exposure, political knowledge, and turnout 5. From low choice to high choice: does greater media choice affect total news consumption and average turnout? Part II. The Political Effects of Media Choice: 6. Broadcast television, partisanship, and the incumbency advantage 7. Partisan polarization in the high-choice media environment 8. Divided by choice: audience fragmentation and political inequality in the post-broadcast media environment.

Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections

Despite dramatic increases in available political information through cable television and the Internet, political knowledge and turnout have not changed noticeably. To explain this seeming paradox, I argue that greater media choice makes it easier for people to find their preferred content. People who like news take advantage of abundant political information to become more knowledgeable and more likely to turn out. In contrast, people who prefer entertainment abandon the news and become less likely to learn about politics and go to the polls. To test this proposition, I develop a measure of people's media content preference and include it in a representative opinion survey of 2,358 U.S. residents. Results show that content preference indeed becomes a better predictor of political knowledge and turnout as media choice increases. Cable TV and the Internet increase gaps in knowledge and turnout between people who prefer news and people who prefer entertainment.

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News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout

This article examines if the emergence of more partisan media has contributed to political polarization and led Americans to support more partisan policies and candidates. Congress and some newer media outlets have added more partisan messages to a continuing supply of mostly centrist news. Although political attitudes of most Americans have remained fairly moderate, evidence points to some polarization among the politically involved. Proliferation of media choices lowered the share of less interested, less partisan voters and thereby made elections more partisan. But evidence for a causal link between more partisan messages and changing attitudes or behaviors is mixed at best. Measurement problems hold back research on partisan selective exposure and its consequences. Ideologically one-sided news exposure may be largely confined to a small, but highly involved and influential, segment of the population. There is no firm evidence that partisan media are making ordinary Americans more partisan.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisci-100711-135242

Media and Political Polarization

Many studies of media effects use self-reported news expo- sure as their key independent variable without establishing its validity. Motivated by anecdotal evidence that people's reports of their own me- dia use can differ considerably from independent assessments, this study examines systematically the accuracy of survey-based self-reports of news exposure. I compare survey estimates to Nielsen estimates, which do not rely on self-reports. Results show severe overreporting of news exposure. Survey estimates of network news exposure follow trends in Nielsen ratings relatively well, but exaggerate exposure by a factor of 3 on average and as much as eightfold for some demographics. It follows that apparent media effects may arise not because of differences in ex- posure, but because of unknown differences in the accuracy of reporting exposure.

Markus Prior

Papers

Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities

Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections

News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout

Media and Political Polarization

The Immensely Inflated News Audience: Assessing Bias in Self-Reported News Exposure