A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies

TLDR: Norris as mentioned in this paper found that exposure to the news media is positively related to citizens' levels of political knowledge, trust, and participation, even after controlling for demographics, attitudinal factors, and cultural differences.

Abstract: A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies. Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 398 pp. $59.95 hbk. $21.95 pbk. The main finding of Pippa Norris's study is that exposure to the news media is positively related to citizens' levels of political knowledge, trust, and participation, even after controlling for demographics, attitudinal factors, and cultural differences. Although various positive contributions of exposure to news media already have been documented in other research, never was the amount of evidence as monumental as in this book. Norris analyzed European Community, Eurobarometer, European Election and Post-election, British Campaign Panel, U.S. National Election, and Pew Center for the People and the Press surveys, providing individual and aggregate level, over-time and cross-sectional evidence supporting her virtuous media thesis. The book is set up as a challenge to "conventional wisdom" or "unquestioned orthodoxy" of media malaise theories that argue that "exposure to the news media discourages learning about politics, erodes trust in political leaders and government institutions, and dampens political mobilization." The problem is that there is a huge gap between the abundance of glib charges and the scarcity of empirical evidence of negative effects of news media. Consequently, Norris mostly relies on Michael Robinson's long ago retracted videomalaise claim and strays away from her main line of theorizing by reviewing studies that deal with the issues well outside the scope of her own study, such as effects of framing news stories, political advertising, and television entertainment. Findings of negative media effects in contexts other than elections and those tapping more specific types of media content and their particular features remain unchallenged by the Norris study. Norris acknowledges that "we need to compare the effects of variance in the media messages so that we can see whether people who consistently use one distinctive source (such as crime-focused local TV news) differ from those who use others (such as rightwing talk radio)" and that "our measures of media habits are often diffuse and imprecise," but she is still restricted in her research to measures of frequency of general newspaper and television news use. Nevertheless, Norris urges us to stopblaming the news media for political problems and instead to direct our attention to "the problems themselves." This call, without showing that media in many of their specific content characteristics or structures are not a part of problems that extend beyond voting and political campaigning, seems premature at best. However, Norris's study makes a significant contribution to communication research by most convincingly showing that the news media may be an important part of solutions to some of the social ills. …