POLI SCI 220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Opinion Leadership, Fairness Doctrine, Federal Communications Commission
8 Mar 2018
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Lippmann: unrealistic to assume ordinary citizens can be well informed. Lupia/mccubbins: people are capable of making reasoned choices even with little information (they rely on heuristics) Page and shapiro: public opinion is stable in the aggregate. Measurement errors and random individual changes tend to cancel each other out. If both parties" leaders are on same side but are wrong, then voters are in trouble - voters follow leaders. Aggregate opinion may be stable but not necessarily consistent. These do not add up (conflict each other) Democrats trust increased a lot in 2017, republicans decreased. The news media is also a private enterprise. Low circulation until 1830-1840s cheaper printing technology. 20th century rise of objective" press (tv/radio) Early radio/tv: airwaves as tragedy of the commons. Federal communications commission regulates airwaves due to scarcity. Echo chambers: relying on washington elites to define the news created problems. Vietnam, watergate led to rise of adversarial journalism.
