Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:53:08.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social Networks and the Mass Media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

DAVID A. SIEGEL
DAVID A. SIEGEL*
Affiliation:
Duke University
*
David A. Siegel is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708 ([email protected]); web: http://people.duke.edu/~das76.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do global sources of information such as mass media outlets, state propaganda, NGOs, and national party leadership affect aggregate behavior? Prior work on this question has insufficiently considered the complex interaction between social network and mass media influences on individual behavior. By explicitly modeling this interaction, I show that social network structure conditions media's impact. Empirical studies of media effects that fail to consider this risk bias. Further, social network interactions can amplify media bias, leading to large swings in aggregate behavior made more severe when individuals can select into media matching their preferences. Countervailing media outlets and social elites with unified preferences can mitigate the effect of bias; however, media outlets promulgating antistatus quo bias have an advantage. Theoretical results such as these generate numerous testable hypotheses; I provide guidelines for deriving and testing hypotheses from the model and discuss several such hypotheses.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 107 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 786 - 805
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ahn, T.K., Robert, Huckfeldt, and John, Barry Ryan. 2010. “Communication, Influence, and Informational Asymmetries among Voters.” Political Psychology 31 (5): 763–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Althaus, Scott L. 2003. Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics: Opinion Surveys and the Will of the People. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, Behr, Roy, and Iyengar, Shanto. 1991. “Mass Media and Elections: An Overview.” American Politics Quarterly 19 (1): 109–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barabas, J., and Jerit, J.. 2009. “Estimating the Causal Effects of Media Coverage on Policy-Specific Knowledge.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (1): 73–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 1996. “Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 40 (1): 194–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaudoin, C.E., and Thorson, E.. 2004. “Social Capital in Rural and Urban Communities: Testing Differences in Media Effects and Models.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81 (2): 378–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, P.A. 2002. “Encouraging Political Defection: The Role of Personal Discussion Networks in Partisan Desertions to the Opposition Party and Perot Votes in 1992.” Political Behavior 24 (4): 309–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, P.A., Dalton, R.J., Greene, S., and Huckfeldt, R.. 2002. “The Social Calculus of Voting: Interpersonal, Media, and Organizational Influences on Presidential Choices.” American Political Science Review 96 (01): 57–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berelson, Bernard R., Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and McPhee, William N.. 1954. Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Election. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Carmines, Edward G., and Stimson, James A.. 1990. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Centola, Damon, and Macy, Michael. 2007. “Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 113 (3): 702–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiang, Chun Fang, and Knight, Brian. 2008. “Media Bias and Influence: Evidence from Newspaper Endorsements.” Working Paper.Google Scholar
Chong, Dennis. 1991. Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Jeffrey E. 2004. “If the News Is So Bad, Why Are Presidential Polls So High? Presidents, the News Media, and the Mass Public in an Era of New Media.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 34 (3): 493–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DellaVigna, S., and Kaplan, E.. 2007. “The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (3): 1187–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Keeter, Scott. 1996. What Americans Know About Politics and Why it Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Druckman, James N., and Nelson, Kjersten R.. 2003. “Framing and Deliberation: How Citizens’ Conversations Limit Elite Influence.” American Journal of Political Science 47 (4): 729–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N., and Parkin, Michael. 2005. “The Impact of Media Bias: How Editorial Slant Affects Voters.” Journal of Politics 67 (4): 1030–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, J.N. 2004. “Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (ir) Relevance of Framing Effects.” American Political Science Review 98 (4): 671–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eveland, W.P. Jr, Hayes, A.F., Shah, D.V., and Kwak, N.. 2005. “Understanding the Relationship between Communication and Political Knowledge: A Model Comparison Approach using Panel Data.” Political Communication 22 (4): 423–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gentzkow, Matthew. 2006. “Television and Voter Turnout.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 121 (3): 931–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George, Lisa M., and Waldfogel, Joel. 2006. “The New York Times and the Market for Local Newspapers.” American Economic Review 96 (1): 435–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Alan, Karlan, Dean S., and Bergan, Daniel. 2009. “Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1 (2): 35–52.Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Green, Donald P., and Larimer, Christopher W.. 2008. “Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-scale Field Experiment.” American Political Science Review 102 (1): 33–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Roger V. 1993. “Collective Action and Network Structure.” American Sociological Review 58 (2): 182–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graber, Doris A. 2004. “Mediated Politics and Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century.” Annual Review of Psychology 55: 545–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groeling, Tim, and Kernell, Samuel. 1998. “Is Network News Coverage of the President Biased?” Journal of Politics 60: 1063–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert. 2001. “The Social Communication of Political Expertise.” American Journal of Political Science 45 (2): 425–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert R., and Sprague, John. 1995. Citizens, Politics and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jerit, Jennifer, Barabas, Jason, and Bolsen, Toby. 2006. “Citizens, Knowledge, and the Information Environment.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (2): 266–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, Kim Fridkin, and Kenney, Patrick J.. 2002. “The Slant of the News: How Editorial Endorsements Influence Campaign Coverage and Citizens’ Views of Candidates.” American Political Science Review 96 (2): 381–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, Pan, Jennifer, and Roberts, Margaret. 2012. “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” Tech. rep., Working Paper, 2012. copy at http://j.mp/LdVXqN Export Tagged XML BibTex Google Scholar.Google Scholar
Klofstad, Casey. 2011. Civic Talk: Peers, Politics, and the Future of Democracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Klofstad, Casey A., Sokhey, Anand E., and McClurg, Scott D.. 2013. “Disagreeing about Disagreement: How Conflict in Social Networks Affects Political Behavior.” American Journal of Political Science 57 (1): 120–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuran, Timur. 1991. “Now Out of Never—The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989.” World Politics 44 (1): 7–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladd, Jonathan McDonald, and Lenz, Gabriel S.. 2008. “Exploiting a Rate Shift in Communication Flows to Document News Media Persuasion: The 1997 United Kingdom General Election.” Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lake, Ronald La Due, and Huckfeldt, Robert. 1998. “Social Capital, Social Networks, and Political Participation.” Political Psychology 19 (3): 567–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lau, Richard R., and Redlawsk, David P.. 1997. “Voting Correctly.” American Political Science Review 91 (3): 585–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leighley, Jan E. 1990. “Social Interaction and Contextual Influences On Political Participation.” American Politics Research 18 (4): 459–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, Arthur and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn what they Need to Know? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug. 1986. “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism—The Case of Freedom Summer.” American Journal Of Sociology 92 (1): 64–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClurg, Scott D. 2003. “Social Networks and Political Participation: The Role of Social Interaction in Explaining Political Participation.” Political Research Quarterly 56 (4): 449–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClurg, Scott D. 2006. “The Electoral Relevance of Political Talk: Examining Disagreement and Expertise Effects in Social Networks on Political Participation.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 737–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLeod, J.M., Daily, K., Guo, Z., Eveland, W.P. Jr, Bayer, J., Yang, S., and Wang, H.. 1996. “Community Integration, Local Media Use, and Democratic Processes.” Communication Research 23 (2): 179–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondak, Jeffrey J. 1995a. “Media Exposure and Political Discussion in US Elections.” Journal of Politics 57 (1): 62–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondak, Jeffrey J. 1995b. Nothing to Read: Newspapers and Elections in a Social Experiment. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mullainathan, Sendhil, and Shleifer, Andrei. 2005. “The Market for News.” American Economic Review 95 (4): 1031–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutz, D.C., and Martin, P.S.. 2001. “Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media.” American Political Science Review 95 (1): 97–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutz, Diana C. 2002. “The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation.” American Journal of Political Science 46 (4): 838–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niven, David. 2002. Tilt?: The Search for Media Bias. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I. 1996. Who Deliberates?: Mass Media in Modern Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Page, Scott E. 2006. “Path Dependence.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 1 (1): 87–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, Roger Dale. 2001. Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe. Studies in rationality and social change, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rojas, H., Shah, D.V., and Friedland, L.A.. 2011. “A Communicative Approach to Social Capital.” Journal of Communication 61: 689–712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rolfe, Meredith. 2012. Voter Turnout: A Social Theory of Political Participation. Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, John B. 2011. “Social Networks as a Shortcut to Correct Voting.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (4): 753–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegel, David A. 2009. “Social Networks and Collective Action.” American Journal Of Political Science 53 (1): 122–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegel, David A. 2011a. “Non-Disruptive Tactics of Suppression Are Superior in Countering Terrorism, Insurgency, and Financial Panics.” PLoS ONE 6 (4): e18545.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Siegel, David A. 2011b. “When Does Repression Work? Collective Action in Social Networks.” Journal of Politics 73 (1): 232–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, Betsy. 2012. The Social Citizen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sokhey, Anand E., and McClurg, Scott D.. 2012. “Social Networks and Correct Voting.” The Journal of Politics 74 (3): 751–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Duncan J. 1999. Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness. Princeton Studies in Complexity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Siegel Supplementary Material

Online Appendix

Download Siegel Supplementary Material(PDF)
PDF 1 MB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.