Public Opinion Exam 1 Study Guide Ch 1 Definition of Public Opinion The preferences of people toward governmental and policy matters generally considered as the aggregation of individuals views Perceptions of the role for public opinion not all opinions are treated equally by government policy makers in part because not all opinions of the public actually reach these policy makers Ways to gather opinions straw polls Gallup polls quota sampling interviews questionnaires Perceptions of the role of polling Gallup too the guess work out of politicians estimates of peoples opinions Herbst Contextual opinion Blumer wants to know if all voices of opinions are created equal Definition and components of attitudes An expressed opinion Made up of beliefs values emotion and information environment Terms associated with surveys population sample types of surveys simple random convenience longitudinal Problems associated with surveys Convenience lack external validity simple random selected by chance could get wrong representation longitudinal attrition the drop off of respondents Benefits and problems with experiments interviews Experiments benefits are that they allow for true randomization and strengthens internal validity Problems are exaggerated effects and the results may not match the real world Interviews benefits are greater depth and less canned responses Problems are increased ability for researchers to make unfounded claims and there is no empirical data to show a cause and effect relationship Focus Groups Like interviews but focused on asking questions to multiple people at a time Content Analysis a research technique for the objective systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication Ch 2 Political Socialization the process by which people acquire relatively enduring orientations toward politics in general and toward their own particular political systems Early Childhood conceptions of government leaders believe that leaders are good and positive role models of the country Causes of Early Childhood conceptions of leaders Their parents and school Political Reality explanation for differences in conceptions of leaders among subgroups Ethnic and racial minorities have less power than whites in the political system and less reason to believe that political leaders will respond to their wishes Mechanisms of parental influence communication politicization the more politicized the parents are the more likely they are to transmit political information to their children and genetics identical twins generally have the same political views The influence of campaigns on the young attitude crystallization development of more concrete and stable political opinions How strongly on is tied to their partisan home Campaigns have an effects on young adults where their beliefs will be crystallized based off their party affiliations part during the campaign The impact of college on opinion college does seem to make students more liberal Based off awareness keeping up with political news enlightenment developing more open attitudes and indoctrination having liberal professors Impressionable years model Life cycle effects people are more influenced in their impressionable years Impressionable years perspective that views political attitudes as changing during late adolescence and early adulthood and then remaining more stable Life cycle effects effects that occur when peoples political attitudes are strongly influenced by their age rather than developing when they are young A problem of Endogeneity people choose friends who are like them and people become more like their friends Impact of social networks on opinion partisanship is often a correlate rather than a cause of friendship Generational and Period effects Generational effects changes in political attitudes to an entire age cohort caused by events or features of the political context Period effects changes in political attitudes of many people regardless of their ages caused by events or features of the political context Shared environment experiences and upbringing that are the same between individuals particularly relevant when examining twins Unshared environment experiences and upbringing that differ between individuals Conformity and obedience conformity occurs in response to social norms Asch experiment with lines Obedience occurs in response to authority Milgram experiment with buzzer Soft news news that has nothing to do with public policy Hard news news regarding political leaders impotent issues and significant events Ch 3 Cognitive dissonance people don t like to hear things they don t agree with so people when exposed to something they don t like will go through ways of not listening Pack journalism groups of media in the same places even though they are different networks they are grouped together and end up covering the same stories 3 C s of media coverage and the implications of each Corporate media are owned by large corporations usually increases competition of stories Concentrated many choices but most are owned by same corporation limited viewpoints Conglomerate media companies owned by parent companies with broader interests Norms of journalism objectivity presenting both sides Neutrality don t interject their own opinions Problems in the concept of objectivity it is difficult to define Justifications for liberal conservative media bias arguments liberal because journalists are liberal themselves conservative because ownership is conservative Hypodermic Minimal effects Meanings and implications Hypodermic model perspective that views the media as quite persuasive and citizens as unable to resist media messages Minimal effects model perspective that views citizens as resistant to media messages because they filter media content through their preexisting attitudes Agenda setting effects that occur when the media influence which issues citizens view as important Endogeneity problems Priming effects effects that occur when the media cover particular issues or personal characteristics and then citizens rely on those issues or characteristics as they evaluate political leaders Framing effects effects that occur when media frames influence public opinion on an issue General idea of Iyenger and Kinders experiments Agenda setting experiment in New Haven Connecticut What people thought based on what they watched on the news Converse and attitudes Converse 1964 party identification is the most stable