POS 3204 Test 3 Review Chapter 8 Elite Participatory democrats views of need for citizen knowledge o Participatory Democrats know what their policy preferences ought to be Democracy requires that citizens be fully informed so that they o Participatory democrats assume that all citizens have the ability to understand what is going on in policy making o Failure of citizens to be informed is a societal rather than an individual problem Democracy functions fine or better when citizens leave decision o Elitist Democrats making up the elites o Elitists assume that it is not viable and perhaps irrational for citizens to try to become fully informed Generalists Findings of Delli Carpini Have a broad swath of knowledge about many key issues Did a seminal study of political knowledge in the United States Found Three Important Types of Knowledge Rules of the Game government Substance of Politics People and Players of the day Knowledge about the institutions and processes of Knowledge about the key issues of the day Knowledge of the important policymakers and newsmakers Knowledge of foreign affairs relative to other countries Bennett et al found that being American costs people 2 5 answers on the index of foreign affairs knowledge on average Key finding The predictors of knowledge are the same across countries Predictors of Political Knowledge Age Sex Education Race Older people are more politically informed than the young Men are politically informed than women The educated are more politically informed than the uneducated White are more politically informed than minorities Jerit Barabas and Bolsen Key Findinings Theory Extensive media attention to a particular issue will increase citizen knowledge Findings Highly educated people don t differ much in knowledge on low coverage issues Highly educated people differ much more on high coverage issues Gap is extended when the source of coverage is print media AKA Highly educated people are able to understand print media better than those that are uneducated Groups of individuals with an intense knowledge and interest in a particular Issue Publics aspect of political information Evidence of Issue Publics Using Demographic Groups as the defining characteristic of Issue Publics Don t Know Responses Using the number of people who express an opinion on an issue as indicative membership in an Issue Public one s most important issue as indicative of Issue Public membership Expressed Interest Most Important Issues Using choice of a particular topic as Probably the best method so far identified in the literature Uninformed Misinformed A respondent who dos not know the answer to a particular question A respondent who thinks they know the answer to a question but is incorrect Measuring Misinfordmedness Examine individual level certainty with the expectation that misinformed will assert high levels of certainty on incorrect positions Between Individuals Look for increased error variance in responses Intuition of Bayesian Updating Bayesian Updating A model of opinion change where posterior belief is formulated from the combination of prior beliefs and new information and the certainty associated with each can be conceived of as normal distribution with a mean belief and Prior Belief a variance indicating uncertainty Posterior Belief information formed from the combination of the priors and the new Conception of Certainty and Mean Belief certain of their position Information Incorporation beliefs More certain individuals update less in response to new information Implications of the Bayesian Model EVERY new piece of information is incorporated into More new information makes people more In the context of factual information people can be rational updaters It is important to account for certainty when determining whether belief change is occurring or not Antithesis of Motivated Reasoning viewpoint Interest in Politics Men are more interested than women Partisans more interested than non partisans Interests varies by the political context 51 of African Americans expressed interest in 2008 44 of Whites did in 2008 32 African Americans expressed interest in 2004 Chapter 9 Political Tolerance opposes Marketplace of Ideas Stouffer Study what did he measure how findings Changes in Support for Civil Liberties Over Time A willingness to allow the presentation of ideas and interests that one Many different political ideas being available to the public o Stouffer used national probability sample to assess support for civil liberties across three groups Communists Atheists Socialists o Stouffer s Key Findings Political tolerance for specific hated groups was fairly low in 1954 Citizens do differentiate between groups in determining their tolerance level Citizens support some civil liberties more than others o Tolerance Over Time The biggest gain in tolerance has been for gay males 87 of Americans support the free speech and rights of gay males Tolerance for all groups has increase dover time but Muslim extremists have the lowest tolerance Problems with the Stouffer Method Americans Sullivan s Alternative Approach they like least o Findings o Makes the assumption that Communists etc are things that are disliked by most Let people choose from a list of dislikable groups the ones Communists were the most disliked in 1978 but only 4 reported communists in 2005 In 1978 groups on the left were the most disliked In 2005 groups on the right were the most disliked Tolerance is higher for Atheists and Communists than for self selected least Groups that attain status as the most disliked are likely to face political favored group repression o Critiques The questions present a dual stimuli that makes it difficult to tease our causality Questions are rapid and the emotional affect against disliked groups may dominate thought in the minds of many Pluralistic Intolerance No one group will be subjected to inordinate amounts of discrimination o Negative Interpretations Gibson argues that Pluralistic Intolerance leads to many more individuals feeling like their own rights are under attack Leads to widespread lack of freedom and declared interpersonal trust worse than Chong s Alternative Approach in the McCarthy era o Theory Frames about disliked groups are very strong frames whereas counter frames regarding civil liberties are often weak and unclear o Methods Conducted extensive interviews with subjects some of whom were provided frames that called to mind the democratic norm of civil