Talking Matters

The news alone is not enough for young people to do well on tests of political knowledge, according to a study.  But it gets the ball rolling.

Consuming the news "leads to thinking about the news when then leads to engagement in discussions about the news, which finally ends with political learning," according to this press release about the study (which I haven't seen).  The study, by a doctoral student and a well known mass comm scholar, examined panel data from two surveys of teenagers around the 2008 election.  In other words, the same kids were questioned before and after the election. 

I can't tell if these were surveys conducted by the Missouri folks or a secondary analysis of existing data (ANES, GSS, Pew, etc.).  I'm guessing it's their own data, probably as part of the doc student's dissertation given there's a 2012 AEJMC paper that appears to use some of the same data (search for the author name Edson Tandoc, about 2/3 of the way down the page).

With some time, I'll hunt up the AEJMC paper, which will then provide more methodological details.

What Tandoc found is that news consumption does not directly lead to political knowledge. Instead, news consumption leads to thinking about the news which then leads to engagement in discussions about the news, which finally ends with political learning.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-news-consumption-political-stories-retain.html#jCp

news consumption leads to thinking about the news which then leads to engagement in discussions about the news, which finally ends with political learning.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-news-consumption-political-stories-retain.html#jCp