What the World Thinks about Global Climate Change

Yeah, it's Christmas.  What better time, with ice and maybe snow on the way to sunny Georgia, to briefly discuss global climate change?  As in, how concerned are people in various countries about how the climate is changing and the potential consequences of those changes?  The graphic below says it all.  Folks in certain countries are seriously worried.  The U.S.?  Nah, but at least we're more worried than those in Poland and Pakistan.  Makes me feel so much better.

Bulldogs vs Gators

In my final Google Ngram contest, at least for 2010, we pit Bulldog against Gator to see which hallowed word received the most book mentions from 1800 to 2000.  The winner?  See below.  Blue is Bulldog, red is Gator.

Yeah, fine, Bulldog kicks Gator butt (do gators have butts?) What if we use the plural?  Ya know, Bulldogs vs. Gators? That hits a little closer to the mark, at least in nickname comparisons between UGA and UF.  See below.

Much closer and, indeed, Gators begin to pass the Bulldogs for a while in book mentions, though of late they are quite close.  The funny thing is, if you look specifically at the two terms, on Gators the top Google hits are about the football team while the top Google hits for Bulldogs is, um, the dog, as in Bulldogs for Dummies.  Sigh.

What does this have to do with the media and political knowledge?  Absolutely nothing.  Merely entertaining myself -- and probably only myself.

Four Kinds of Knowledge?

The latest issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly includes a meta-analysis of the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis, which is a concept I've always liked, particularly when compared to the crud that is called agenda-setting research.  Rather than dig into the study findings, I want to focus deep in the article and its measurement section.  Relying heavily on a previous study, the author argues for four overlapping types of knowledge.  They are:

• Factual Knowledge -- which is exactly what it sounds like.
• Awareness Knowledge -- which is a softer version of above, though the article isn't exactly clear.
• Belief Knowledge -- Even more confusing, but apparently having to do methodologically with how many responses someone gives, and theoretically with how much information someone holds, regardless of its accuracy.
• And a combination category, for no good reason.

Most studies use the first two.  Factual is easy to measure.  Ask respondents to name the Vice President or Speaker of the House.  Awareness is more like asking people what they think they know or, a bit better, asking them how aware they are of something. In general, it's a sucky measure.  Belief has been used in political science for years -- often badly -- by merely counting how many likes and dislikes someone can generate about a political actor or party.

What's interesting, from the study, is the notion that belief is less correlated with education than the other kinds of knowledge.  This is viewed as a positive.  I'd argue it's evidence that how much information we hold, regardless of its accuracy, makes that conceptually distinct from actual knowledge -- the holding of correct information.  As a respondent or crazy uncle I may rattle off lots of information, none of it accurate, probably full of conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's religion or being the anti-Christ.  But is that knowledge?  Or a sort, certainly, and belief knowledge is probably as good a term as any, but I wouldn't treat that as political knowledge in the strictest sense.

And yeah, that image I put in there makes me want to have a seizure as well.

Knowledge vs. Wisdom

In yet another epic showdown, below we use Google's new ngram viewer to discover which gets the most mention in books from 1800 to 2000 -- knowledge, or wisdom?

And the winner is ... knowledge. No surprise, really, and it appears to be widening its lead in the last 80 years.  Let's face it, knowledge is less mushy, less subjective, and it appears in so many more domains than wisdom.

European Integration, and the Media

Given the present economic situations in Ireland, Greece, and a handful of other European countries, the idea of an integrated Europe is under some stress.  In that vein, here's a study (abstract only, sorry) that examines the role of media use and integration.  Or, as the abstract puts it: "The comparatively low level of Europeanization in the news media is said to promote euroscepticism or at least hinder further integration."

Using data from several countries and the smoke-and-mirrors of structural equation modeling (no, I'm not a fan), "we can demonstrate that domestic media use has a positive but small effect on knowledge, attachment to Europe and support for the European Union."  In other words, media use increases -- not decreases -- support for an integrated Europe.

While we're stuck with only the abstract, apparently cognitive mobilization plays a part in the study. I mention this for a couple of reasons.  First, it's one of the more popular search terms that allows people to find this blog.  Second, it's one of my first ever areas of research interest.  And third, I just like the way it sounds, as if a bunch of smart people are getting mobilized. 

So to keep with the cognitive mobilization theme, I point to this study which takes that concept to examine why informed citizens may be skeptical of referenda.  Political knowledge -- the measure of being "informed" -- plays an obvious role in the research.  Five factual questions about Canadian politics (yes, it's a study from Canada) are used as a measure of political knowledge and they seem straightforward. 

But what I really like is the measure of public incompetence -- essentially tapping into the belief that people suck when it comes to politics.  Below are their two questions:

• “The problem with democracy is that most people don't really know what's best for them.”
• “Most people have enough sense to tell whether the government is doing a good job.”

This is a neat idea, a global measure not of internal efficacy, which is whether or not you are capable of participating or understanding politics, but rather a measure of public competence.  I like it.  A lot.  There are some interesting theoretical possibilities here and it smacks of the third-person effect.  Note that I'm not getting into the guts of what they found in this study because, frankly, I'm less interested in that than this concept.  I will point out that political knowledge is negatively associated with support for referenda, which probably has to do with really smart people not trusting other people to vote on stuff.  But ... hold on, say the authors.

Building from this initial statement, the central objective of the paper has been to uncover explanations for this information effect in support for the use of referenda. To do so we identified three possible explanations with firm grounding in the literature: 1) the incompetent public explanation, 2) the confidence in government explanation, and 3) the support for minority rights explanation. Our analyses provide support for the last two explanations, but not the first.

So much for the incompetent public concept, I suppose.  And I had such high hopes for it.

Newspapers vs TelevisionJournalism vs Public Relations

Okay, this chart below says it all.  I trended newspapers and television in books scoured by Google's new ngram viewer.  It's not a great reproduction, this image, but as you can see the red (television) intersects with newspapers (blue) in the late 1960s, at least in mentions in books scanned by Google. 

Okay, that was fun.  What else can we do?  My colleagues down the hall will love this one.  Below I look at journalism (blue) versus public relations (red).  I find it fascinating that PR cranked it up in the 1950s and 1960s, in book mentions, and then slipped back again.  Why?  Some smart PR professor will no doubt let us know, or maybe do some research to explain this odd burst of attention that later slips back.

Faux News

I hate to pick on Fox News again this week, but this memo deserves notice as yet another example of the cable news network blatantly attempting to skew the news.  C'mon guys.  Be professional.  Or at least try.