Better Informed?

The Internet has made Americans feel better informed, according to a new Pew study. The key point -- 76 percent of respondents say the Internet has made "average Americans" better informed, and 77 percent say the net has made "America's students" better informed. You can see the raw questionnaire here.

A couple of points.

• First, this is perception of being informed, not actual knowledge. Perceived knowledge and actual knowledge are positively correlated, but not perfectly so, and there are segments of the population who believe they are better informed than they actually are, and the consumption of certain media can exacerbate this effect (i.e., talk radio). Here respondents were asked not whether they are better informed thanks to the Internet, but rather whether others are better informed. That's a subtle difference.

• There's an interesting table on the types of information available on the net that makes you feel better informed. Look at it (Q34 on the raw questionnaire, but page 2 of the pdf). In most cases people feel better informed, but the fascinating failure, if you will, is for "civic life and government activities in your community," a 49-49 split. Also the net seems to better serve national and international news as opposed to local news (see top of table). That makes sense, as the Internet destroys geography and cobbles us back together based on interests, partisanship, and the rest.

Those are my two takeaways. There's no a lot here otherwise, in part because it appears this is part of a bigger survey in which the results are not yet out.

A few quick mentions on a busy afternoon, just to feed the blog and give you something to consider or to point you in the direction of some interesting stuff.

• There's a huge new Pew Center report on social media out today.  I'll be reading it this weekend for a discussion Monday in my Consequences of Social Media grad seminar (thank you Pew for the perfect timing).  It's an 85-page pdf, so it'll keep the students busy and off the streets this weekend.  And it does a nice job of summing up the stuff we've been discussing all week and will discuss next week.  I may discuss this more next week if any of it fits my blog theme.

• More to the point, there was a story in the NYTimes the other day about how poorly U.S. students do on tests of history.  Indeed, as the lede says, "American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject."  That alone is enough to make high school history teachers sob themselves to sleep.  Only 12 percent of U.S. high school seniors demonstrated proficiency on the exam, and the story comes complete with the startlingly low correct responses to the traditional questions.  Read it and weep.

• Here's an interesting opinion piece out of Canada (and how often can you write those words?) in which the author states: "I want to challenge the myth that so-called "real" news is democracy's oxygen while "infotainment" has the deadly effect of carbon monoxide."  The argument is straightforward, and one I'm sympathetic to -- that news must engage the audience, else it exist in a vacuum and become, for many, irrelevant.  Some call this dumbing down, some call it marketing.  But there's no doubt the royal we of journalism are damn good at making the important brainnumbingly dull.  It's an old argument, the prescription model of news (here's your medicine, I know it tastes bad, but it's good for you) and the sugar-filled model of news (all celebrities, all the time).  The days of the former are over.  Now we just need to strike a meaningful balance in order to both make money doing journalism and fulfill are obligations to democracy and an informed electorate.

The News ... Tomorrow

The lede:

America's news executives are hesitant about many of the alternative funding ideas being discussed for journalism today and are overwhelmingly skeptical about the prospect of government financing, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism in association with the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) and the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).

Read more here in a report by the Pew Center or the full, longer report here.

News People Want More Of

A new Pew analysis finds five areas in which the American public says it would like more coverage.  The list below is drawn directly from the study:

• Science news and discoveries: 44% of Americans say there is not enough coverage of science-related news. Younger adults are more likely than senior citizens to express interest in increased coverage. Some 52% of those ages 18-29 would like more coverage of this news, compared with 41% of 50-64 year-olds and 34% of those age 65 and older. Those who use the most news platforms (between four and six on a typical day) are among the most interested in getting more science news: 48% of them say so.

• Religion and spirituality: 41% of Americans say there is not enough coverage of religious and spiritual issues. Women (44%) are more likely than men (37%) to seek more coverage of this area; young adults ages 18-29 (49%) are more likely than those over age 50 (35%) to say this; and bloggers (50%) are more likely than non-bloggers (40%) to say this.  Race/ethnicity is also a factor, with African-Americans (57%) significantly more likely than both whites (38%) and Hispanics (43%) to say they would like to see more coverage of religion and spirituality. 

• Health and medicine: 39% of Americans say there is not enough coverage of health and medical news. African-Americans (50%) are more likely than whites (36%) to say there is not enough coverage; non-internet users (43%) are more likely than internet users (37%) to say this. 

• Your state government: 39% of Americans say there is not enough coverage of news about their state government.  There are no significant demographic variations where this topic is concerned.

• Your neighborhood or local community: 38% of Americans say there is not enough coverage of their neighborhood and local affairs. Young adults (41%) are more likely than senior citizens (31%) to believe this; those who get news on the internet (44%) are more likely than others (36%) to express this view.

Now, keep in mind this is what they say they'd like more of, not necessarily what they would actually consume (or, even more important, pay for).  I'm not convinced, for example, that people really want more state news or are willing to pay for it.  Local news?  I can buy that, and I just sent off a paper to an academic journal that looks at the appetite for local news from 1998 to 2008 and how that fits with newspaper reading, so this topic is near and ear to my heart.

Of Tablets and Pads and Mobile Devices

Will the iPad save printed news? (not likely, but I'm hopeful)  Is the Kindle gonna catch fire? (millions out there already)  Can't I come up with any better cliches?  (no)

This article has some nice musings about the unfortunately named iPad (which won't play Flash? what the hell's up with that?).  But the real question from a journalism standpoint is whether tablets and mobile e-readers will create a new revenue stream for news organizations badly in need of any kind of revenue stream (even a trickle will do, please).  Will people use their pads/tablets/kindles/etc to keep up with news and -- in terms of this blog -- what will that mean for how much they learn about politics and public affairs?

Full disclosure -- I'm on a team of scholars studying the Kindle as a source of news.

The NYTimes didn't mention much about the iPad at its latest meeting, and the Times already has an app for the thing and got on stage with Steve Jobs at the pad's unveiling.  Odd.

My own gut feeling, based on minimum data -- the iPad in particular will be used as a news reader but that'll be a minor reason to have the gizmo.  Games will drive its use, followed by whatever other toys they put on the thing (no camera? really?).  Kindle users I think of as the serious readers, the librarians of the gizmo set, and they'll sniff and look down at iPad users (and perhaps rightly so).  Will these folks add news to their Kindle?  Maybe, if the price is right, but I suspect not.

Obviously -- or it seems to me -- news orgs will have to partner with tablet makers to create some kind of pricing scheme.  Subscribe to the AJC for three years, for example, and we'll give you a $100 coupon for the purchase of an iPad/tablet/thingie.  Maybe then, with people "bought into" the news, the habit might kinda return and we'll see subsequent improvements in what people know.

How People Know about Local Stuff

When it comes to covering local, that bad old MSM (mainstream media) remains a force.  Most local news continues to originate with the traditional media, according to this new report that closely examines the "news ecosystem" of one market -- Baltimore.

According to the report:

And of the stories that did contain new information nearly all, 95%, came from traditional media—most of them newspapers. These stories then tended to set the narrative agenda for most other media outlets.

Where the hell are the bloggers? 

Twitter and the News -- Not

Half of Americans dunno what Twitter is.  The other half don't think much of it as a source of news.

A new report by the First Amendment Center includes some questions about social networking, including Twitter (scroll to the bottom for these questions).

Three percent see Twitter as "very reliable" and 14 percent as "somewhat reliable" as news source.  Thirty-four percent see is as unreliable (49 percent have no opinion, meaning to them Twitter is something birds do, not people).

Interesting factoid: African-Americans (11 percent) and Hispanics (10 percent) are more likely than whites (1 percent) to say Twitter is a very reliable news source.  This might impress you if it wasn't for the small number of these folks in the overall sample (10 percent of the sample black, 5 percent Hispanic).  The margins of error here are big enough to drive a truck through, making any interpretation of these numbers tricky.  But it is suggestive.  A racial/ethnic oversample might uncover some interesting trends, though off the top of my head I can't see any reason why one group would trust or distrust Twitter more.

Pulitzers Announced Today

Today, yet again, I will not win a Pulitzer Prize.

The announcement is at 3 p.m. EST, this year's twist being that online news sites are also elgible "assuming primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing stories," and they "adhere to the highest journalistic principles.”

Translation: aggregators and Drudge need not apply.

E&P often makes a good guess as to the finalists, if you want to look ahead or at 3:01 p.m. check its accuracy.

And, of course, I won't win.

Is Jon Stewart Hurting America?

Remember when Jon Stewart went on the old Crossfire show? He had a simple request of the program's two doofy hosts:

"Stop hurting America."

Stewart's appearance helped kill the CNN show. Not a great loss for political discourse, although its death and that of related programs left a void soon filled by a series of ideologically-focused, single-person programs. You know the gang: O'Reilly, Dobbs, Grace, Olbermann, Hannity, etc. So in the long run I'm not so sure killing Crossfire was a good thing, given what happened next, but there was no way to know that at the time.

And then, of course, Cramer came to town.

Stewart spent days blasting CNBC and star Jim Cramer, the entertaining and crazed stock pick guy. Finally Cramer appears on The Daily Show and the result is ugly for Cramer. Everyone agrees. I'm not gonna spend time putting in links for stuff we've all watched over and over again.

Many agree that Stewart was probably unfair to CNBC. He got away with selective editing of video, funny-as-hell juxtapositions, and some telling journalistic work that shows Cramer describing how to cheat the system.

And Stewart always gets away with criticism by the same dodge -- I'm a comedian.

Stewart is more than a mere comedian. His show often sets the news agenda. Whether that's a good thing or not is another matter, but it remains a fact of life, and one Stewart can no longer avoid by joking about being on Comedy Central or the program that leads into his program or with a funny face or sniffing himself. He is part of the meta-media: mainstream news and bloggers and video sites and, yes, The Daily Show. His interviews with authors and celebrities are some of the best on TV. His comments are picked up by CNN and all the rest.

He'd say that says something bad about news organizations, but if what he's doing at 11 p.m. every night becomes water cooler talk the next morning, then it becomes news, and he's now a player.

So is Jon Stewart hurting America? Maybe. A little.

But then again, who isn't?

There is some suggestion that people who watch his program become more cynical, less trusting. Less naive? Does watching parody and satire fill us with empty news calories so we don't consume serious news? Does news now have to be funny? Sugar in all our medicine?

Can you be a player, but avoid being a player? Yes, Stewart is having his cake and eating it too, and time's up.

Bad News is Good News

A research article in a recent Political Communication demonstrates that not all bad news is bad news, at least when it comes to media content and political participation. Using 1974 data, Paul Martin pairs a comprehensive analysis of newapaper content with national survey data to show that the news media, when covering the bad, help energize people to participate.

So the news is only bad? That's good.

He writes:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, media negativity need not be detrimental for democratic citizenship. Indeed, the media may serve as a sentinel to the people, arousing them to participate when conditions seem bleak. Rather than decrying the press for being too negative, we may wish to encourage newspapers and media outlets that paint the world in rosy colors to put the thorns back into the picture.

The effect was most pronounced for those with medium levels of knowledge. That's interesting in and of itself.

Grazing

Grazing gets a bad rap. Let's face it, we all graze certain content: the TV news, dull conversations with family, memos from our boss. A couple of scholars looked specifically at news grazers, who they defined as people who watch the TV news with a remote in hand, ready to switch around when a story of little interest appears on the screen.

Yeah -- been there, changed that channel.

(btw: I didn't know the first remote, from Zenith, was called Lazy Bones. That's funny.)

Men graze more than women. Grazers are less likely to read the newspaper and, indeed, they are more likely to avoid any hard news of any type: local, national, international. As is now kinda obvious, grazers tend to know less about public affairs, at least as measured in the study. This makes sense. Inadvertent, haphazard exposure to news is simply not enough to be informed. What is not measured here is the difference between recall and recognition. Theoretically (yeah, I used the T-word), we would expect grazers to do better at recognition questions because they would have the answer on the tip of their tongue. Reading or carefully attending to the news would lead to higher recall scores (as is the case here).

The so what? Seventy percent of young people are grazers. They may feel informed through picking up bits and pieces here and there, from TV news or Jon Stewart or the web, but grazing doesn't lead to actually being informed. Grazing works well only for cows.

Recall vs Recognition

It matters how you ask the question.

The Pew Study mentioned below tested whether it makes a difference if you ask people a recall question (Who is the president of Russia) versus can you tell me which of these guys is the president of Russia (answer: Putin). Scroll down to the sixth table. The results are simple: 36% got the recall question right. They could pull out of their heads (or some other body part) Putin's name. Give them a multiple guess and 60% nail the recognition question.

Hey, we're not so stupid after all.

In my own research there is support for the idea that television is better suited for recognition-based knowledge while print is better suited for recall-based knowledge. I'll explore this more at some other time, but it says a great deal about how we measure knowledge and whether our tests mean what we think they mean.