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Political Behavior and Extreme Television Media Consumption

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Extreme Media and American Politics

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Abstract

How do extreme television media affect policy attitudes and behavior? Are extreme television media different from their partisan or mainstream brethren? Are their effects more powerful? Using multiple datasets from the National Annenberg Election Study and a multimethod approach, Taylor shows how extreme media are correlated with policy attitudes on immigration, and frequency of discussing politics. Taylor shows that extreme media cause viewers to become advocates for candidates, but extreme media are not significant predictors of formal political behaviors like voting, working for a campaign, or online campaign activity. These findings show the complexity and nuance of extreme television media effects on normatively valuable aspects of politics. Extreme television media help citizens engage in political expression, but do create problematic effects such as attitude polarization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina, USA

    J. Benjamin Taylor

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 6.10.

Table 6.7 Propensity Score Matching Model for NAES PERS
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Table 6.8 Average treatment effects on discussion, 2008 NAES
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Table 6.9 Ordered probit model for political discussion
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Table 6.10 Online campaign activity variables and scale metrics
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Taylor, J.B. (2017). Political Behavior and Extreme Television Media Consumption. In: Extreme Media and American Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41183-5_6

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