News Media, Knowledge, and Political Interest: Evidence of a Dual Role From a Field Experiment | Zendy

Lecheler Sophie | Zendy; de Vreese Claes H. | Zendy

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News Media, Knowledge, and Political Interest: Evidence of a Dual Role From a Field Experiment

Author(s) -

Lecheler Sophie,

de Vreese Claes H.

Publication year - 2017

Publication title -

journal of communication

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 3.752

H-Index - 131

eISSN - 1460-2466

pISSN - 0021-9916

DOI - 10.1111/jcom.12314

Subject(s) - newspaper , politics , news media , dual (grammatical number) , function (biology) , field (mathematics) , test (biology) , political science , psychology , public relations , advertising , business , mathematics , law , art , literature , evolutionary biology , pure mathematics , biology , paleontology

Political knowledge and political interest are generally positively influenced by news media exposure. Yet, at the same time, knowledge and interest are among the most important predictors of news media exposure in the first place. We conduct a field experiment ( N = 393) as a test of this dual function of knowledge and interest in a realistic news media choice setting. We examine whether preexisting interest and knowledge predict which individuals can be encouraged to read an unfamiliar information‐rich newspaper, and if using this newspaper, in turn, has effects on interest and knowledge. Results show that interest and knowledge are predictors of compliance in the experiment. While political knowledge shows some response to the additional news exposure, interest remains stable.

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