Download or read book Social Evolution Political Psychology and the Media in Democracy written by Peter Beattie and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes why we believe what we believe about politics, and how the answer affects the way democracy functions. It does so by applying social evolution theory to the relationship between the news media and politics, using the United States as its primary example. This includes a critical review and integration of the insights of a broad array of research, from evolutionary theory and political psychology to the political economy of media. The result is an empirically driven political theory on the media’s role in democracy: what role it currently plays, what role it should play, and how it can be reshaped to be more appropriate for its structural role in democracy.

Download or read book The Psychology of Media and Politics written by George Comstock and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2005-05-31 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research indicates that people discount their own opinions and experiences in favor of those of "experts" as espoused in the media. The framing of news coverage thus has a profound impact on public opinion, and political decision making as a response to public outcry. However, the choice of how to frame the news is typically made to solicit viewership and high ratings rather than to convey accurate and meaningful information. The Psychology of Media and Politics discusses why people discount their own opinions, how the media shapes the news, when this drives political decision making, and what the effect is on the future of society. Issues addressed include: How powerful are the media in shaping political beliefs/judgment? How has this power changed in recent years? How does media influence voting behavior? To what extent do media opinions affect political decision making? Demonstrates the ways in which the media both constrain and facilitate democratic participation Provides insight into why individuals have varying levels of attention to and interest in politics Discusses such issues as political advertising, polls, debates, and journalists' pursuit of scandal Describes why only some Americans turn out to vote in prominent elections Offers a model of personal- versus social-level influences that extends beyond politics into other important topic areas Brings together research and theories from the fields of Communication, Psychology, and Political Science Reviews hundreds of key sources, both historical and contemporary

Download or read book The Political Psychology of Democratic Citizenship written by Eugene Borgida and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-16 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While scholars in political science, social psychology, and mass communications have made notable contributions to understanding democratic citizenship, they concentrate on very different dimensions of citizenship. The current volume challenges this fragmentary pattern of inquiry, and adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of citizenship that offers new insights and integrates previously disparate research agendas. It also suggests the possibility of informed interventions aimed at meeting new challenges faced by citizens in modern democracies. The volume is organized around five themes related to democratic citizenship: citizen knowledge about politics; persuasion processes and intervention processes; group identity and perception of individual citizens and social groups; hate crimes and intolerance; and the challenge of rapid changes in technology and mass media. These themes address the key challenges to existing perspectives on citizenship, represent themes that are central to the health of democratic societies, and reflect ongoing lines of research that offer important contributions to an interdisciplinary political psychology perspective on citizenship. In several cases, scholars may be unaware of work in other disciplines on the same topic and might well benefit from greater intellectual commerce. These themes provide excellent opportunities for the interdisciplinary cross-talk that characterizes the contributions to this volume by prominent scholars from psychology, political science, sociology, and mass communications. In the final section, distinguished commentators reflect on different aspects of the scholarly agenda put forth in this volume, including what this body of work suggests about the state of political psychology's contributions to our understanding of these issues. Thus this volume aims to provide a multifaceted, interdisciplinary look at the political psychology of democratic citizenship. The interdisciplinary bent of contemporary work in political psychology may uniquely equip it to create a more nuanced understanding of citizenship issues and of competing democratic theories.

Download or read book Social Media and Democracy written by Nathaniel Persily and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last five years, widespread concern about the effects of social media on democracy has led to an explosion in research from different disciplines and corners of academia. This book is the first of its kind to take stock of this emerging multi-disciplinary field by synthesizing what we know, identifying what we do not know and obstacles to future research, and charting a course for the future inquiry. Chapters by leading scholars cover major topics – from disinformation to hate speech to political advertising – and situate recent developments in the context of key policy questions. In addition, the book canvasses existing reform proposals in order to address widely perceived threats that social media poses to democracy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Download or read book Manipulating Democracy written by Wayne Le Cheminant and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Download or read book The Psychology of Political Behavior in a Time of Change written by Jan D. Sinnott and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-23 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to add a unique perspective on the complex relationship between psychology and politics, focusing on three analytical points of view: 1) psychology, politics, and complex thought, 2) bio/psycho/social factors of masculinity and power, and 3) underlying factors in political behavior. Contributors examine recent political events worldwide through a psychological lens, using interdisciplinary approaches to seek a deeper understanding of contemporary political ideas, psychologies, and behaviors. Finally, the book offers suggestions for surviving and thriving during rapid political change. Among the topics discussed: Biopsychological factors of political beliefs and behaviors Understanding political polarization through a cognitive lens Impact of psychological processes on voter decision making Motivations for believing in conspiracy theories Nonverbal cues in leadership Authoritarian responses to social change The Psychology of Political Behavior in a Time of Change is a timely and insightful volume for students and researchers in psychology, political science, gender studies, business and marketing, and sociology, as well as those working in applied settings: practitioners, government workers, NGOs, corporate organizations.

Download or read book Media Democracy and Social Change written by Aeron Davis and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we are told so regularly that we live in a ‘post truth’ age and are surrounded by ‘fake news’, it can be tempting to think of politics as primarily mediated. Discussion and analysis of public affairs is preoccupied with the power and reach of platforms or the passion and rage of social media exchanges. As important as these issues may be, a focus on the communicative risks downgrading the political. Media, Democracy and Social Change puts politics back into political communications. It shows how within a digital media ecology, the wider context of neoliberal capitalism remains essential for understanding what political communications is, and can hope to be. Tackling broad themes of structural inequality, technological change, political realignment and social transformation, the book explores political communications as it relates to debates around the state, infrastructures, elites, populism, political parties, activism, the legacies of colonialism, and more. It is both an expert introduction to the field of political communications, and a critical intervention to help re-imagine what a democratic politics might mean in a digital age. It will be essential reading for students, researchers and activists. Aeron Davis, Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman and Gholam Khiabany all work at the Department of Media and Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London, where they teach together on the MA in Political Communications.

Download or read book Post Broadcast Democracy written by Markus Prior and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The media environment is changing. Today in the United States, the average viewer can choose from hundreds of channels, including several twenty-four hour news channels. News is on cell phones, on iPods, and online; it has become a ubiquitous and unavoidable reality in modern society. The purpose of this book is to examine systematically, how these differences in access and form of media affect political behaviour. Using experiments and new survey data, it shows how changes in the media environment reverberate through the political system, affecting news exposure, political learning, turnout, and voting behavior.

Download or read book Psychology of Democracy written by Ashley Weinberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about all our futures and demonstrates how essential insights from political psychology can nurture and safeguard democracy.

Download or read book Personalizing Politics and Realizing Democracy written by Gian Vittorio Caprara and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few people today would challenge the legitimacy of democracy as the form of government most congenial to modern-day citizenship, as it requires its members to treat each other as equals and to cooperate in the shared pursuit of conditions that maximize both the individual's potential and the achievement of a public welfare. However, a number of facts challenge these deeply-rooted ideals: declining political participation, along with skepticism and dissatisfaction with the function of democracy has spread; citizens' increasing capacity to control their own circumstances within their private, economic, and social spheres is at odds with their inability to exert control over their elected representatives; and the shift of opposing radical coalitions towards more pragmatic and ideologically elusive platforms aimed to attract a larger constituency of the electorate has greatly diluted the identity of political parties. In Personalizing Politics and Realizing Democracy, authors Gian Vittorio Caprara and Michele Vecchione present the ever-growing reciprocal relationship between personality and politics, and assert that politics are not only increasingly dependent on the likes and dislikes of its citizenship, but ultimately on the personalities of political candidates attracting these voters' preferences. In this book, Caprara and Vecchione draw from recent research in personality psychology that offer a decisive role in understanding the major changes that have occurred within politics in the last several decades.

Download or read book Democratic Culture and Moral Character written by Jerome Braun and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-03 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book returns critical theory to its roots in both psychology and the social sciences. It shows some of the relationships between equality in a political and social sense and personal identity that either relates well to such equality, or rebels against it. All this reflects processes of social and cultural influence that involve not only random change but also processes of social and cultural evolution that themselves have effects regarding potentials for self-fulfillment and even public morality. This book provides a framework to help one study the interaction between individual aspirations and social opportunities. Jerome Braun, known for his writings in interdisciplinary social science, an approach he calls pragmatic critical theory, here provides a book that discusses issues relevant to the moral underpinnings of democratic society, including issues of social evolution and of culture and personality. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Psychology (particularly in the areas of Psychology of Personality and Cultural Psychology), Sociology (especially those interested in Sociology of Alienation and Sociology of Culture, as well as Sociology of Mental Health), Anthropology (particularly in the area of Psychological Anthropology), Cultural Studies, and Social Theory in general.

Download or read book The Politics of Evolution written by David F. Prindle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The controversy over teaching evolution or creationism in American public schools offers a policy paradox. Two sets of values—science and democracy—are in conflict when it comes to the question of what to teach in public school biology classes. Prindle illuminates this tension between American public opinion, which clearly prefers that creationism be taught in public school biology classes, versus the ideal that science, and only science, be taught in those classes. An elite consisting of scientists, professional educators, judges, and business leaders by and large are determined to ignore public preferences and teach only science in science classes despite the majority opinion to the contrary. So how have the political process and the Constitutional law establishment managed to thwart the people’s will in this self-proclaimed democracy? Drawing on a vast body of work across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, Prindle explores the rhetoric of the evolution issue, explores its history, examines the nature of the public opinion that causes it, evaluates the Constitutional jurisprudence that upholds it, and explains the political dynamic that keeps it going. This incisive analysis is a must-read in a wide range of disciplines and for anyone who wants to understand the politics of biology.

Download or read book The Psychology of Political Communicators written by Ofer Feldman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely study, Ofer Feldman, Sonja Zmerli, and their team of experts shed light on the multiple ways communication affects political behavior and attitudes. Written for students and scholars alike, The Psychology of Political Communicators uses examples from the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East to examine the nature, characteristics, content, and reception of communication in three major areas of discourse: The style and nature of language used by political actors in the national and international arenas The discourse used in nationalist populist movements and during negative campaigns The rhetoric of the media as it tries to frame politics, political events, and political actors Collectively, the essays form a solid foundation on which to understand the different roles language plays in the conduct of politics, the way in which these roles are performed in various situations in different societies and cultures, and the political outcomes of verbal behavior. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of political psychology and communication studies.

Download or read book Emotions Media and Politics written by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emotions have long been neglected in media research, although their role is a vital ingredient in shaping our shared stories and the ways we engage with them. But emotions, as they circulate through the media, can also be divisive and exclusionary. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen makes the case for researching the role of emotions in mediated politics. Drawing on a series of studies, she explores the complex relationship between emotions, politics and media. The book includes analyses of how Facebook structures emotional reactions; the anger of Donald Trump; the use of personal storytelling in feminist Twitter hashtags; the role of emotionality in award-winning journalism; and the communities created by political fandoms. Essential reading for scholars and students, this important volume opens up new ways of thinking about and researching emotions, media and politics.

Download or read book Impersonal Influence written by Diana C. Mutz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-11-28 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People's perceptions of the attitudes and experiences of mass collectives are an increasingly important force in contemporary political life. In Impersonal Influence, Mutz goes beyond simply providing examples of how impersonal influence matters in the political process to provide a micro-level understanding of why information about distant and impersonal others often influence people's political attitudes and behaviors. Impersonal Influence is worthy of attention both from the standpoint of its impact on contemporary politics, and because of its potential to expand the boundaries of our understanding of social influence processes, and media's relation to them. The book's conclusions do not exonerate media from the effects of inaccurate portrayals of collective experience or opinion, but they suggest that the ways in which people are influenced by these perceptions are in themselves, not so much deleterious to democracy as absolutely necessary to promoting accountability in a large scale society.

Download or read book Connected written by George E. Marcus and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-07-15 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the frontiers of cyberspace to Tibetans in exile, from computer bulletin boards to faxes, film, and videotape, the ongoing and often startling evolution of media continues to generate fresh new avenues for cultural criticism, political activism, and self-reflection. How is contemporary life affected by this stunning proliferation of information technologies? How does the Internet influence, and perhaps alter, users' experience of community and their sense of self? In what way are giant media conglomerates implicated in these far-reaching developments? Connected, the third volume in the groundbreaking and highly acclaimed Late Editions series, confronts these provocative questions through unique experiments with the interview format. It explores both the new pathways being forged through media and the predicaments of those struggling to find their way in the twilight of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Public Opinion written by Vincent Price and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1992-06-16 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is perhaps most amazing about this little book is its comprehensiveness. In little more than a 100 pages, Price manages to discuss the relevance of ′public opinion′ to just about every major mass communication theory. . . . The reference list alone would be a valuable resource for anyone studying public opinion. . . . Price does a stellar job of explaining in easy-to-understand language what most of these references have to say about public opinion. . . . The two greatest contributions of the book are Price′s organization of the vast literature on public opinion, coupled with his distillation of major works, including some truly hefty tomes, into a few simple words. Those who have grappled with the thoughts of Habermas and Blumer, for example, will greatly appreciate Price′s succinct and insightful descriptions of the relevance of these difficult works to the study of public opinion. Another strong point is the book′s currency: while you will find references to works published in the 1920s, you also will find books, articles, and reports published in the 1990s. . . . If you are new to the study of public opinion and communication, this book is the most painless, yet valuable introduction I can recommend. If you think you already know a lot about public opinion, the book may be even more valuable: it may dispel you of the notion that anyone knows a lot about public opinion." --Journalism Quarterly Public opinion--is it a simple aggregation of individual views, or instead some kind of collective-level, emergent product of debate and discussion? What is the role of public opinion in popular government? How do the mass media shape public opinion, or link it to governmental decision-making? Price′s Public Opinion explores such questions by tracing the historical development and application of the concept of public opinion. It examines the concept′s origins in Enlightenment thought and follows its evolution as a tool for social-scientific research. Intended as a map of the sprawling research terrain, Public Opinion introduces the conceptual mechanisms underlying public opinion research and shows how these concepts are used in an attempt to resolve enduring theoretical, normative, and practical questions. Because public opinion is one of the most vital and enduring concepts in the social sciences, this book will enjoy wide application in psychology, sociology, political science, journalism, and communication research in both academic and applied settings.