Author's Keywords: Media and Politics, Voting, Soft News, Elections, Political Communication, Media Effects	Convention Convention is an application service for managing large or small academic conferences, annual meetings, and other types of events! Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: American Political Science Association URL: http://www.apsanet.org
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p60819_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Baum, Matthew. "High-Quality vs. High-Brow: Can Soft News Ever be the Best News?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, Sep 02, 2004 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p60819_index.html>

Baum, M. , 2004-09-02 "High-Quality vs. High-Brow: Can Soft News Ever be the Best News?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL Online <.PDF>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p60819_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Review Method: Peer Reviewed Abstract: What constitutes high quality news? In answering this question, scholars and journalists have frequently equated “high quality” and “high-brow.” “High quality” news, as typically defined, appeals to individuals who find politics intrinsically interesting. Many people, however, are not overly interested in learning about the nuances of politics. “High brow” news is therefore unlikely to appeal to non-political junkies, or to influence their voting behavior. Yet, high quality is not necessarily equivalent to high brow. We argue that previous assessments of “quality” -which were framed by normative democratic ideals of the public sphere-are inadequate. To understand news quality, we should consider how it enables consumers to match public policy debates to their self-interests. In electoral politics, this implies that high quality news is that which allows citizens to most efficiently identify which candidates are most likely to pursue policies consistent with their own interests. We argue that, for politically inattentive citizens, consuming soft news in general, and daytime talk shows in particular, is more efficient than consuming traditional, “hard” news for achieving this goal. Drawing on research from cognitive psychology on the use of heuristic cues in individual decision-making, we derive a series of hypotheses, which we test using data from the 2000 National Election Study. We find that among relatively apolitical Americans, “low-brow” news can be most effective in facilitating more (personally) “accurate” vote choices. In the 2000 election, politically inattentive individuals who consumed soft news were more likely than their non-soft-news-consuming inattentive counterparts to vote for the candidate who best represented their own declared self-interests (i.e., to “vote correctly”). Our findings suggest the need to rethink conventional definitions of “high quality” news.

Candidate Appearances on Soft News Shows and Public Awareness of Primary Campaigns

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