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High-Quality vs. High-Brow: Can Soft News Ever be the Best News?
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High-Quality vs. High-Brow: Can Soft News Ever
be the Best News?
What constitutes high quality news? In answering this question, scholars and journalists havefrequently equated “high quality” and “high-brow.” “High quality” news, as typicallydefined, 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 votingbehavior. Yet, high quality is not necessarily equivalent to high brow. We argue that previousassessments of “quality” –which were framed by normative democratic ideals of the publicsphere—are inadequate. To understand news quality, we should consider how it enablesconsumers to match public policy debates to their self-interests. In electoral politics, thisimplies that high quality news is that which allows citizens to most efficiently identify whichcandidates are most likely to pursue policies consistent with their own interests. We arguethat, for politically inattentive citizens, consuming soft news in general, and daytime talkshows in particular, is more efficient than consuming traditional, “hard” news for achievingthis goal. Drawing on research from cognitive psychology on the use of heuristic cues inindividual decision-making, we derive a series of hypotheses, which we test using data fromthe 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 morelikely than their non-soft-news-consuming inattentive counterparts to vote for the candidatewho best represented their own declared self-interests (i.e., to “vote correctly”). Our findingssuggest the need to rethink conventional definitions of “high quality” news.
Angela S. Jamison
UCLA
Department of Sociology
Box 951551
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551
(## email not listed ##)
and
Matthew A. Baum
UCLA
Department of Political Science
Box 951472
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1472
(## email not listed ##)
Prepared for delivery at the 2004 annual meeting of the American Political ScienceAssociation, Chicago, Il, September 2-5, 2004. The authors wish to thank Richard Laufor making his “correct vote” algorithm available to us, as well as for offeringconsiderable guidance and support as we sought to operationalize it. We are also gratefulto our 40 colleagues who generously responded to our “expert” survey. Additionally, wethank Alexandra Brandt, Jonathan Eels, Lily Kim, Maya Oren, Shawna Spoor, and EriTsujii for research assistance.
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High-Quality vs. High-Brow: Can Soft News Ever
be the Best News?
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.
Angela S. Jamison
UCLA
Department of Sociology
Box 951551
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551
(## email not listed ##)
and
Matthew A. Baum
UCLA
Department of Political Science
Box 951472
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1472
(## email not listed ##)
Prepared for delivery at the 2004 annual meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Chicago, Il, September 2-5, 2004. The authors wish to thank Richard Lau
for making his “correct vote” algorithm available to us, as well as for offering
considerable guidance and support as we sought to operationalize it. We are also grateful
to our 40 colleagues who generously responded to our “expert” survey. Additionally, we
thank Alexandra Brandt, Jonathan Eels, Lily Kim, Maya Oren, Shawna Spoor, and Eri
Tsujii for research assistance.
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