Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The Bubble People


Conservatives Increasingly Tuned Out Everything Except Fox News Between 1998-2006

"A new analysis by University of Georgia associate professor Barry Hollander finds that between 1998 and 2006, Americans became increasingly polarized in their news-gathering habits. After examining five national Pew Center for the People and the Press during that time period, Hollander concluded that the public now lives in “a huge echo chamber of attitudes and ideas.” (...)

Hollander also notes that conservatives “dramatically dropped news sources that they perceive as being biased against their position.” Evidently, this included C-SPAN, which also saw a dramatic drop in conservative viewers.
These findings are similar to a Norman Lear Center/Zogby International poll from November 2007, which found that 22 percent of conservatives say they “never” enjoy entertainment that reflects values other than their own, as opposed to just 7 percent of liberals. Fox News was also the “most politically divisive TV channel,” with 70 percent of conservatives and just 3 percent of liberals watching it daily.
But too much Fox News may be bad news for conservatives. An April 2007 Pew Research Study survey found that viewers of the conservative Fox News channel had the lowest knowledge of national and international affairs."

5 Comments:

Blogger Jean Kitchen said...

"viewers of the conservative Fox News channel had the lowest knowledge of national and international affairs."

Big schocker there!

30/4/08 12:12 PM  
Blogger nolocontendere said...

Yup, whenever I come across these findings! I think to myself "well duh", but a lot of people seem to need gentle repetition to get the point.

30/4/08 7:46 PM  
Blogger Nina said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

1/5/08 11:54 AM  
Blogger Nina said...

I think a more accurate analysis would be people are actually less aware and knowledgeable after watching FOX news, especially in repeated doses. The more you watch, the less you know.

1/5/08 11:55 AM  
Blogger nolocontendere said...

Yup. Such heavy doses of emotional string pulling and comedic confrontation distracts completely from any basic understanding of the issues.
"Haha, O'Reilly just owned that guy, haha."

1/5/08 8:04 PM  

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