Court TV
The reality of reality television: Does reality TV influence local crime rates?
Lesley Chioue & Mary Lopez
Economics Letters, forthcoming
"We estimate changes in the city's crimes per capita after the debut of the MTV-based reality show 'Laguna Beach' using a difference-in-differences approach. Given the demographic and geographic similarities between Laguna Beach and its neighboring city Dana Point, we use Dana Point as a control to account for trends in crimes over time. We observe a divergence in total crimes for the two cities in the period after the show aired. More specifically, we find that after the show aired, the number of non-residential burglaries, auto thefts, and rapes increased disproportionately in Laguna Beach. We do not find evidence of an increase in the number of residential burglaries or robberies after the show aired."
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Public Opinion and Senate Confirmation of Supreme Court Nominees
Jonathan Kastellec, Jeffrey Lax & Justin Phillips
Journal of Politics, July 2010, Pages 767-784
Abstract:
Does public opinion influence Supreme Court confirmation politics? We present the first direct evidence that state-level public opinion on whether a particular Supreme Court nominee should be confirmed affects the roll-call votes of senators. Using national polls and applying recent advances in opinion estimation, we produce state-of-the-art estimates of public support for the confirmation of 10 recent Supreme Court nominees in all 50 states. We find that greater home-state public support does significantly and strikingly increase the probability that a senator will vote to approve a nominee, even controlling for other predictors of roll-call voting. These results establish a systematic and powerful link between constituency opinion and voting on Supreme Court nominees. We connect this finding to larger debates on the role of majoritarianism and representation.
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Testing Causal Direction in the Influence of Presumed Media Influence
Nurit Tal-Or, Jonathan Cohen, Yariv Tsfati & Albert Gunther
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to the influence of presumed media influence hypothesis, people estimate the potential effects of media on other people and change their attitudes or behaviors as a consequence. In recent years, many studies offered some support for this idea. However, a central limitation of these studies is that all of them utilized correlational methodology and thus do not offer a valid way to infer causality. The current research examined the causal direction in the influence of presumed media influence using experimental methodology. In Study 1, the authors manipulated the perceived influence of watching pornography and measured the effects of this manipulation on support for censorship. In Study 2, perceptions regarding the influence of a news story about an expected shortage in sugar were manipulated indirectly, by manipulating the perceived exposure to the news story, and behavioral intentions resulting from the story were consequently measured. In both studies, results supported the causal direction postulated by the "presumed influence" hypothesis.
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Executive Discretion, Judicial Decision Making, and Separation of Powers in the United States
Clifford Carrubba & Christopher Zorn
Journal of Politics, July 2010, Pages 812-824
Abstract:
Existing work on the U.S. separation of powers typically views the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of constitutional and statutory disputes. By contrast, much comparative work explicitly recognizes the role of executives in enforcing and implementing court decisions. Drawing on that work, this study relaxes the assumption that executives must comply with Supreme Court rulings, and instead allows the propensity for executive compliance to depend upon indirect enforcement by the public. We develop a simple model of Supreme Court decision making in the presence of executive discretion over compliance and demonstrate that such discretion can restrict substantially the Court's decision making. Using data collected for the Warren and Burger courts, we find evidence consistent with the argument that the Supreme Court's ability to constrain exective descretion depends critically upon the public.
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Does informative media commentary reduce politicians' incentives to pander?
Scott Ashworth & Kenneth Shotts
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Elections sometimes give policy-makers incentives to pander, i.e., to implement a policy that voters think is in their best interest, even though the policy-maker knows that a different policy is actually better for the voters. Pandering incentives are typically attenuated when voters learn, prior to the election, whether the policy chosen by the incumbent truly was in their best interest. This suggests that the media can improve accountability by reporting to voters information about whether an incumbent made good policy choices. We show that, although media monitoring does sometimes eliminate the incumbent's incentive to pander, in other cases it makes the problem of pandering worse. Furthermore, in some circumstances incumbent incentives are improved when the media acts as a "yes man" - suppressing some information that indicates the policy-maker made the wrong choice. We explain these seemingly paradoxical results by focusing on how media commentary affects voters' tendency to apply an asymmetric burden of proof to the incumbent, based on whether she pursues popular or unpopular policies.
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Politicians and the News Media: How Elite Attacks Influence Perceptions of Media Bias
Glen Smith
International Journal of Press/Politics, July 2010, Pages 319-343
Abstract:
When political elites receive unfavorable news coverage, a common strategy is to attack the source. Past research suggests that attacks on the news media increase perceptions of media bias, but it remains unclear how this occurs. Using two experiments, the author examines how attacks on the news media increase perceptions of bias. For the experiments, all participants read news articles about elected officials, but some read an attack on the source. The author also manipulated the direction of the attack (liberal or conservative bias) and its placement before or after the article. The results suggest that elite attacks increase perceptions of bias in the news source, and this occurs even when the attack is read following the article. In addition, attacks were effective when they came from politicians in both parties, suggesting that Republicans and Democrats are able to influence perceptions of bias. In conclusion, the author argues that elite attacks are likely to benefit the attackers but weaken democratic accountability.
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Does Local Television News Coverage Cultivate Fatalistic Beliefs About Cancer Prevention?
Jeff Niederdeppe, Erika Franklin Fowler, Kenneth Goldstein & James Pribble
Journal of Communication, June 2010, Pages 230-253
Abstract:
Many U.S. adults hold fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention despite evidence that a large proportion of cancer deaths are preventable. We report findings from two studies that assess the plausibility of the claim that local television (TV) news cultivates fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention. Study 1 features a content analysis of an October 2002 national sample of local TV and newspaper coverage about cancer. Study 2 describes an analysis of the 2005 Annenberg National Health Communication Survey (ANHCS). Overall, findings are consistent with the claim that local TV news coverage may promote fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention. We conclude with a discussion of study implications for cultivation theory and the knowledge gap hypothesis and suggest foci for future research.
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Stare Decisis: Rhetoric and Substance
Patricio Fernandez & Giacomo Ponzetto
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Stare decisis allows common law to develop gradually and incrementally. We show how judge-made law can steadily evolve and tend to increase efficiency even in the absence of new information. Judges' opinions must argue that their decisions are consistent with precedent: this is the more costly, the greater the innovation they are introducing. As a result, each judge effects a cautious marginal change in the law. Alternative models in which precedents are either strictly obeyed or totally discarded would instead predict abrupt large swings in legal rules. Thus, we find that the evolution of case law is grounded not in binary logic fixing judges' constraints, but in costly rhetoric shaping their incentives. We apply this finding to an assessment of the role of analogical reasoning in shaping the joint development of different areas of law.
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My body or my mind: The impact of state and trait objectification on women's cognitive resources
Robin Gay & Emanuele Castano
European Journal of Social Psychology, August 2010, Pages 695-703
Abstract:
Objectification theory posits that as a result of pervasive sexual objectification of the female body in American culture, women are socialized to take an observers' perspective towards the self, resulting in self-objectification. This tendency, combined with an objectifying context, is hypothesized to increase cognitive load, thereby impairing performance. Two experiments tested this hypothesis by investigating the joint impact of trait and state objectification on cognitive load among women. Results of the first experiment showed longer response latencies on a Letter Number Sequencing task, specifically among women high in trait self-objectification (TSO), in a highly objectifying condition. The second experiment replicated results from the first while also exploring possible correlates of the effects.
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The Tone of Local Presidential News Coverage
Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha
Political Communication, April 2010, Pages 121-140
Abstract:
There is little research on the tone of local news coverage of the presidency, despite the public's preference for local rather than national news. I use theories of media politics, based primarily on the profit-seeker model of news coverage, to explore the impact of newspaper characteristics, audience preferences, and story characteristics on local newspaper coverage of the presidency. Based on a sample of 288 stories taken from the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, I demonstrate that everyday local newspaper coverage of the presidency is slightly more negative than positive and that audience support for the president, newspaper resources, and corporate ownership affect the tone of local newspaper coverage of the presidency.
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Socializing economic theories of discrimination: Lessons from Survivor
Lisa Dilks, Shane Thye & Patricia Taylor
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper draws upon structural social psychological theories of small group dynamics to add predictive power to economic theories of discrimination. We first combine economic models of taste-based discrimination with social identity theory and hypothesize that discrimination is driven mainly by preferences or affinities that follow in-group/out-group boundaries. We also bring together status characteristics theory with economic views on information-based discrimination to alternatively hypothesize that discrimination is primarily driven by expectations of competency that are culturally linked to status characteristics. Predictions from both arguments are tested using data from the reality television show Survivor, a quasi-experimental setting that has compelling advantages for the study of discrimination. Specifically, we model the number of votes for elimination a contestant receives using sex, race, age, education and group membership as explanatory variables. The results overwhelmingly support our integration of status characteristics theory and information-based models of discrimination. In the early episodes, when strategic considerations should lead contestants to value competency, low status individuals (women, minorities and older contestants), receive more votes for elimination than high status contestants. However, as predicted from our refinement of information-based discrimination, this pattern is reversed in the later episodes. Here, when strategic considerations disfavor competency, it is high status contestants who are targeted more frequently. In contradiction to taste-based theories, discrimination tied to status characteristics is much more evident than voting according to in-group/out-group membership. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research for contemporary theories of discrimination.
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Resistance and relief: The wit and woes of early twentieth century folk and country music
Iain Ellis
Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, May 2010, Pages 161-178
Abstract:
Folk and country music were rural-based music styles that developed during the pre-rock decades of the early twentieth century. Largely performed by working-class practitioners for working-class audiences, these genres captured the hardships of poor constituencies through markedly different means of humorous expression. Whereas folk employed an often strident satire in resisting perceived oppressors, country looked inwards, using self-deprecating and personalized humor as a shield and relief against outside forces. Narrative tall-tales and regional vernacular were ubiquitous features of folk and country humor, and both crafted struggling characters to serve as illustrative metaphors for broader class concerns. In surveying these music forms in their infancy-as well as their key players-we are connected to the roots of American humor, as well as subsequent developments in rock & roll rebellion.
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Rupert Till
Journal of Beliefs & Values, April 2010, Pages 69-80
Abstract:
Prince is an artist who integrates elements from the sacred into his work. He uses popular iconography to present himself as an icon of consumer culture, as a deified 'rock god' worshipped by his fans, and as a preacher leading his audience like a congregation. His personality cult mixes spirituality and sexuality, and deals with issues of ecstasy and liberation, a transgressional approach that draws both controversy and public interest. This paper investigates Prince's work and the role of the pop star as an icon within contemporary culture, an icon that contains a physicality and sexuality not present in contemporary Western religious traditions. It discusses to what extent popular musical culture operates as a form of religious practice within contemporary Western culture, and the implications that this has. The paper investigates the construction of Prince's public character, his manipulation of the star system, and how he uses popular iconography to blur the distinctions between spirituality and sexuality, the idealised performer and the real world, the sacred and the profane, and the human and the divine. It explores how he possesses and is possessed by the audience, who enter into the hollow vessel he offers up to his fans.
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"Can't C Me": Surveillance and Rap Music
Erik Nielson
Journal of Black Studies, July 2010, Pages 1254-1274
Abstract:
Rap music has always been under surveillance, and the purpose of this article is to explore the most significant ways that the genre has been influenced by it. It begins with an overview of some of the ways in which surveillance has played a crucial role in the emergence of hip hop in general and rap in particular. It then uses a close analysis of 2Pac's track "Can't C Me" as a point of departure for a broader discussion of the way many of rap's lyrical, structural, and thematic features can be interpreted as a response to the perception of being watched. As this article will demonstrate, despite rap's ostensible emphasis on visibility and recognition, these features indicate a countervailing strain in rap's aesthetic, one that favors invisibility and anonymity.