Delli Carpini, Michael X
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Publication Does It Make Any Difference How You Feel About Your Job? An Exploratory Study of the Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Political Orientations(1983) Delli Carpini, Michael X; Sigel, Roberta S; Snyder, RobinDoes job satisfaction - as reported by the jobholder have a bearing on one's political orientations? Findings based upon five sets of political variables suggest that job satisfaction is related to politics, though not always strongly so. Dissatisfied individuals participate less, trust government less, and are more politically alienated than job-satisfied respondents. Job satisfaction cannot be characterized as a surrogate for other job- and personality-related characteristics, but has explanatory power of its own, though this power is affected when controls are introduced to the research design. While job satisfaction has important political implications, none of the relationships examined split satisfied and dissatisfied individuals into opposing majorities. In a relatively alienated, distrustful. and apathetic population, the dissatisfied are somewhat more so. The data base was NORC's General Social Survey Cumulative File 1972-1980.Publication The Year of the Woman? Candidates, Votes and the 1992 Elections(1993) Delli Carpini, Michael X; Williams, Bruce AThe struggle for political power has been long and difficult for women in the United States. The barriers to participation in politics have been both legal and cultural, overt and subtle. In colonial America there were few direct limits on women's participation. However, the combination of franchise restrictions based on property ownership and the overwhelming propensity for property to be held in a man's name meant that few women participated in electoral politics as either voters or officeholders.Publication Stability and Change in the U.S. Public's Knowledge of Politics(1991) Delli Carpini, Michael X; Keeter, ScottThe U.S. public's current knowledge about politics is compared with levels of knowledge in the 1940s and 1950s. Fourteen questions asked by Gallup on various surveys from 1945 to 1957 were included on a larger survey of political knowledge conducted by telephone in 1989 with a randomly selected sample of 610 adult U.S. residents. On 8 of the 14 items, the percentage answering correctly in 1989 was higher than in the earlier surveys (by 4-15 points). One item showed an increase of 1 percent, two were down 1 percent, and three others declined by 5 percent, 9 percent, and 10 percent. When level of education is controlled, however, levels of knowledge appear to have declined for most of the items. A reanalysis of some of the original Gallup data is used to estimate the effectiveness of schools in transmitting political information in 1989 compared with the earlier years.Publication Gen.com: Youth, Civic Engagement, and the New Information Environment(2000-01-01) Delli Carpini, Michael XWhat follows is an exploratory examination of the current disengagement of young Americans from public life, some thoughts on the roots of this disengagement, and speculations on the ways in which new technologies such as the Internet might be used to improve this state of affairs. It is meant to be a starting point for discussion.Publication In Search of the Information Citizen: What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters(1999-11-12) Delli Carpini, Michael XIn The Good Citizen, Michael Schudson describes four interconnected but ultimately distinct eras of American civic life, each characterized by the dominance of a particular model of citizenship. In the first era, roughly corresponding to the 18th and early 19th centuries, citizens deferred to the leadership of political elites – civic responsibility consisted mainly of affirming the legitimacy of this ruling caste. The second era, in place throughout the remainder of the 19th century, was characterized by the dominance of political parties. In this period, citizens played a more central role, though this role was orchestrated by strong local party organizations that mobilized the masses through the tangible incentives of patronage, entertainment and other individual, material rewards rather than through detailed appeals to ideology or issues.Publication Fictional and Non Fictional Television Celebrates Earth Day: Or, Politics Is Comedy Plus Pretense(1994) Delli Carpini, Michael X; Williams, Bruce AWhile there is much new work in the field of communications that challenges such distinctions, many scholars who study the medium still assume a clear and natural separation between fictional and non-fictional television. Falling into the former category are most prime-time shows, specials, movies and other broadcasts serving, it is assumed, primarily as entertainment. Further, many scholars assume that such shows have little impact on the way people think about the 'real world', in general, and politics, in particular. In the latter category are shows like the news, documentaries and other public-affairs programming. Such shows are assumed to deal with events or conditions in the 'real world'. With few exceptions, for example, political scientists examine only 'nonfiction' television when they search for the effect of the medium on political attitudes and beliefs. In this paper we critically examine the distinction between 'fiction' and non-fiction' television, arguing that it does not hold up under close scrutiny. Indeed, its unexamined persistence tends to blind scholars to the full political implications of television for democratic politics in the United States.Publication Let Us Infotain You: Politics in the New Media Age(2001-01-01) Delli Carpini, Michael X; Williams, Bruce APolitical communications scholars, members of the press, and political elites have traditionally distinguished between entertainment and non-entertainment media. It is in public affairs media in general and news media in particular that politics is assumed to reside, and it is to this part of the media that the public is assumed to turn when engaging the political world. Politics, in this view, is a distinct and self-contained part of public life, and citizen is one role among many played by individuals. As a former network television executive put it, in the civic education of the American public, entertainment programming is recess. But people, politics, and the media are far more complex than this. Individuals are simultaneously citizens, consumers, audiences, family members, workers, and so forth. Politics is built on deep-seated cultural values and beliefs that are imbedded in the seemingly nonpolitical aspects of public and private life. Entertainment media often provide factual information, stimulate social and political debate, and critique government, while public affairs media are all too often diversionary, contextless, and politically irrelevant. In this chapter we build upon the premises contained in the opening quote from Edelman: that politics is largely a mediated experience; that political attitudes and actions result from the interpretation of new information through the lenses of previously held assumptions and beliefs; and that these lenses are socially constructed from a range of shared cultural sources. We also agree with Edelman that this has always been the case, and so to the extent that researchers have ignored or downplayed entertainment media, popular culture, art, and so forth, in the construction of both news and public opinion, we have missed a critical component of this process.Publication Americans Roundly Reject Tailored Political Advertising(2012-07-01) Turow, Joseph; Delli Carpini, Michael X; Draper, Nora A; Howard-Williams, RowanPublication The Making of a Consensual Majority: Political Discourse and Electoral Politics in the 1980's(1994) Delli Carpini, Michael XThe economic and political reforms begun in the United States during the 1930s and expanded during the 1960s and early 1970s represented a significant change in the relationship between government and citizens, shifting the boundary between public and private spheres of influence. Much of this expanded government was harnessed to benefit previously powerless groups, often in ways that violated the tenets of classical liberal democracy and free market capitalism. To some degree, this expansion of the state was accompanied by a parallel shift in the terms of public discourse (consider, for example, the imagery contained in a phrase like 'The Great Society'). In general, however, essentially socialist policies were justified using the rhetoric of liberalism: political reforms were defended in terms of individual rights, and economic reforms in terms of equal opportunity. Indeed, some have argued that the reforms of the 1930s and the 1960s were designed to prevent a more conscious and comprehensive embrace of democratic socialism. The creation of a limited welfare state led to tangible gains for America's politically and economically disadvantaged classes. However, the failure openly to address the relationship among the often competing values of democracy, capitalism and socialism, coupled with the incremental, piecemeal nature of the reforms themselves, resulted in a double bind. Grafted on to essentially unchanged political and economic institutions, processes and values, the reforms were incapable of producing the 'Great Society' that was promised. By the late 1970s these limits were clear. Against the backdrop of 'stagflation', political and economic justice could no longer be sold as costless. No longer assured of the expanding economic pie that helped mask both the limits and the costs of many federal programmes, America needed to confront its half century ménage à trois with democratic capitalism and democratic socialism. However, the failure to develop a coherent justification for the socialist reforms of the past 50 years meant there was no 'public language' with which directly to defend them, let alone to advocate for more comprehensive change.Publication Age and History: Generations and Sociopolitical Change(1989) Delli Carpini, Michael XIt is the possibility of change in the human condition that underlies both the practice and the study of politics. History is chronic1ed by deviations from the past. Political philosophies have come into existence, individuals have risen to power, governments have toppled, because of the promise of change or the fear of it. Even a preoccupation with stability, which characterizes many political ideologies, governments, and traditions of research, is driven by the specter of potential change. Politics is the art/science of controlling changes in the human condition. Not surprisingly, therefore, institutions, processes, periods, and moments of real or potential change dominate its study. It is at points of discontinuity, such as the outbreak of war or the peaceful transfer of power among competing elites, that visions of Utopia and Armageddon flick momentarily into our collective mind's eye. Even periodic change that occurs under the constraints of carefully developed rituals, traditions, and institutions contains the possibility of major disjunctures from the past and so also evokes the hopes and fears associated with the unknown. Of course, such controlled change is usually much less traumatic for the political system. Indeed, one of the major functions of political institutions is to cope with the inevitability of change in a way that maximizes its predictability. In the United States, for example, the holding of periodic, staggered elections, the existence of a two-party system, the separation of powers, and so on, all work to channel political change along a predictable, moderate course (Burnham 1970; Ginsberg 1982). It is in this context of continuity and change that the importance of generations to the study of politics is best understood. There is no more fundamental transfer of power, and therefore no more fundamental potential for change, than that which occurs between generations. This is so because, unlike any other type of change, it is inevitable, it is all-inclusive, and it is untested.