Delli Carpini, Michael X
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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 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 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 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 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 Race and Community Revitalization: Communication Theory and Practice(1998-10-15) Delli Carpini, Michael XThe words community and communications are both derived from the Latin word for common. According to John Dewey, people "live in a community by virtue of the things they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common" (1915: 4). Dewey’s point — that communities can not exist without communications — leads to a corollary: that the nature and health of a community depends upon the nature and health of its communications capacity. Thus, to revitalize a community necessarily means revitalizing communications. Communications can take many forms, ranging from face-to-face conversations among family, friends, and neighbors to the broader flows of information that are provided through the mass media. All these forms are central to the way communities are constructed, maintain themselves, interact with other communities, and impact the political process. In this paper I will address how the communications environment, as currently structured, has contributed to many of the problems faced by inner city racial and ethnic communities in the United States. In order to address this issue I will first discuss the importance of communications to community development. In the next four sections I will examine relevant research regarding four key elements of the mass media: structure; access and control; content; and impact. In the sixth section, I will explore the literature regarding less mediated, more interpersonal communications. Throughout sections two through five I will pay specific attention to what existing communications theories and research tell us (explicitly or implicitly) about issues of race and ethnicity, especially as they relate to poor urban communities. Finally, I will discuss issues regarding the intersection of race, class, and communications that require further study, and how changes in the communications environment might contribute to the revitalization of urban communities.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.Publication The Tasks in Creating a New Journalism(2004-01-01) Delli Carpini, Michael XJournalism is not going to disappear. As author Michael Schudson observed, if there were not journalists, we’d have to invent them. The real issue is what journalism will look like and if it — and the larger media environment of which it is a part — will ably serve our democracy.Publication Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Democracy!(2002-04-19) Williams, Bruce A; Delli Carpini, Michael XAfter two decades of declining news audiences, decreasing newspaper circulation, and increasing uneasiness over the blurring of public-affairs and entertainment media, the heightened ratings for television news in the wake of September's terrorist attacks came as a relief to many observers. Journalists, especially, saw it as reassuring evidence that, when it really mattered, Americans still turned to them. However, that increased audience has largely dissipated, and even a closer look at the patterns of news-media consumption at the peak of the crisis suggests that journalists are whistling past the graveyard if they conclude that Americans rely on them as much as in the past.