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Within the scientific community, much attention has focused on improving communications between scientists, policy makers, and the public. To date, efforts have centered on improving the content, accessibility, and delivery of scientific communications. Here we argue that in the current political and media environment faulty communication is no longer the core of the problem. Distrust in the scientific enterprise and misperceptions of scientific knowledge increasingly stem less from problems of communication and more from the widespread dissemination of misleading and biased information. We describe the profound structural shifts in the media environment that have occurred in recent decades and their connection to public policy decisions and technological changes. We explain how these shifts have enabled unscrupulous actors with ulterior motives increasingly to circulate fake news, misinformation, and disinformation with the help of trolls, bots, and respondent-driven algorithms. We document the high degree of partisan animosity, implicit ideological bias, political polarization, and politically motivated reasoning that now prevail in the public sphere and offer an actual example of how clearly stated scientific conclusions can be systematically perverted in the media through an internet-based campaign of disinformation and misinformation. We suggest that, in addition to attending to the clarity of their communications, scientists must also develop online strategies to counteract campaigns of misinformation and disinformation that will inevitably follow the release of findings threatening to partisans on either end of the political spectrum.

"A current perspective from a leading scholar. This significant revision shows how current issues like the normalizing of "alternative facts," the management of the COVID-19 crisis, the 2020 election and Trump's exit from office, and the proliferation of social media fit into a larger understanding of political communication. Shanto Iyengar, a leading scholar in the field, makes contemporary research accessible and engaging with new examples and data throughout. No book illuminates more clearly how media influences politics and how politicians use media to get elected, stay in power, and achieve policy goals"--

Abstract
In this review article, Shanto Iyengar summarizes the book's key findings on the psychological antecedents of support for violence and the political contexts that either facilitate or discourage outbreaks of violence. Given recent events, the book is certainly timely and theoretically insightful. However, the evidence on which the book is based is limited; it is likely that that the authors have provided vastly inflated estimates of support for violence caused by "non-attitudes" and measurement unreliability.

Campaigns are strategic contests between candidates and reporters. While candidates have proven to be adept at gaming news coverage of their campaign advertisements, journalists have maintained their autonomy by curtailing coverage of the candidates' stump speeches. The advent of online media, however, advantages the candidates by permitting direct communication between candidates and voters.

A review essay on a book by George Lakoff, Don't Think of an Elephant (Chelsea Green, 2004).