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Media critics often complain about too much coverage of "horse-race" polls. A common assumption sustaining this criticism is that such coverage competes with issue coverage. We propose the opposite, that horse-race polls might increase voters' attention to other election messages, including issue information, which in turn leads to a better understanding of public policies. To test these competing theories, we conducted three studies during the 1992 presidential election: a controlled experiment, a statewide one-time survey, and a three-county two-wave panel survey. Each of the studies reports a positive relationship between horse-race polls and issue knowledge. The two surveys also report positive correlations between exposure or attention to polls and exposure or attention to general election coverage, which in turn is positively correlated with issue knowledge.

Studies of media effects on political knowledge have used exposure and attention to measure television watching and confidence and accuracy to measure knowledge. These studies have employed a variety of control strategies. Although measurements and control strategies are known to affect the magnitude of the resulting independent-dependent correlation, this study investigates whether they can affect research outcomes in any other way. The topic of substance, which we use as an example, is whether voters learn more from political advertisements than from television news. The results indicate that different methods can lead to different, or even opposite, conclusions.

When a company wants to spread its ideas, it faces key choices of format and source. It may choose to buy advertising space or to work with media reporters to generate news coverage. The source may be a corporate official, such as the CEO, or it may be an outside, noncommercial authority. The experiment reported in this study suggests that news stories may be more effective than ads. A CEO appears more persuasive than an outside authority because the CEO can generate more interest among the audience. Persuasion, in turn, may lead to behavioral changes.

Examines the impact of the media on public opinion in the People's Republic of China, where the media are tightly controlled by the government. Regression & path analyses of secondary questionnaire data from 870 Beijing residents concerning economic reform in China during the mid-1980s suggest that the government media were effective in increasing knowledge about reform & in affecting some attitudes, but they were less effective or totally ineffective in others. When compared with US media studies, the magnitude of effects appears larger, a result consistent with message competition theory. This relatively new theory predicts that competing messages tend to neturalize net effects of the media, while controlled media systems tend to show increased net effects. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 75 References. Adapted from the source document.