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In the past two weeks political commentators have been gripped with convention fever, as the Republican and Democratic parties met to choose their respective nominees for this year's presidential election. Lindsay Hoffman comments that both conventions were marked not by chaos or violent protests – as many had predicted – but by their awkwardness. Despite the wall to wall coverage, with the presidential election campaign about to enter high gear, she writes that the conventions will soon be a distant memory for the public.

Americans' confidence in news is at an all-time low, and many are turning to entertaining programming, such as cable-talk programs like Hannity or political-satire programs like The Daily Show. These programs regularly feature interviews with public officials, potential candidates, and celebrities. In this new hybrid news-entertainment environment, what are the effects on citizens' perceptions of media bias and its effects on themselves, as well as others? This study, combined with results from a qualitative analysis (Baym, this special section), demonstrates that different program brands have different effects on perceptions of bias and effects. Respondents were randomly assigned to view an interview with a potential 2012 presidential candidate, and results demonstrated significant differences among them in perceived bias toward the candidate. Perceptions of the candidate, the host, and the program's makers also differed significantly across the program conditions. Implications for media effects research are discussed.

Citizens are variably influenced by information flow depending on their location within a social structure. One method of understanding this influence is through an assessment of multiple levels of analysis. Although many scholars have called for such analyses, few have heeded that call. This research addresses the relevance of "context" to the study of media effects on perceptions of public opinion. Survey data from the American National Election Studies are combined with a content analysis of campaign news in 24 regional newspapers, as well as advertising data, in order to parse out contextual media effects. Results show that perceived public opinion varies significantly across media markets. Newspaper use and personal candidate preference had a significant effect on the likelihood of perceiving Kerry to be the state-winning candidate. There was also a significant cross-level interaction between media context and political discussion on perceptions of public opinion.

The present study answers calls of previous research to analyze the content of online news, assessing differences between print and online newspapers in frequency of "mobilizing information" (Ml)—information aiding people to act on pre-existing attitudes. Conceptual and operational definitions of locational, identificational, and tactical MI are included. Results revealed that online newspapers did not have significantly more MI than their print counterparts. This finding counters the assumption that online newspapers have more mobilizing content than print.

The exchange of opinions is an important component of participatory democracies, and newspaper forum pages have been hailed as a conduit for such discussion. This research explored Schwartz's value framework to characterize lay and journalist frames in a national sample of local newspapers. A content analysis was conducted on newspaper forum articles on health policy issues—notably, alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, and crime—for the presence and complexity of value frames. Significant differences in values were found by article type and topic. Values typically associated with liberalism were also predictive of greater integrative complexity.