DIFFERENCES AMONG NEWSPAPERS, TELEVISION, AND RADIO IN THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE OF THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA

While communications research has shown a contribution to citizens' kn owledge of political affairs from newspapers and television, it has no t shown a similar contribution for radio. This study questions those f indings, asking if researchers' failure to find a contribution to radi o is due to inadequacies in sampling and measurement techniques. In th is study, commuters were sampled and asked about their attention to me dia coverage of the Contract With America, a topic of heavy discussion on talk radio. The authors found that radio made as large a contribut ion to respondents' knowledge of this particular political issue as ne wspapers and television. They suggest future studies of learning about political affairs for media should include radio in their analysis.