The influence of political talk radio on confidence in democratic institutions

This study compares people's use of political talk radio to that of other m ass communication sources and to their confidence in democratic institution s. The paper augurs that communication modalities (e.g., political talk rad io) serve as important sources of secondary socialization:negative depictio ns of democractic institutions by specific sources cultivate negative perce ptions of those institutions among users of these modalities. Iii order to test this position, the investigation employs a broad interconnected approa ch, combining a content analysis of references to specific democratic insti tutions across mass communication sources with a survey of people's media n se patterns and their confidence in institutions. The results indicate that political talk radio depicts most institutions negatively, and that listen ers manifest reduced confidence in those institutions. The implications of these findings for this nation's "crisis of confidence" in political instit utions are explored.