MEDIUM OR MESSAGE - PREDICTING DIMENSIONS OF POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION

This investigation examines the theoretical linkage between patterns o f mass media news use and various dimensions of political sophisticati on through three empirical models of comparison. A between-medium mode l traces the cognitive effects to the form of media; a between-content model isolates effects attributable to content type; and a cross-medi um model explores the possibility that the effects of one medium may b e mediated by use of another medium. Our explication of the dependent measure, political sophistication, limits the traditional conception t o the cognitive domain and focuses attention on political interest, po litical knowledge, cognitive elaboration, and information processing s trategies. Analyses of telephone survey data reveal that people who bo th frequently use and rely on newspapers outperform their television c ounterparts in knowledge and cognitive elaboration, but television is more effective in producing political interest and active processing o f news information. Significant differences were found across differen t content types within each medium, and some mediating effects were de tected among those using both newspapers and television.