American Government, Chapter 6 - The Politics of Public Opinion

The assigned reading materials are:

• American Government, Chapter 6: The Politics of Public Opinion https://openstax.org/books/american-government-2e/pages/6-introduction

• American Government, Chapter 7: Voting and Elections https://openstax.org/books/american-government-2e/pages/7-introduction

• American Government, Chapter 8: The Media https://openstax.org/books/american-government-2e/pages/8-introduction

• Prior, Markus. 2007. “The Real Media Divide” The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071501110.html

• Grossman, Matt. 2018. "The media isn't making people more divided ." https://medium.com/trust-media-and-democracy/partisanteam-f59a45b19536

1. Where does public opinion come from? Discuss its cognitive foundations and how socialization produces these. Why might it be collectively rational? Why not?

2. Describe important differences between focus groups, nonscientific polling, and scientific polling, including their benefits and drawbacks. Which is best for accurately measuring public opinion? Why? How might this type still fail?

https://openstax.org/books/american-government-2e/pages/6-introduction

https://openstax.org/books/american-government-2e/pages/7-introduction

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071501110.html

https://medium.com/trust-media-and-democracy/partisanteam-f59a45b19536

3. What types of factors explain an individual voter’s probability of turning out to vote? What could be done to increase voter turnout?

4. What factors influence how the media covers political issues? How do these standards influence the way the public thinks about policy problems, political events, and electoral contests? What could the media do to improve how Americans think about such important political problems?