PUBLIC INFORMATION About WORLD AFFAIRS

JOHN P. ROBINSON

SURVEY RESEARCH CENTER I !

ISR Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan PUBLIC INFORMATION ABOUT WORLD AFFAIRS

by John P. Robinson

SURVEY RESEARCH CENTER

Institute for Social Research The University of Michigan

March 1967 PREFACE

This report is an opportunity to present some new data along with some older studies on public Information regarding world affairs. While drawing from a wide selection of studies, it is certainly not meant to be a definitive review of the large amount of research material that is available on this complex topic.

Dr. Martin Patchen was responsible for substantial portions of the outline and content of the report. Helpful comments and suggestions were provided by Drs. Angus Campbell, Bernard Cohen, Philip Converse, Samuel Hayes, Robert Hefner, Alfred Hero, Kent Jennings, Herbert Kelman, Michael Margolis, James Rosenau, James Swinehart, and Stephen Withey. Misses Hinda Manson and Roberta Rehner made significant contributions to the data analysis and preparation of the report. Particular appreci• ation goes to Virginia Nye for her timely and careful typing of the final manuscript. The final report was edited by Dr. Stephen Withey.

Special permission to use previously unpublished data from a study in Detroit (the 1964 Detroit Area Study) was kindly given by Drs. Robert Hefner and Sheldon Levy. Data on the Detroit population without a bibliographic reference come from this study.

ii Table of Contents

Page

I. Introduction and Background 1

II. Results of Exposure to Information 7

III. Sociological Correlates of Foreign Affairs Information Levels. . 12

IV. Mass Media as an Information Source 18

V. Effects of Face-to-Face Communication 34

VI. Developing Interest in World Affairs 46

VII. Problems in Changing Public Response 51

Appendix A (Magazine Classification and Circulation) 54

Appendix B (Media Questions Used in SRC and DAS Studies) 55

Appendix C (Media preference Data) 61

References 65

iii I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Extent of Public Ignorance

One of the many popular assumptions about the workings of our demo• cratic society pictures the average citizen, surrounded by mass media, as an interested, informed follower of U.S. foreign policy and other world events. Few notions have been so consistently contradicted by findings of social surveys.

Survey researchers and other social scientists who have examined the results of typical poll data have found that the vast majority of citizens hold pictures of the world that .are at best sketchy, blurred and without detail or at worst so impoverished as to beggar description. These restricted horizons become particularly evident when one examines the public's inability to give satisfactory answers to objective questions related to world affairs. Of course the criteria for "satisfactory answers" implies a judgment that needs to be documented. The following examples illustrate the general level of public enlightenment. They are, as are almost all of the data used in this report, based on representative samples of the general adult public.

1. Awareness of troubled areas: In answer to the question, "Have you heard anything about the war in Viet Nam?", 25 percent of a cross-section sample in the spring of 1964 (before the Presidential election in the fall of that year but after over two years of combat involving American troops) claimed they had not (Patchen, 1964). In a separate study made at the same time in the Detroit area, 37 percent of the respondents claimed they had not heard about any activity in Viet Nam and Laos. In the late autumn of 1961, 23 per• cent of a national sample were unaware of any trouble either in Berlin or in the Congo (Withey, 1962).

2. Knowledge of the characteristics of foreign countries: In the Patchen (1964) study, 28 percent of the population sampled were unaware of the exist• ence of a Communist government in China, and an additional 29 percent did not know of the existence of the alternate Chinese government on Formosa. In the January, 1964, Detroit Area Study, 29 percent were unable to answer the question on Chinese governments correctly. In the same study, only 64 percent correctly said that India did not have a Communist government and oniy 60 per• cent knew that France had developed and tested its own atomic weapons.

3. Knowledge of the location of foreign countries: In the Detroit study, 34 and 51 percent, respectively, correctly answered that Afghanistan and Mongolia were not In Africa. In June, 1955, about 90 percent of the national population could not accurately place the country of Bulgaria on a map of Europe (Erskine, 1963a).

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4. Knowledge of personalities connected with foreign affairs: In March, 1959, about 73 percent of the sampled public could not name the Secretary of Defense. In August, 1959) 22 percent had not .heard of Fidel Castro (Erskine, 1962). In 1964, only 54 percent of the public had read or heard about Mao Tse Tung (Patchen, 1965).

5. Knowledge of foreign policies and events: In November, 1962, 71 per• cent of the public had heard of the Peace Corps, and in April of the same year only 13 percent could be classified as having any correct picture of President Kennedy's proposed plans to increase foreign trade; however, 46 percent said they knew on a simple yes-no question. In December, 1961, only 22 percent of the American public had heard of the Common Market (Erskine,- 1962) and almost half of this group had an incorrect impression. In 1959, six months after the launching of Sputnik I, 36 percent of a national sample could at best give vague or erroneous information about the purposes of space satellites (See Table 1) (McLeod and Swinehart, 1960).

Although not documented here, the field of foreign affairs is not alone in being an area of public ignorance and misinformation. Science, domestic affairs, local government, and other areas show a similar lack of public attention. One can also note that studies have found large segments of the adult public lacking the basic numerical and verbal skills expected of high school pupils that are required to assimilate complex news material (See, for instance, Lane and Sears, 1964; Erskine, 1963a).

These examples cannot be taken to mean that all information related to foreign affairs is unknown by large segments of the public. Only 2 of 557 respondents in the Detroit Study said that Russia had not developed and tested its own atomic weapons, and in 1960, 96 percent of the public had heard of the U-2 incident (Erskine, 1963a). Results from the Detroit Area Study indi• cated that all sociological groupings in the community tended to share an elementary, mental "map" of the world that might not be very helpful in pin• pointing boundaries and locations on an official map of the world but did provide cross-group similarities in the classification of countries into the three categories--Western, African-Asian-neutral, and Communist. These data were replicated in a follow-up of the original study.

Criticism may be levied at individual questions on surveys. For instance, in response to a question like, "Have you heard anything about the war in Viet Nam?" some respondents may know of hostilities but know of no special news or incidents in recent months and answer "No." One's awareness of national events may be quite high without being able to name a Secretary of Defense who has been in office only a short time. Some people might remember a portrait picture but forget the name "Castro." But the picture of lack of information is too general to be seriously threatened by criti• cisms of any small group of items.

The nature of Information is also open to question. In the above examples the items of information were specific and objective. France has developed its own atomic devices, Morocco is in Africa and Bulgaria does belong on a particular spot of the map of Europe. But it may well be argued 3

that most foreign affairs information does not come to the public in such objective, educational-test form and even less is it likely to be remembered in that format. Psychological research into what objects "mean" to people (Osgood, et al., 1957) suggests that the most important aspect of the mean• ing of an object is its evaluative content--!.e., whether it is seen as good or bad, dangerous or friendly. Thus, despite some quite striking objective resemblances between Russia and the United States in population, size, world power, scientific achievements, climate, etc., four times as many of the Detroit Area Study population saw the Philippines as more "similar" to the United States than Russia, and six times as many saw Cuba and Russia as alike as saw the United States and Russia as similar. This strong emphasis on political criteria may reflect the fact that foreign events are "coded" as good or bad, relevant or irrelevant to U.S. welfare, while many of the details and names associated with the events are forgotten. Perhaps informa• tion on foreign affairs attracts attention only when it has some evaluative connection that hits close to home. For many this evaluative connection may require a background frame of reference that simply does not exist except in terms of clear international threat.

Although this report will be restricted to the more objective defini• tions of information, it should be remembered that much of what is labeled "opinion" or "attitude" comprises extremely important facets of informa• tion. In turn, these attitudes play crucial filtering roles in determining what information will be sought or attended to and how it will be interpreted.

Factors in the Information Transmission Process

whatever one's position on the role of public opinion in the govern• mental process, it would be naive to simply blame the mass media for the low level of public information about foreign affairs. While a large majority of individuals may hear about some event on a TV newscast or read about it in a newspaper, abundant evidence indicates that many factors influence the attention the item will receive, the interpretation that will be given the report, and the amount of detail that will be remembered. A comprehensive model of the information transmission process must include many variables that reach into the mind and activity of the Individual as well as the network of influence in society. In somewhat simplified form, many of these variables might be summarized under the following three categories:

1. An individual's trust and confidence in the source of information: People have various opinions of the accuracy, coverage and insight of various repre• sentatives of the mass media and accordingly exaggerate, accept or discount much of the news they receive.

2. An individual's previous frame of reference into which news must be fit: By the time a person is an adult a frame of reference has been developed that tends to define a degree of interest in types of events and parts of the world, attitudes are formed and not easily contradicted, and previous information creates expectations and filters for interpretation of new events. The work of Festinger (1957) and others indicates the strong tendency of people to rationalize, distort, forget and invent in order to maintain an environment 4

that is understandable. But there is also a content of knowledge that is required if many events are to be seen as relevant, important, interesting and worthy of attention. If this background is absent no attention and interest are aroused and one is very likely to categorize the news to which one is exposed as dull and useless information.

3. Reactions of others: Few, if any, of us are so expert or self sufficient that we do not check our understanding and evaluation of events against the reactions of others. Part of this may be a residue of childhood dependence but much of it is also based on the enrichment of experience that follows discussion and interaction with others. In many fields others have insights and knowledge far beyond our own. Also, one may be interested in testing or exploring future implications of an event or series of developments. Certain individuals and certain groups can readily become mechanisms for validating and interpreting the course of events. These people become "reference groups" for these types of events. For many Americans, only a Presidential announcement authenticates the importance and veracity of an event. For many people face-to-face interaction is the authentication as well as the pace setter for interest, attention, interpretation and behavior. However these interactions can, as Bauer, Pool and Dexter (1963) contend, effectively stifle potential communication and continued information seeking.

In their study of the reactions of business elites to government foreign trade policy information, Bauer, Pool and Dexter (1963) conclude that the final outcome of the information process on the individual's information struc• ture is much more determined by these previous and ongoing conditions than by the actual information transmitted.

This point of view, which highlights the pivotal role of these historical, internal and face-to-face aspects of information, prevails throughout this paper. The relevance and interaction of some of these factors is displayed in some of the data from the 1964 Detroit Area Study (Figure 1). This model is limited to the available data. The central variable in the diagram and the one found in this study to be most influential in predicting world affairs information is "education." Education is a very gross index of a large number of background factors including intellectual ability, family background, inter• ests, etc., and it is correlated with such current characteristics as occupa• tional level, income and so forth.

In a more comprehensive model one should propose a complex welter of factors of a psychological, social psychological and sociological sort that would account for the influence of abilities and personal characteristics, peer groups, schools and family background and upbringing, travel, age, geographic location, social class, etc.

In the Detroit Area Study data it was found that education was related (first order Pearson r_ correlations) positively to the amount of world affairs information held by individuals. Degree of formal education, in turn, is related to self-exposure to world news in the mass media (in this case the newspaper), which relates to the level of information reported. All of these measures, education, media exposure, and information, are related to reported face-to-face discussion of world news reports with friends and work associ• ates. It might be noted, however, that both media exposure and interpersonal discussion account for about half as much variance (correlation squared) in information level as does degree of formal education. Figure 1: Simplified Schematic Portrayal of the Hypothesized Interrelation of Factors Studied in this Report.*

MASS MEDIA EXPOSURE

Psychological Factors

Social Psychological Factors EDUCATION (Occupation WORLD AFFAIRS Sociological Factors Income) INFORMATION

FACE-TO-FACE DISCUSSION OF WORLD AFFAIRS

'Correlations between factors from 1964 Detroit Area Study data (mass media exposure here indexed by readership of world news in the newspapers). 6

The remainder of this paper is divided into six sections. In section II we shall examine some results of information campaigns which have been conducted since the end of World War II. We shall report on the disappointing results of these campaigns. Some reasons for the failure of these campaigns will be postulated.

In section III we shall examine the very strong clustering of infor• mation levels about foreign affairs material within certain strata or segments of the population. Review of recent survey data relating infor• mation level to sociological background factors such as sex, race and education will lead to a set of six sociological "types" of citizens who show marked differences in their knowledge of world affairs.

The following section reviews survey data on the patterns of mass media usage by these six "types" of citizens. It will be seen that those types who are already well informed about foreign affairs are prone to additional information exposure in the mass media--directly and indirectly. A well-documented (Campbell, Gurin and Miller, 1954; Hero, 1959, IV) finding regarding usage of the mass media will be more closely examined to find out the extent of overlap that does exist in use of the media. We will comment on the apparent large increase in the use of media and on the distinctive mass media habits of certain "elite" groups in our society.

Section V reviews the meager evidence available on the different interpersonal communication patterns about foreign affairs among the six "types" of people. Data pertaining to the importance of this phase of information transmission will be reviewed. The role of voluntary organiza• tions in increasing personal interaction on foreign affairs topics will be discus sed.

The motivation and interest that lie back of information seeking behavior are explored in section VI. The crucial people and events in a person's early life which may lead to an interest in this direction are reviewed, as is the small amount of descriptive data on this problem.

In the last section there is a brief review of the problems involved in attempting to increase foreign affairs awareness in the face of the evidence presented in this short report. II. RESULTS OF EXPOSURE TO INFORMATION

Why Information Campaigns Fail

Hyman and Sheatsley (1947) outlined the following reasons for the failure of foreign affairs information campaigns.

1. A hard core of uninformed: The authors estimated that 12 percent of the national population were unaware of any of five major, contemporary, foreign affairs issues. Another 18 percent were aware of only one of the five. One might assume, that on simply trying to create an awareness of foreign affairs issues, from one eighth to one third are largely inaccessible.

2. People already interested and somewhat informed acquire the most information: The authors found that people expressing interest in one foreign affairs issue were highly likely to be interested in, and already informed about, other foreign affairs issues. Later studies indicate that such interested people are usually relatively better informed about, and interested in, other subjects as well such as science (McLeod and Swinehart, 1960), cultural affairs (Hero, 1959, IV) and especially national, domestic issues (Hero, personal communication).

3. People seek information congenial to present attitudes: The authors described a phenomenon previously found in research on political campaigns. People committed to one point of view, or one party, exposed themselves more to propaganda of that position than to propaganda from the opposition (Lazarsfeld et al., 1948). Lazarsfeld (1947) also found that radio programs dealing with the contributions of various national groups to American life and culture tended primarily to attract audiences composed of the national group being discussed in any one program. More recently, Fe.stinger (1957) has found that among the heaviest readers of a particular automobile advertisement are the recent purchasers of that make. Bauer, Pool, and Dexter (1963) describe the same "reinforcement" phenomenon in news item choice among businessmen who have taken a stand for or against the govern• ment's proposed foreign trade policy.

Nevertheless, some of the unorganized information which many people do have is partly attributable to the fact that the self-selection process of audiences is seldom complete (Berelson and Steiner, 1964). Headlines intrude on one's attention, networks interrupt programs for news flashes and avid or steady listeners or viewers seldom turn off their sets just because news programs come on.

Thus people interpret the same information differently. Depending upon a person's confidence in the media and his background information and attitudes about participants and actions in an event, considerable variation in interpretation is likely to occur following exposure to a particular report. Using contexts considerably broader than just foreign affairs, Hovland (1959) showed in a number of field and laboratory experiments that

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information somewhat close to one's attitudinal position was more easily- believed and learned than information more consonant with highly discrepant attitudinal positions. Hyman and Sheatsley report, for instance, that readers, with differential estimates of newspaper bias, varied in their interpretation of stories about Russian-American disagreements.

4. Information alone will not necessarily change attitudes: Attitudes do change under the impact of events although they may resist alteration quite strongly. Cartwright's classical articles (1949, 1951) suggest the variety of pressures and supports over and beyond simple accounts of events, that are needed to facilitate attitude change. Attitudes that are intensely held, of long duration, well supported by other evidence and valued groups, etc., are more resistant to change than less valued and less supported opinions.

Hyman and Sheatsley found some of these aspects of informational impact true regarding a single piece of information. After discovering on one survey that the major reason people opposed loans to England was doubt of repayment, they informed respondents on half of a subsequent survey that England had taken definite repayment steps in addition to giving the U. S. certain trade advantages in return. The other half of the surveyed respondents were not given this information. While this information bolstered the attitudes of those already in favor or neutral towards the loan, the percentage opposed was unchanged in the two halves of the split sample.

Fromme (1941) found a similar result when he told respondents that their expressed attitudes disagreed with those of foreign policy experts. Even though these people conceded they knew less than the experts, this information had little effect on their stated position.

The Cincinnati Study

As a test of the effectiveness of a massive informational approach on a foreign affairs topic, the classic Cincinnati Plan for the United Nations was undertaken with the hope of circumventing some of the problems described in Hyman and Sheatsley's conclusions.

Parent-teacher associations, school children, churches, radio stations and newspapers were deluged with information posters, pamphlets, slogans, action program proposals, films, guest speakers, and gimmicks designed to increase awareness and knowledge about the United Nations. To assess the campaign's effectiveness, representative surveys of the community were taken prior to, and six months after, its initiation.

Although this campaign was specifically addressed to those "most in need of enlightenment" (women, the relatively uneducated and poor, and the elderly were mentioned), it was the men, the better educated and the young who reported being reached by this U. N. information. However, results were in general extremely disappointing. When respondents were asked to mention problems of government, the number mentioning an international issue rose from 47 to 74 percent, but this appeared to be more a function of Cold 9

War problems in the news rather than a result of the campaign. When asked for war-prevention suggestions, a mere six percent of the before-sample and three percent of the after-sample mentioned the United Nations. The propor• tion knowing nothing about the purpose of the UN stayed at about 30 percent and proportions at other information levels also remained at about the same levels before and after the campaign. Even among the most informed, nearly nine in ten had not heard about any world affairs organizations in their local area. Fifty one percent had not heard radio slogans (pre-TV years) which were included in one-minute pitches for the UN 150 times a week. One woman who had heard said: ,tWhy, yes. I heard it over and over again, but I never did find out what it means."

Star and Hughes (1950), reporting the results of the study concluded:

The Cincinnati experiment has proved that the creating of interest is the first measure in building public opinion and that only after that will information be absorbed....Information grows interesting when it is functional, that is, when it is so presented that it is seen to impinge upon one's personal concerns. Isolated or highly technical facts...are not likely to make an impression on the ordinary man. Facts about the United Nations' role in preventing war are more readily functional because a plain man can more easily see the connection between war and his own affairs.

Their data well illustrate the importance of interest on reaction to information. Holding previous information level constant, 8 to 16 percent more of the post-campaign, better informed respondents came from the more interested than from the less interested sector of the city's population. However, the greatest absolute gains occurred among those who were previously best informed.

A Startling International Event

The launching of Sputnik was certainly a startlingly novel event with international ramifications. The Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan happened to ask some questions on the public's awareness of and information about the purposes of space satellites six months before the launching of Sputnik I. The questions were repeated about six months after the event.

Both surveys asked respondents if they had heard of space satellites. Those who had were then asked, "From what you've heard, what is the purpose of launching these space satellites?" Solicited responses were coded into one of seven categories listed in Table 1.

The event was certainly sufficiently novel and publicized to attract considerable attention. The number uninformed about space satellites dropped from 54 to 8 percent. Those who gave scientific purposes were likely to be heavy readers of newspapers1 foreign affairs reports. Large segments of the 10

Table 1 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF PURPOSE OF EARTH SATELLITE' (before and after Sputnik)

Satellite Purpose Before After Sputnik Sputnik Relatively Informed 1. Scientific detailed information 12% 11% "Finding out weather and atmospheric conditions"

2. Scientific general information 16 "To find out more about outer space"

3. Competition with the Russians 20 "To see who can get to the moon first--us or Russia"

4. Future possibilities 17 "Getting ready for space travel in the future"

Total Relatively Informed 21% 64%

Relatively Uninformed

5. Misinformation 11 "To protect us from invasion from outer space"

6. Don't know 14 23 "I've heard something but I can't remember what it was"

7. Heard nothing 54 "Nope"

8. Not ascertained

TOTAL 100% 100%

Examples of each type of response given in quotes below each category heading are from McLeod and Swinehart, 1960.

Less than 1/2 percent. 11 public did not evaluate these developments beyond the framework of compe• tition with the Russians or future developments with overtones of science fiction. Over one-third could still be classified as quite uninformed about the presence or purposes of earth satellites.

Again, as in the Cincinnati study, professed interest in science was a crucial factor (in addition to formal education) in the depth of knowledge acquired. Also, the number of media used was related to the quantity of retained information. Seventy-four percent of those using all four media could be classified as relatively informed while only 21 percent of those exposed to one or none were similarly so informed.

The Importance of Interpersonal Conversation

The two previous examples focus on the effectiveness of mass media in dispersing information. In a domestic, rather than a foreign affairs, field, the Lazarsfeld et al. (1948) election study found personal influence much more effective than mass media in changing voting decisions. Reviewing several studies, Klapper (1960) concludes: "In real life situations, informal personal appeal has been consistently found to be more effective than any mass medium..." In a series of experiments, Lewin (1952) found the interchange of group discussion far superior to lecture method in changing attitudes and actions. He also points to the importance of publicly expressed commit• ment and the support of group consensus in assuring the retention and the use of transmitted information by experimental subjects. A small study by Brim (1954) involved an informational program with about 50 mothers in which they were given some advice on child feeding. Three times as many mothers who rated the advice as authoritative versus not generally helpful actually tried these practices. However, only in those cases where additional significant support was given by people close to the mother were these practices finally adopted. It would seem that in addition to confidence in the source of information, it is helpful to have some reinforcement for holding an informational perspective especially if a form of behavior is required. III. SOCIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS INFORMATION LEVELS

Clustering of Information

The "hard core of uninformed" who are consistently found in results of surveys and polls may well have their counterpart in a "hard core of well- informed." As far back as the 1949 Survey Research Center's study of foreign affairs attitudes in Albany (Metzner, 1949), it was noted that many more respondents answer all questions correctly than one would expect if the answers were independent of each other. For example, if we have four infor• mation items and if there is no likelihood that answering one question correctly will lead a person to answer the next one correctly and each item is answered correctly by 50 percent of the population, then the probability that one particular respondent will answer all correctly is (.5)^ or .0625. Put another way, if we interview 10,000 respondents, we can expect 625 to get all items correct.

In the Albany study, 18 times as many respondents accurately answered all items as would be expected on the basis of independent answers (Metzner, 1949). In the Survey Research Center's science study (Davis, 1958), 167 times as many people had their science items correct as on the basis of a chance distribution alone. Finally, in the 1964 Detroit Area Study, the corresponding figure was 144 on the 16-item information quiz. Guttman (1965) has analyzed mental test data that may indicate the same phenomenon-- that distinct clusterings of people exist who have expertise in a number of fields. In other words, people highly knowledgeable in one area tend to be knowledgeable in other areas as well. The question now becomes one of discovering the common sociological characteristics that predispose people to high levels of world affairs information.

Information About the Far East

The Survey Research Center (Patchen, 1964) study of attitudes towards Red China asked four Information items. Respondents were then assigned information scores based on the number of items they answered correctly. These questions were:

1. Do you happen to know what kind of government most of China has r.ight now—whether it's Democratic, Communist, or what?

2. Have you happened to hear anything about another Chinese govern• ment besides the Communist one?

3. Do you happen to know whether the United States has been treating Russia and China the same up to now, or whether we've been treating them differently?

4. Have you happened to hear anything about the fighting in Viet Nam?

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The relation of this information score to a number of sociological characteristics previously found to be related to foreign affairs informa• tion (Hero, 1959, I) was examined. The characteristics include the edu• cation, race, income, occupation, sex and age of the respondent, as well as the geographic region and the size of the community in which he resides.

As has been seen previously, amount of education was the major factor related to high levels of information. Within particular education levels, however, significant additional factors affected knowledge of this foreign affairs material. At higher levels, differences resulted from occupation (especially professional, technical and managerial professions). Annual family income most affected those with only high school education or less. Finally, among those with grade school education or less, distinctive differences arose between white and non-whites. Six combinations of these background factors were constructed from the sociological data. These combinations appeared to lead to the most crucial differences in informa• tion levels.

Figure 2 illustrates the general definitional framework of these six categories. Group I includes non-whites with less than high school education and total annual family income under $7,500. An estimated 9 percent of the total population falls into this group. Group II, about 27 percent of the population, differs from I only on the race factor. Group III (12 percent) is made up of "misfits," as people in this category either make more money (over $7,500 per year) than expected of non-high school graduates, or make less (under $4,000 per year) than their high school degree usually brings. Group IV (about 29 percent) contains those with a high school degree earn• ing over $4,000. Group V (13 percent) contains people with some college experience and college graduates employed in "blue-collar" occupations. College graduates in "white-collar" positions make up Group VI. Based on the survey producing this data we could estimate the college graduate group at ten percent. (Census figures indicate they comprise eight percent of the national population; the difference would be expected in a sample study.)

Hero (1959, I) describes another type of citizen, mainly from this final group. He maintains that a small segment of the population (one percent or somewhat less) Is quite involved in world affairs. They follow events closely in the mass media, read books and analytic magazine articles, enter organizations and foreign policy discussions, and even express their opinions to Congressmen, newspapers, or other "influentials." Using Hero's estimate, between 5 and 14 individuals who fit this description should have fallen into the present sample. However, because most of the data needed to identify such individuals were not collected in this survey, they could not be distinguished in this study. Considering Hero's assumptions, one would expect practically all of them to have the maximum score of four on this information quiz. More detailed analysis might also show, as Hero (1959, IV) suggests, that occupational groups such as lawyers, teachers, business executives and clergymen are more likely to be highly informed than those in other group VI occupations. However, our data do not indicate much difference in knowledgeability between these professions and the others. If, as Hero further suggests (1959, IV), we were able to isolate the teachers, Figure 2: Combinations of background factors for each of the six groups within the United States population showing large differences in information scores about the Far East. Percentage of population estimates are based on the same Survey Research Center data as are the average information scores. Maximum information score

Entire Population

Some College Less than High School College Graduate High School Graduate Graduate

17 to N Under $7,500 Per Year

II III IV VI

9% Percent 27% 12% 29% 13% 10% of Population

Average Information Score -6 1.7 2.2 2.8 3.2 3.6 Table 2

PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION ITEMS ABOUT THE FAR EAST (SPRING 1964) FOR EACH SOCIAL GROUP IDENTIFIED IN FIGURE 2 (PATCHEN 1964)

(MEDIAN NUMBER OF ITEMS ANSWERED CORRECTLY UNDERLINED FOR EACH GROUP) % National Number of Items Answered Correctly Group Population 0 1 2 3 4 TOTAI

I ( 9) 66% 20 8 4 2 100%

II (27) 30% 16 15 18 100% III (12) 16% 18 22_ 19 25 100% IV (29) 6% 12 21 23 38 100% V (13) 1% 5 19 19 56 100% VI (10) 0% 5 4 15 76 100% Via* (1/3-1) 0% 0 0 5 95 100%

Total Sampling 1007o 18% 14 16 17 35 100%

N = 1,429 Activist group, estimates based on Hero (1959, I, see text). 16 industrialists, etc. who fit the above description, they might come close to achieving the maximum score.

Figure 2 and Table 2 show that amount of information increases sig• nificantly from Group I (average .6 items answered correctly) through Group VI (average 3.6 items answered correctly).

Based on some preliminary calculations, we have also roughly estimated effects of other sociological characteristics. Women, less informed than men for various psychological and sociological reasons (see Hero, 1959,

VI, p. 41)9 score about .5 less than the average for each of the six groups (given at the bottom of Figure 2). Males, conversely, score about .5 higher than the average. Respondents in the 55-64 age bracket score about .5 higher than average for Group I through IV, while men under 35 score about .5 lower than average. Negroes score 1.2 under the average in Groups III through VI (Group I is practically all-Negro; Group II is entirely non- Negro) . Whites score about .1 over the average for Groups III through VI.

Geographical factors also affect the scores. Southerners score .5 less than average, while those in other regions score about .2 above average. Metropolitan inhabitants score about .2 above and rural dwellers about .5 below average. It should be noted that we have not investigated these factors in combination, so there is no evidence to say that a respondent in a rural Southern area scores .5 + .5 or 1.0 less than average, although such may or may not be the case. (For a special account of Southern world affairs interests, cf. Hero, 1965.)

Detroit Area Study General Information Quiz

In the 1964 Detroit Area Study, it was not possible to test the effect of these geographic factors on information level. Therefore, discrepancies exist between the pattern of answers to a 16-item information quiz in the Detroit Area Study (see Table 3) and the four questions asked on the national survey. Education was again found the most important independent factor. However, women in all groups scored three to four points lower than men--more significant than the two point difference between Negroes and whites. This more pronounced sex difference may be due more to the tech• nical nature of the questions asked, than to the metropolitan sample involved. Very little information score difference appears in Groups II and III. Nevertheless, the six "types" suggested by the national sample data still showed large differences in their ability to score well on the information test, as is seen in Table 3. However, as is usually the case: (1) education alone was as good an information level predictor as the more complicated scheme, and (2) interviewer ratings of the "brains and background" of the respondent (made before the information test) resulted in the best corre• late of the respondent's information level. Table 3

PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION SCORES WITHIN EACH SOCIAL GROUP FOR DETROIT AREA STUDY 1964 (Median category for each group underlined)

Percent of 0 and Average Group* Population less** 1-4 5-8 9-12 13-16 Total Score

I (10%) 38% 38 13 5 6 100% 3.0

II (26%) 17% 22 33 21 7 100% 5.7

III (14%) 17% 28 22_ 25 8 100% 5.6

IV (26%) 6% 21 27_ 25 21 100% 8.0

V (16%) 0% 9 29 34 28 100% 9.9

VI ( 8%) 2% 2 14 25 57 100% 12.0

TOTAL 100% 12% 20 26 24 18 100% 7.0

N = 557

* See Figure 2 for description of each of these social groups. ** Total negative scores were possible since points were subtracted for incorrect answers. IV. MASS MEDIA AS AN INFORMATION SOURCE

General Data on A National Sample

As one finds a clustering of information within the population, one might also expect a clustering of media usage. The possibility arises that a high media clustering might occur most often in the high-information level groups. However, complete data to investigate this hypothesis exist only for the 1964 Detroit Area Study, which we shall review at the end of this section. While recent information data on the national population are available from the Patchen study, the last detailed nationwide data on everyday media usage were collected in the 1957 Survey Research Center investigation of science attitudes (Davis, 1958). Data on media usage in connection with the last five national elections have also been collected by the Survey Research Center; some of these data will be contrasted with the 1957 results.

For some idea of the relations between information and media usage, we shall examine how media habits vary as a function of the Figure 2 classi• fication scheme. Certain methodological questions arise, in addition to the fact that there were seven years between the two surveys and that the socio• logical groupings show some large variation in size. First of all, education and income levels have risen substantially. Thus, in the 1957 media data analysis we have used $6,000 instead of $7,500 as the cut-off point for high or low salaries to formulate Groups II, III and IV. A more equitable distribution of individuals among these three categories is thus ensured.

Secondly, some increases in mass media usage since 1957 are evident. Television now reaches an estimated 95 percent instead of the 86 percent reported in 1957. Magazine circulation figures (see Appendix A for these figures, as well as a classification of magazines used in this report) for general news magazines have risen around 37 percent since 1958; analytical commentary magazines have averaged a 30 percent increase, pictorial news magazines 27 percent, and the elite magazine Foreign Affairs 158 percent (Ayers 1958, 1964). These magazine figures in particular show a marked increase over the concomitant 10 percent increase in the adult population during the same 7 year period. Yet, despite similar increases in magazine circulation evidenced between 1949 and 1958, Davis (1958) found that the percentages of the population reporting readership of various types of magazines in 1957 was practically identical to those found In a 1947 study. Even assuming that the increase since 1957 is detectable at the individual level, we strongly suspect that little of such increase would be due to new subscription among the less-educated.

A final methodological difficulty lies in the different methods of asking media usage questions. In a Detroit Area Study follow-up, when the

18 Table 4

AVERAGE VALUES OF INDICES OF MEDIA USAGE FOR THE SIXGROUP S OF FIGURE 2 (1958 Survey Research Center data)

Average Number Sophisticated Percent Average Number of Sophisticated Media Used Group of Sample of Media Used Media Used 0 1 2-3 4-8 TOTAL

I ( 8) 2.6 1.1 36 33 27 4 100%

II (42) 3.3 1.8 19 29 42 10 100%

III (12) 3.8 2.4 11 16 49 24 100%

IV (20) 4.0 2.6 6 20 47 27 100%

V (11) 4.2 3.2 5 11 41 43 100%

VI ( 7) 4.5 4.1 0 4 33 63 100%

100%

N = 1,919 20 same respondents were asked directly if they read Life or Time, the numbers answering "Yes" were two to three times larger than the figures obtained in the prior interview from asking the indirect question, "What magazines do you read?" For the most part, indirect questions were asked of the 1957 national sample. Appendix B contains the media questions asked of the national sample.

In Table 4, the ordering of groups clearly follows the hypothesized order of number of media used. (Col. 1). The "number of media used" refers to the number of the five media—books, magazines, newspapers, TV and radio--to which a respondent claimed exposure. However, this measure allows inclusion of a single medium if only a single paperback, a single article, or a single program was the limit of exposure.

To circumvent such limited coverage, measures on a more sophisticated set of criteria were calculated and appear in the second part of Table 4. The more demanding criteria require at least half the books read to be non- fiction. Magazines were categorized in three ways—analytical (e.g., Harpers), general news and business (e.g., Time or Business Week), and general interest news (e.g., Life or Post). Separate scores were calculated for those who "read most or all" foreign news in their newspaper and those who at least "read some." Finally, scores were given for those who specifi• cally mentioned they listened to news or political programs on the radio and for those watching these kinds of programs on TV. Two points were given to serious book readers and those reading analytical magazines regularly. Single points were accumulated for those meeting each remaining criterion. No respondent in the 1957 sample achieved the maximum score of ten, and only four respondents scored eight.

The more demanding index produces greater discrimination between the six groups than the simple cumulation of media used. Nevertheless, even the more simplified index shows that better informed groups have more access to, probably pay more attention to, and seek out more foreign affairs information from the five media than do other people.

The second part of Table 4 allows a closer study of the degree of exposure on the eight step index used. The final column indicates that 63 percent of Group VI score over four on the index but only two-thirds as many score as well in Group V or in Group IV. Groups I and II, mean• while, have only four and ten percent who rate this well. While 36 percent of Group I and 33 percent of Group II have no exposure to sophisticated media, all of the members of Group VI have at least some exposure.

Scores on the serious media index (see the second portion of Table 4) for other demographic groupings are generally consistent with differences noted on the 1964 Survey Research Center world affairs information test (Section III). Women were about .4 less than men for Groups II through VI on the serious media index. Negroes average .7 less than whites on the average for all groups. Respondents in the South score .5 less than Table 5

PERCENTAGE WITHIN EACH SOCIAL GROUP IN EIGHT SEPARATE TYPES OF SOPHISTICATED USAGE (1957 Survey Research Center data)

Read all Read at Analytic News and Pictorial & or most Least Some Listen to Watch Books Commen tary Bus ines s Interest Foreign News Foreign News News On News On Group* (Non-Fiction) Magazine Magaz ine Magaz ine in Paper in Paper Radio TV

I 1 0.0 3 15 7 27 49 10 II 5 0.2 3 21 15 45 58 25 III 8 0.4 9 37 20 63 63 28 IV 8 1.1 13 47 25 69 57 33 V 15 0.5 24 53 36 80 62 34 VI 24 10.0 44 61 40 83 69 42

Total Sample 8 1.1 11 34 21 57 59 28

National Opinion Leaders (Rosenau) 17 30 (est.) 60(est. ) 12 (est.) NA 94 (est. ) 10 (est.) 10

National Business Leaders (Bauer et al.) NA 20 (est.) 88 (est.) 40 (est.) NA 98 (est.) NA NA

* See Figure 2 for definition of groups. ** See text for explanation of the Rosenau, Bauer et al. data 22 respondents from other parts of the country. People over 50 years of age score .5 higher on the average than people under 35. The results for urban and rural respondents however are less clear-cut; outside of groups VT and I, for which media scores of those in metropolitan areas exceed those in extremely rural areas by .7 and .5 respectively, no clearcut differences appear on this characteristic.

Examination of Table 5 reveals that outside Group VI reading analytic magazines such as Harpers is almost non-existent. The figures in Tables 4-8 are for people who read at least one of the types of magazines in question, i.e., we make no distinctions between those who read one analytic commentary magazine and those who read several of these magazines. Reading of news and business magazines (e.g., Time) is also highly concentrated within this group and Group V (less so). On the other hand, listening to radio news and discussion programs is distributed pretty equally among the six groups, although the better-educated are still more likely to hear these programs. Similarly for TV news and discussion programs, the tendency for the better- educated to dominate the audiences is less pronounced, as it is for reading "some" foreign news in the newspaper. More substantial differences are seen for pictorial and general interest magazines and for reading all foreign news in the paper. We shall see that much the same results (although differences are less pronounced) appear from the Detroit Area Study data presented in Table 8.

Also included at the bottom of Table 5 are estimates derived from Rosenau (1963) and Bauer, Pool and Dexter (1963) on comparable media usage for two "elite" groups. Rosenau investigated a non-probability sample of 647 (out of 1,400) corporation executives, university presidents, heads of voluntary organizations, publishers, Congressmen, and others called to a special 1958 presidential conference on foreign aid problems. Bauer, Pool and Dexter's data came from a 1954 probability sample of over 900 business leaders and executives. Since neither set of authors grouped data in the way we have in this analysis, we were forced to use "guesstimates" in Table 5.

Both accounts essentially agree that usage of analytic commentary and other news magazines, as well as foreign news stories in newspapers, is much more prevalent among "elite" groups. The same may be true of books on foreign affairs, as Rosenau's data suggest. It definitely appears that these groups make less use of pictorial and general interest magazines and radio and TV news programs as sources of foreign news. Similar data from another "elite" group interviewed by Issacs (1958) substantiate this finding (as well as the other findings of Table 5) that radio and TV news programs seldom come to the minds of these people when important sources of world affairs information are being ascertained. Undoubtedly, however, the percentages listed for the Rosenau study for TV or radio news programs are far below the actual percentages who actually catch these programs. 23

Seventy-seven percent of Rosenau's sample and 30 percent of Bauer et al's said they regularly read the New York Times, not listed in our national study; the corresponding figure for the Detroit Area Study was 2 percent which may be close to the figure for the national population. Rosenau suggested that a large segment of his sample used government publications and reports while Bauer et al. mention travel as an important supplementary source of information. Both mention personal communication as an even more important source. Large differences within Rosenau's group, among business, labor and communications, and between large and small corporation, or college educated and non-college educated, executives in Bauer et al's study are, of course, obscured by these average figures.

These data (as those In Tables 6 and 7) are somewhat discrepant from the hypothesis suggested by'Hero (1959, IV) and Converse (1962) that media usage can be systematically ordered so that users of the unpopular media are still users of those media that are more popularly used. Based on the same interview data presented here, Hero's analysis seems to imply that people reading books about foreign affairs are very likely to read and seek foreign affairs information from magazines and newspapers in addition to discussion and news programs on radio and TV. Similarly, those who do not read books but do read magazine accounts on foreign events are still likely to seek similar material in the papers and on radio and TV. Finally, there are those whose only source of information is TV. Combinations such as just books and TV or just radio and magazines are supposedly infrequent exceptions to the model.

This" model, recognizable as the Guttman scale pattern, is used quite widely in social science methodology (cf. Torgerson, 1958). While such an ordering is a useful first approximation, media habits do not meet the more objective criteria usually applied to data using the Guttman model. In actuality, readers of books or analytical magazines seem much more likely to read newspapers and other magazines than they are to seek news from the radio or TV (see Table 6). To be sure, those gathering their foreign affairs information from the more detailed printed media analyses are still more likely than those who do not to derive additional information from radio and TV; however, a substantial proportion of the population still get news only from radio or from TV, or from combinations such as newspapers and TV or magazines and radio. The model does appear, however, to hold fairly well for the printed media alone.

It also appears that the model holds in various developing countries like Costa Rica, Colombia and Turkey. Not only are the TV interrelation• ships much higher than those of Table 6, but total mass media usage con• tributes to the prediction of political knowledge and indices of moderni• zation even when controlled for level of education (Rogers, 1965, Waisenan and Durlak, 1966).

The two-dimensional plot of the data in Table 6, given in Figure 3, captures the media usage interrelationships in more simplified form. This plot was derived from the first two dimensions of a new multidimensional "similarity" analysis, described in Guttman (1965). The definite separation 24

TABLE 6 INTERCORRELATIGNS BETWEEN TYPES OF MEDIA USAGE

CO *H (0 u QJ m u a> n < a) CO 4) CO tn T3 AJ • n < t> -H cd P rn CD tO N c <: a) O to a. o (0 *H ^ .a *H j*J CO DO »n -H § CJ oi a) o 00 S 00 H N M g U QJ 3 00 D n) ii T) (0 0 3 OJ o

.46 .00 -.09 .13 .32 .07 .17 .01 .23 TV User M Number of .66 .44 .52 .51 .20 .32 .31 .17 .60 Media Used .30 .27 .08 .14 .23 .08 .17 .62 Serious Books Commentary .49 .08 .29 .60 .00 .15 .66 Magazines News & Business .31 .30 .32 .18 .15 .61 Magazines General Interest .20 .27 .08 .06 .38 Magazines Papers Always .09 .11 .55 Read Papers Sometimes .13 .12 .63 Read. .08 .37 Radio News

.37 TV News

Values are based on Yule's statistic which represents the probability of predicting from one two-valued variable to another, given that on both variables events are equally likely (Goodman and Kruskal, 1959). mIndicate s correlation is 1.00 by definition Figure 3: Two-Dimensional Representation of the Interrelations of Types of Media Usage Given in Table 6 (Simple Usage Items Underlined).

« Book User

• Commentary Magazines • Serious Books • News and]Busines s Magazines • Radio User »Magazine User

« Number of Serious Media Used « Radio News

m Newspapers Sotnet imes Read Number of Media Used

# Newspapers Always Read

• Newspaper User General Interest Magazines

« TV News

• TV User 26 of the radio and TV items (as well as their low correlations with the total media usage entries of Table 6) shows that usage of these media is relatively unrelated to usage of printed media sources; in fact, indices of radio usage and TV usage suggest that they are hardly related to each other. There is a definite clustering of printed media sources in Figure 3, however. Two clusters appear most significant. The first occurs between analytic magazines, serious books and news magazines as well as overall book and magazine usage; a second concentration is noted between various Indices of newspaper usage and reading of general interest magazines (Life, Look, Post). The first suggests a more sophisticated detailed and literate approach--the second a more general and popular outlook toward world affairs (or topics in general).

The correlations in Table 6 represent actual probabilities that a person using one medium will use another. Thus, the .60 value at the intersection of the "papers sometimes read" and the "analytic, commentary magazine" categories means that given only knowledge that a man reads commentary magazines, the probability is .60 that he reads some foreign newspaper news as well (if both events had a 50-50 chance of occurring). The range of values in Table 6 signifies that variability which exists in inter-media usage. The fact that only two values in the table are negative (which means, for example, that radio users tend not to watch TV) indicates a definite clustering of media usage within certain groups of people. (With this sample size, values of Y greater than .15 in Table 6 are sig• nificant at the .01 level. The interested reader can check Goodman and Kruskal (1959) for more details on the computation and interpretation of Yule's Y Index of correlation.)

One should not interpret the above remarks as criticism of Hero's work (1959, IV). His description of reasons behind multi-media usage patterns is far more detailed and enlightening than this short account. It should be noted that our indices of sophisticated TV and radio exposure could be improved. Furthermore, through a skillful use of unpublished media studies, Hero is able to present an insightful, comprehensive account of how various population segments actually receive the various media. Our attempt is to examine Hero's primarily verbal account in a few statistical tables. If one consults Hero's (1959, IV) work, one can put some flesh onto our statistical skeleton.

Furthermore, Hero's suggested ordering of media makes good sense, even if data exceptions noted above exist. Serious books on foreign affairs contain more detail and require more concentrated effort than does an article in Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs requires more interest than an article in Time. Time requires more than Life. Life reaches fewer people than newspapers do; reading newspapers, in turn, requires more effort than listening to a radio discussion or a TV documentary. Since the skills requisite to the more demanding task of detailed reading are usually developed In one's college experience, it is of little surprise to find those without such experience resorting to the more casual and TABLE 7

ORDERING FOR EACH GROUP OF FIGURE 2 ON MOST USED SOURCE FOR GENERAL NEWS (1957 SRC DATA ) AND FOR WORLD AFFAIRS (1964 DAS DATA)

Survey Research Center Detroit Area Study Group Preference Ordering Preference Ordering

I Papers, Radio, TV, Magazines TV, Radio, Papers, Magazines

II Papers, TV, Radio, Magazines TV, Papers, Radio, Magazines

III Papers, TV, Radio, Magazines TV, Papers, Radio, Magazines

IV Papers, TV, Radio, Magazines Papers, TV, Radio, Magazines

V Papers, TV, Radio, Magazines Papers, TV, Radio, Magazines

VI Papers, Radio, Magazines, TV Papers, TV, Magazines, Radio

National Opinion Papers, Magazines, (Special reports), TV, Radio Leaders (Rosenau) 28 personal approach of radio and TV announcers to keep informed about the world. Hero contends that it is for this central reason that we find such high relations between those ordered categories, which gave such large differences in information level, and the ordered patterns of media usage in Tables 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Hero also does not include Sunday newspaper magazines in his analysis although they have rather large circulation (see Appendix A).

Subjective Assessments of Media Importance

Another approach to these conclusions is to examine respondents' subjective assessments of the media they used to get most of their infor• mation. Table 7 presents the results for the various sociological groups on the 1957 Survey Research question, "Where do you get most of your general news," and for the 1964 Detroit Area Study (DAS) question, "All in all, where would you say you get most of your information about what is happening in the world--from TV, radio, the newspapers or magazines." Noticeable difference in the orderings for these two studies is perhaps attributable to the form of the questions, to the more restricted geographical and demo• graphic area surveyed in the Detroit study, and to the seven year period between the studies. If one summarized overall impressions from these data, it would appear that the majority of the public gets most of its news information from newspapers. Television is a more popular medium for the less educated urban dwellers.

Magazines, which barely qualify as third choice in both samples for Group VI, are hardly used as world affairs information sources by the vast majority of the citizenry. But, as Metzner (1949) found, they are generally cited most often by those respondents in the public who are best informed. Moreover, magazines are consulted regularly (and indeed seem almost the important source) for members of the "elites." However, analysis of those respondents listing magazines as their first source in the Detroit Area Study shows they were as likely to list radio or TV as second choice instead of newspapers (counter to an expectation based on the Hero hypothesis).

Data which cast some light on the reasons for the differences between the Detroit Area Study and the Survey Research Center results in Table 7 are presented in Appendix C. Here the questions concerned the most informative media used during election campaigns, and thus may not bear directly on foreign affairs. The data came from a nationwide study conducted by the Survey Research Center Political Behavior Program during the 1960 campaign. Since this same question has been asked for four con• secutive elections, it is possible to trace the relative shares of the media market over a time period which has produced some large changes. It can be seen that TV made large gains in the election audience from 1952 to 1960, apparently at the expense of radio programs; printed media took a bigger share of the audience in 1964, but TV still was the major source 29 of election news for over three out of five expressing definite media preference. (Xhose expressing a preference comprise from 86 to 92 percent of those interviewed for the four studies.) However, TV does seem to be losing the small inroads it had made into the better-educated segments of society (Robinson and Converse, 1966).

Steiner, however, did examine the effect of education on four atti• tudes about the handling of news by the media. As far as the "most com• plete news coverage" was concerned, the results are practically identical to those of the 1957 SRC study. In giving "the clearest understanding of the candidates and issues in national elections," TV did have an edge over the others but only among those who hadn't completed high school and hardly by the margin indicated by the (1960) SRC election study (Appendix C). Newspapers edged out TV among those better-educated. And when those with graduate degrees were examined, magazines stood as the first preference. This most educated group, not isolated in this report because they were not identifiable in the studies we have examined to date, also had the most deviant notions about the "most unbiased" source of news. They gave radio and magazines top honors while all other segments of the population named television and newspapers. All groups agreed that radio and TV brought "the latest news most quickly."

Taking all studies into account then, newspapers appear to be holding a slight "news" edge over television, with radio and magazines trailing far behind. Preference for the printed media, however, is far more preva• lent among the better-informed, while non-printed media are clearly the choice of the less-educated. In Robinson and Converse (1966), one finds that on an average day a person with at least some college exposure has a 74 percent chance of serious newspaper reading, a 64 percent chance of listening to news on the radio, a 44 percent chance of watching a TV news program, a 19 percent chance of reading a magazine with some news content, and a 7 percent chance of reading a serious book. The comparable figures for someone who hadn't completed high school were 49 percent newspaper, 52 percent radio, 44 percent TV, 6 percent magazine, and 1 percent book.

The full SRC election data on media usage, including percentages who say they use each medium in addition to preferences, are presented in o Table 8

PERCENTAGE WITHIN EACH SOCIAL GROUP IN EIGHT SEPARATE TYPES OF SOPHISTICATED MEDIA USAGE

(1964 Detroit Area Study data)

Reads All Reads at Analytic News and Pictorial & or most least some Listens to Watches Commentary Business Interest Foreign News Foreign News News on News on Group * (Non-Fiction) Magazine Magazine Magazines in Paper in Paper Radio TV

I (10%) NA 1 12 37 16 31 59 86

II (26%) NA 1 4 34 29 47 48 91

III (14%) NA 1 11 48 34 55 59 91

IV (26%) NA 1 21 61 44 60 49 92

V (16%) NA 9 43 64 51 64 56 91

VI ( 8%) NA 9 50 54 52 75 57 91

100% NA 3 22 50 38 56 54 • 91

N = 557

* See Figure 2 for definition of groups. 31

Appendix C along with the Roper and Steiner results. All in all, there remain inconsistencies in these data which need to be cleared up by new surveys which focus on more specific kinds of information and more detailed events.

Further Data From the Detroit Area Study Sample

Table 8 contains roughly the same results for the 1964 Detroit area population as does Table 5 for the 1957 national population. There was little overlap in the types of questions asked on the two surveys except for magazine usage. Both studies employed indirect questions on magazines, which probably somewhat underestimate the total readership. Greater usage of all magazines was reported for the Detroit study, but magazine readership is known to be higher in metropolitan areas (Hero, 1959, IV) and circulation figures have increased. The use of analytic and news magazines is generally consistent with the results of Table 5 (except most notably for a high Group I readership of news magazines). However, a much greater spread of pictorial and general interest magazines across all six groupings was noted for the Detroit population.

Newspaper readership figures are quite close for the two samples, even though somewhat different direct questions were employed. In general, 38 percent of the Detroit public said they read world news "almost every day" in the papers, while 21 percent of the national sample said they read "all" world news in their newspapers. As found in Table 5, listening to world news on the radio is spread almost equally among the six groups; here a direct question was used for the Detroit Area Study, while an in• direct question was used in the national sample.

The same types of questions were used on both studies regarding news programs on TV, but this time with radically different results. While 91 percent of the Detroit Area Study sample said they watched TV news programs at least once a week, only 28 percent of the national sample (several years previously) specifically mentioned these programs as among those they watched on TV. As can be seen in Table 8, watching TV news programs (like listening to radio news programs) is distributed practically equally for each of the six groups in the Detroit sample.

The same was found in a recent national urban sample by Robinson and Converse (1966), in response to the question, "Did you watch any news pro• grams or documentaries on TV yesterday?" A practically constant figure of 44 percent had watched on a "typical" day; the average time spent was also the same in all groupings: 15 minutes. Questions regarding "yesterday's" use of each medium corresponded, with a few minor exceptions, to the data of Tables 6 and 8.

In an earlier sample of Detroit respondents, Wilensky (1964) found the most significant differences in sophisticated media usage when Group 32

VI respondents were divided into those who went on to graduate school (especially a high-quality one) and those who did not. However, the grade school—high school—college split seems to provide greater predictive power in a full national sample than it does for residents of a single metropolitan area or even a national urban sample. Nevertheless, future media usage studies should make a special effort to identify and analyze separately this "egghead" sector of society.

Thus, it seems that sometime during a week TV news programs do reach the vast majority of the 95 percent of the national population that has a TV set. Additional data from the Detroit study indicate that the 52 percent of the population which watches TV public affairs programs is also distributed fairly equally across the six segments of the population. Thus, it does appear that the non-printed media are the only ones which do reach all segments of the population. Detroit Area Study data further suggest that perhaps an effective printed method of reaching certain hitherto unreached segments of the public is through the newsletters sent out by churches, congressmen, unions, etc. How much foreign affairs content can be or is put into such newsletters is unknown, however.

The Detroit Area Study data, as mentioned at the beginning of this section, allow us the opportunity of ascertaining how media usage actually influences level of information. In all, the multiple regression and correlation of 27 separate media usage indices with information level were computed. Of these, only four showed an overall correlation greater than .25 with information level: reading of national news in the newspaper (.36), reading of world news in the newspaper (.30), total number of maga• zines read (.28) and watching of public affairs programs on TV (.26). Even when the general effects of education on these variables were controlled only two indices (a news magazine and radio news) were barely significant in the overall prediction equation for information level.

Separate regression analyses using these media usage indices were then calculated for each of the six social groupings. The four indices which emerged for the general sample (given in the above paragraph) were found to predominate for each of the social groupings as well. But the major finding of these separate analyses was that media usage factors accounted for much larger portions of the variance in information levels in Groups I through IV than it did in Groups V and VI; this was especially true for Group I. It thus appears that the media (especially newspapers) may have a significant effect in increasing public information, particularly among the lesser-educated in our society. Nevertheless our data suggest that they play a secondary role to education (see Figure 1), income, sex and racial factors in ultimately affecting information level.

This is not to say that such need be the case or that the mass media can play only a minor role in diffusion of information. At the end of a 33 recent article about public cold war opinions, Rosenberg (1965), a prominent social psychologist in the field of attitudes and attitude change, concludes the following:

What I am suggesting is that the potential threat that public opinion poses for the pursuit of rational policy is in part due to the fact that governmental and communication elites have been so ready to hide the facts, and to misrepresent or oversimplify the actual justification for policy choices. In consequence, public opinion has remained far more uninformed and rigid than it need have been.

Some members of the news profession probably share the same general feeling. In a recent TV panel discussion, newscaster Walter Cronkite (Time, February 26, 1965) made the following comments:

I'm afraid that the public is getting brainwashed into a belief that they're getting all that they need to know from television. And this is not so. They need to know a great deal more than we can communicate to them. Somehow or other, we have to teach the American people to seek more information, to be a little more discriminating perhaps. And when they do, they'll get even better news programs on television.

In the Detroit Area Study regression analyses described above, the relation to information level of eight measures of world affairs activity was also investigated. A consistently significant relation (.33) was found between information and one of these variables, amount of face-to- face world affairs discussion. Moreover, a sizable relation was found between amount of discussion and mass-media exposure (see also Converse, 1962 and Key, 1961), especially in Groups I and VI. While this latter "group" finding is particularly difficult to explain, we shall turn our attention in the next section to the critical role of interpersonal world-affairs discussions--both as it directly affects information trans• mitted from the mass media and as a general information source in its own right. V. EFFECTS OF FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION

World-Affairs Discussion in the Public

The "two-step" opinion flow model expounded by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) has been very popular among social scientists. According to this model, almost all groups contain trusted and informed people who pay attention to new events and then pass on information and influence rela• tives, friends and acquaintances.

Katz (1960) in a more refined examination notes that when the inno• vative decision-making process is broken into phases, the mass media appear relatively more influential in the early informational phases, whereas personal influences are more effective in the later phases of deliberation and decision. The model thus does not see the mass media and personal influence processes as competitive but rather as complementary sources in an individual's decision-making process.

The proportion of such informed people appears to increase with education--Berelson et al's (1954) election campaign figures suggest about a one to three ratio of "opinion leaders" to the remainder of the population among those with at least a high school education, a one to four ratio for those with less. Further research by Berelson et al. and others (see Hero, 1959, VI) suggests that these "opinion leaders" are a little more educated than those they influence, and that they are more likely to follow, be interested in, and be informed on issues relevant to the group and on the attitudes of most group members. In some groups, the opinion leader may truly be the leader of the group, but other groups may have specialized opinion leaders for various topics. In still other groups, such as farmers or doctors, the person relaying information (especially of an innovative nature) from other sources may be considered almost an outsider. As we noted for individuals, there is usually resistance to an influx of new ideas into a group (especially with the less educated) since the function of most groups is to provide a friendly, comfortable atmosphere for its members. The group leader, entrusted with upholding group norms and opinions, tends to be more resistant than the average group member to those new ideas not in line with these group norms. In Groups I through IV, it is very unlikely that the group leader is much concerned with world affairs; thus initiation by a non-leader, though well-informed or Interested, is quite unlikely. As Hero (1959, VI) points out, in such groups development of any strong group norms on some foreign affairs topic (except perhaps to keep it out of conversation) is highly unlikely.

34 35

Hero provides a number of important reasons for the greater effective• ness of the personal means of information transmission: one does not feel he is being exposed to propaganda, hence his defenses are relaxed; it is more difficult to dodge communications presented in this manner than a radio or TV which can be switched off; conversation talks out irrational or emo• tional prejudices; the influencer can be more flexible in fitting arguments to a given individual and can offer rewards (such as reciprocal support) to acceptors; and finally, the mode of communication is easier to follow than a medium. The reader should further consult Hero (1959, VI) for a number of conditions under which new information is more likely to change group members' opinions.

Despite the growing literature on this topic, there is virtually no information from a representative sample which examines just how many informal "groups" an individual does belong to--how large they are, who comprises them (relatives, friends, colleagues), how much time and effort the indi• vidual spends with them, what sort of topics are usually raised in group discussion, how often "influence" is used, and how often (and why) group allegiances are shifted. We would expect to find large differences in the above group characteristics within each of the six social groupings of Figure 1. Moreover, we should also expect to find relatively little overlap or exchange of ideas (especially on foreign affairs) between groups or group members who are from different social classes in our grouping system.

In fact, evidence from a small Detroit sample analyzed by Troldahl and Van Dam (1965) indicates that there is such limited overlap in the societal communication network that most people are not really in the network at all. Opinion "givers" turn out to be the same people as opinion "askers" and thus opinion "sharing" is a more apt description of the second stage of the two-step flow. Alienation appears to be a good predictor of those people outside the network; McLeod et al (1965) found alienated people to be less interested in all types of news--sensational or not.

Occasions for World Affairs Discussion

In Table 9, we have more detailed evidence (from the Detroit Area Study) on how frequency of world affairs discussion varies between the six socio• logical groups. As noted above, this activity is definitely more prevalent in high status groups; ten times as many Group I as Group V and VI respond• ents say they discuss world affairs less than once a month. Within Group I discussion, when it occurs, is highly related to information; but which is cause and which is effect in this instance is a moot point.

Much the same can be said for the causal relations between discussion and media exposure. Hero (1959, IV) presents arguments which indicate that more people seek mass media because of interpersonal conversation than the reverse. Converse (1962) presents data indicating that during an election campaign exposure to media is related to attempts at persuasion and concludes 36

Table 9

FREQUENCY OF WORLD - AFFAIRS DISCUSSION WITH FRIENDS, FAMILY OR OTHER ACQUAINTANCES, 1964 DETROIT AREA STUDY DATA (Median within each group underlined)

More Than Once or Once or Not Twice Twice Twice a Less Ascer• Group * a Week a Week Month Often Never tained Total

Low Status I (10%) 9% 35 15 22 18 1 100%

II (26%) 22% 33 19 13 13 - 100%

III (142) 20% 33 27 8 12 - 100%

IV (26%) 33% 44 17 5 1 - 100%

V (16%) 36% 51 10 1 2 100% High Status VT ( 8%) 44% 45 7 2 2 100%

(100%) 27% 40% 17% 8% 8% - 100%

N = 557

*See Figure 1 for description of each social group. Table 10

PATTERNS OF DISCUSSION ABOUT WORLD AFFAIRS AMONG ACTIVIST AND RANDOM GROUPS

With which of the following groups or people are you likely to discuss foreign affairs?

57 Most Active 65 Random Respondents

(Disagree with) (Disagree with) a) People you work with 32 (3) 27 (3) b) Your employer 8 2 (1) c) Members of your political party 6 (1) 2 (1) d) Members of your club or organization 16 (2) 6 e) People in your union 6 (1) 3 f) Members of world affairs organization 1 0 g) Someone with special world 7 (3) affairs interests h) Your close friends A2 (2) 39 (3)

1) Your immediate family 45 (2) 43 (4) j) Neighbors you know 32 (9) 28 (2) k) Members of your religious faith 18 (1) 8 (1)

213 (24) 158 (15)

*The number of people respondents talked with but also usually disagreed with is given In parentheses (source—1964 Detroit Area Study follow-up)• 38 that the relation is indeterminant. Adequate data to test for cause and effect relationships or interactions would require a complex experimental design.

Opportunities for conversation occur with a very limited number of types of people in a restricted number of social settings. We can probably discount settings in which "client" interactions (e.g., buying gas or going to a doctor) take place as seldom leading to discussions about foreign affairs. More casual personal communication with neighbors, the immediate family, work colleagues, or other friends and relatives should result more often in some consideration of foreign affairs.

In Table 10, we have presented data from a follow-up study of the 1964 Detroit Area Study in which the 57 most active followers of foreign affairs in the larger sample (based on media exposure, membership in relevant organi• zations and other factors) were reinterviewed, along with a random sample of 65 of the remaining respondents. While these data are based on a very small metropolitan sample, they may represent practically the only available data bearing on everyday foreign affairs discussion habits of any cross- sectional sample. It must be remembered that these (as well as the data in Table 9) are subjective estimates of the respondents and the content of their discussions is not reported.

Table 10 shows that differences are smaller than one might expect but that, in the total number of people talked with, the most active group generally listed about 50 percent more people. The most outstanding dif• ferences between the two groups were in the greater frequency of discussion that activists had with employers, members of their political party, other clubs, their religious faith, and with someone having special interest in world affairs. They also disagreed more with such interested persons as well as with neighbors. Rates of disagreement are perhaps signs of the greater degree of independent thinking these more active people allow them• selves. An additional question indicated that activists were twice as likely to "do more talking than listening" in all foreign affairs conversa• tions but only a third of the activist respondents gave this reply.

However, little difference occurred in the four major types with whom most foreign affairs discussion took place; namely, immediate family members, close friends, neighbors, and fellow employees. When questions regarding specific foreign affairs issues (e.g., Viet Nam) were asked of these follow-up respondents, little difference appeared in the ty_pes_or in the social settings of such discussion. (Troldahl and Van Dam A965/, in a sample similar to our random respondents, found news discussion greatest among co-workers and least among neighbors.)

A number of interesting findings resulted from a set of questions dealing with the Russia-Red China split (which had perhaps reached its peak at the time of the interview). While there was a noticeable increase, around 20 percent, in the percentage of respondents feeling that Russia would 39 ultimately side more with the United States than with Red China, a far lower proportion of the random group said they had changed their opinions on this matter. Activists, on the other hand, were five times more likely to say that they had talked with someone who held a different opinion from them on this question, and twice as likely to say that they knew a person who called such topics to their attention. Again, however, only about a third said that they knew either type of individual.

Finally, unlike the Survey Research Center election studies in which over 75 percent of respondents consider media sources more informative than interpersonal sources, well over half the Detroit respondents gave a per• sonal source as the most important in their knowledge of the Russia-China split. Of those who claimed mass media sources, activists were much more reliant on magazines and newspapers, while newspapers were listed as the major media source (and magazines as the least important source) among respondents from the (non-activist) random sample. Despite the fact that this was only a "pilot" study, and that respondents' actual information about the topic was not used as a screening device, we think the evidence definitely points to the crucial importance of face-to-face communication and printed media in spreading and interpreting foreign affairs information.

Discussion Among Elites

Two highly specialized social settings exist in which perhaps the majority of informed, influential, and action-oriented world affairs discussions take place. The first of these exists in the national and local "elite" sectors of our society. One might note, however, that the elite tends to be organized around certain areas of power and expertise. Hero (personal communication) proposes that, "If one organizes people along a continuum in terms of their influence on decisions and actions on matters of local community importance (usually not world affairs, but things like the United Fund, local hospitals and schools, urban redevelopment, local bond issues,...etc.), most of those at the top level of this continuum in most communities would be more interested and more informed on world affairs than would a representative sample of the community. But, if one pinpointed the one percent or so of individuals in a locale who are most sophisticated on foreign affairs, most of them would occupy roles in the community of less influence on local developments than the top power structure. They might be editorial writers on one of the local papers, the public affairs chief on one of the TV stations, some local college professors or even high school teachers of social studies, some lawyers, the director of the International House, several clergymen with the more sophisticated churches, the vice- president in charge of the international department of a local bank, those responsible for foreign operations in several, large, complex corporations, etc. But these cosmopolitans are a small minority of the second, third, and fourth levels of local influence. Some of them, in fact, make little or no effort to exert influence over parochial developments." 40

Locally, then, it is not the top influence group which tends to be the most cosmopolitan within a community (Hero, 1959, IV, VI; Padover and Beebe, 1958). Those who are most involved and informed on foreign affairs topics usually have only occasional contact with local top influential group members who are overwhelmingly concerned with local issues. However, when an international event has local relevance, the interpretations and insights of this informed group are usually sought by local power figures. A sizable majority of the top-influential elite do keep themselves aware of international matters by exposure to both radio and TV news programs and news magazines. In addition 20 percent had "recently" read a book on world affairs (Padover and Beebe, 1958). Rosenau (1963) indicates that when Congressmen keep their ears to the ground in gauging local reaction to international matters, it is this cosmopolitan group with lesser local influence but greater international involvement who are regarded as the "ground."

Conversations among national opinion leaders, a number of whom are identified in more detail by Rosenau (1963) and Bauer, Pool and Dexter (1963) are perhaps more relevant for national foreign affairs policy. Figure 4, taken from Rosenau's text, presents a valuable typology of sixteen basic kinds of influential opinion-makers. The more contrived examples Rosenau used to fill the "local" columns of this chart convinced him of the more influential roles of national opinion makers. He was also convinced of the fact that, numerically speaking, such a chart is dominated by single- issue opinion-makers. From a sample of the national opinion-makers attending a special Presidential Foreign Aid Conference in 1958, Rosenau found consider• able horizontal communications, especially among those with greater "opinion- making potential" (determined in terms of how many people the respondent felt he could reach with a message on foreign affairs). This suggests that interpersonal communication is an especially important source of the supple• mentary information these men need to spread and test their interpretations and ideas. In his more detailed examination of the elite's opinion-making process, Rosenau suggests that this group alone takes at least two additional "steps" to result in a "four-step" model of information transmission to the wider public. Rosenau does not, however, indicate how often or on what occasions personal interaction or discussion takes place within this national elite.

In their sample survey of business leaders and executives (the cate• gory Cohen (1959) claims to be by far the most influential non-governmental group on foreign policy in the country and which comprises about 25 percent of Rosenau's national opinion-makers sample), Bauer, Pool and Dexter report that these men rely on conversation with specialists and advisors, many within their own organizations, through memos, telephone, and face-to-face meetings, whenever information on a specific international topic is desired. On matters of specific company policy, additional conversations with fellow executives, likely to be affected by or have opinions on the subject, often lead to the consensus the group requires to "pressure" the legislative or executive branches of the government. Although business leaders, usually 41

Figure 4

A TYPOLOGY OF SIXTEEN BASIC KINDS OF OPINION-MAKERS*

national national local local multi-issue single-issue multi-issue single-issue opinion- opinion opinion opinion makers makers makers makers

Gov• A United The Assist• A mayor The chief ern• States ant Secretary of a city customs mental Senator of State for officer of Opinion- European a port city makers Affairs

Associa• The national The presi• The com• The head tions 1 commander dent of the mander of of a coun• Opinion- of the Asia a city's ty's refugee makers American Foundation American organization Legion Legion Post

Insti• The chair• The head of The presi• A partner tutional man of the a missile dent of a in a coffee- Opinion- board of the manufactur• city's lead• importing makers Genera 1 ing company ing bank firm Motors Corp.

Indi- A syndi• The nation's A prominent A Professor vidua1 cated col• leading de• author in of Asiatic Opinion- umnist mographer the Affairs at makers community a nearby college

*Source: Rosenau, 1963. 42 in the larger firms, may be influenced by cosmopolitan or altruistic viewpoints from their reading or travelling, their specific company policy is usually dictated by economic self-interest.

As in the general public, amount of foreign affairs discussion in this group is related to the business leader's amount of reading and knowledge; heads of larger firms are more likely to read more and to be more knowl• edgeable. However, even in this group, reading not followed by discussion seldom results in firm opinion or tangible action. Top businessmen gain additional foreign affairs information from listening to speeches (about six per year), general business meetings (averaging two per year) and consulta• tion with managers of overseas installations (eight per year).

One should not assume, however, that these national elite groups and opinion-makers have sophisticated or detailed conceptions about the world or people in foreign countries. When Issacs (1958) interviewed an "oppor• tunity sample" of 181 prominent opinion-makers about their attitudes towards the peoples of China and India, he described these attitudes as based on "limited notions, scanty, even wispy, yet sufficient to establish some kind of attitude or bias, sometimes a vague sort of feeling...." Although more than half of this sample had more than incidental involvement in Asian affairs, on the basis of his interviews Issacs concluded, "The images of Asia and of Asian-Western relationships persisting in the minds of men educated and conditioned primarily to an Atlantic-Western-white view of the world certainly have a major place in the slowness and pain with which major American policy makers have reacted to the new realities in Asia since 1945." Nevertheless, occupation, especially in the upper echelons, is a first-order determinant and setting for both influential foreign affairs communication and significant opinion-making.

The problem of increasing interest and information on foreign affairs among blue collar occupations, for instance, appears more formidable, however. Hero (1965) reports on just such a study among UAW personnel that met with only limited success. One clear problem is that of communicating responsible analyses of world affairs through organizations that are designed primarily for other purposes and which have attracted participants due to motivations very different from an interest in understanding international relations.

The second highly specialized social setting for informational elites is offered by voluntary organizations essentially concerned with foreign affairs. Although members of these organizations might be in positions of influence, the organizations themselves, up to now, have had little formal influence on foreign policy (Cohen, 1959). They do, however, offer a means of world affairs communication through face-to-face discussion groups and activities. These organizations vary from those which are seriously analyti• cal, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and university sponsored groups, to those which are propagandists vehicles or study sections for pressure groups. 43

Only a narrow stratum of society is reached by such organizations. It is suggested that somewhat less than one-half of one percent of the adult population participate in organized, serious, world affairs programs during a typical year. As Hero (1960) comments, the vast majority of Americans_ participate in some organizational life for the advantages of social con• tacts or to satisfy particular personal or group goals. Individuals' organizational interests are usually more centered on these objectives than on what appears as impersonal subject matter often distant from anything in their daily experience that is seen as characterizing foreign affairs.

Subject matter treated in these specialized groups that do cater to foreign affairs interests is usually sophisticated, complex and often abstract. Some deal with a wide variety of international questions, such as the Foreign Policy Association or World Affairs Councils. Others, such as the Committee on Economic Development, deal with limited aspects of international questions. Some others such as the League of Women Voters consider foreign policy questions but also consider other fields of interest to their membership.

Participants in these world affairs programs evince sophisticated interests and activity in a broad spectrum of intellectual and cultural fields, not merely world affairs alone. They are high consumers of the more sophisticated content in mass media: the better books, magazines, newspapers, and a correspondingly higher content of TV and radio programs (Hero, 1959, IV). A study of Minnesotans (Rogers and Stuhler, 1964) who were known to be especially interested in world affairs, and who were active in organiza• tions, revealed that they were "voracious" consumers of high quality printed media. In addition, more than 75 percent of them watched public affairs programs on educational TV, and over 50 percent of this group listened to public affairs programs on educational radio. In addition, members of such organizations have access to specialized sources of information in the form of pamphlets and guest speakers.

Hero (1959, V) contends that participation in organized world affairs groups is limited to a small segment of society, concentrated mainly within Group VI of our social typology. As is the case with exposure to, interest in, and knowledge about world affairs, education is the most important single demographic variable in determining this participation. Each step of college training brings a corresponding increase in likelihood of participation especially among those not in specialized or technical training.

The Detroit Area Study provides some data on the distribution of membership in organizations with some relevance to foreign affairs. Respondents rated the organizations to which they belonged as to whether its world affairs function was (1) about equal to the other concerns of the organization, (2) one of the primary concerns or (3) the primary function of the organization. One point was accumulated for every organi• zation the respondent belonged to in the first category, two for the second category, and three for those organizations for which world affairs or foreign countries was the primary concern; thus a person who belonged to Table 11

DISTRIBUTION OF MEMBERSHIPS IN ORGANIZATIONS WITH SOME CONCERN FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (1964 DETROIT AREA STUDY DATA)

Group 0 1-2 3-4 5-8 Total Average

I (107.) 90 6 4 0 100% .24

II (26%) 83 11 5 1 100% .36

III (14%) 77 15 6 , 2 100% •52

IV (26%) 80 10 6 4 100% .57

V (16%) 61 17 11 11 100% 1.26

VI ( 8%) 64 11 16 9 100% 1.33

(100%) 77 12 7 4 100% 45 three organizations, one of which fell into each category, would receive a score of six points.

Table 11 is a breakdown of these scores for each of the social group• ings we have used throughout this paper. In every group, membership in a world-affairs relevant organization is the exception, not the rule. Again, the preponderance of foreign affairs activity is within the higher status groups. VI- DEVELOPING INTEREST IN WORLD AFFAIRS

Previous sections have noted considerable world affairs apathy among large segments of the public. At the same time some citizens, especially those better educated, are highly involved in and informed about world affairs. We shall attempt to focus on three interdependent, but analytically separable, sets of factors related to the gulf between the informed and uninformed. These three are: childhood and adolescent experiences, resultant societal attitudes and psychological approaches to life, and the different "life-styles" of citizens in our society. While the amount of formal educa• tion alone may be, by far, the most incisive explanatory variable for dif• ferentiating information levels, in a statistical sense, a number of pro• cesses accompany and determine degree of education and need to be examined to better understand why the differences we have found in our six social groupings do exist. Lane and Sears (1964), for example, quote a study in which college freshmen were found to be as knowledgeable about foreign affairs issues as seniors, indicating that amount of education per se is far from a satisfactory conceptual variable.

There is definite evidence for the importance of motivational factors. Hyman and Sheatsley (1947), Davis (1958), McLeod and Swinehart (1960) have all found that a respondent's information level is highly affected by his interest; this relation holds for respondents at all levels of formal educa• tion. However, a survey conducted for the Carnegie Endowment for Inter• national Peace (Padover and Beebe, 1959) indicated that only one American in ten would be interested in giving more time to world affairs and U.N. matters. Issues closer to home such as "education" and "religious activity" interested 36 percent and 35 percent respectively. Even "con• servation of resources" with 12 percent outscored world affairs.

Miller (1965), Converse et al (1965) and Stokes (1966) have noted that multivariate analyses of presidential election voting since 1952 indicate that foreign policy concerns (mainly fear of war) account for at most an advantage of three percent of the vote for the party seen as having the soundest foreign policy. The Republicans, by the way, held this favorable image until the advent of Goldwater, although somewhat over half of the public do not see any foreign policy differences between the two parties.

Two questions asked of the respondents in the Survey Research Center science study (Davis, 1958) attest to greater interest as a function of the six social groupings. While 11 percent and 6 percent of Groups VI and V, respectively, said that foreign news was the first item they read in their newspapers, only about 3 percent of Groups I through IV gave this response. Those respondents expressing an interest in more foreign news in their newspaper numbered 32 percent and 28 percent of Groups VI and V? but only

46 47

about 14 percent of the remaining groups. In the Detroit Area Study, respondents were asked to rank order the importance of seven problems (four international and three domestic) currently facing the United States govern• ment. Here 40 percent of Group VI respondents gave more weight to the international items while only 7 percent of Group I, 18 percent of Group II, 22 percent of Group III, 26 percent of Group IV and 31 percent of Group V respondents did so.

Some investigation into the sources of foreign affairs interest was done by Metzner (1949). From a random sample of adults in Albany, he found 24 percent saying they had more interest in foreign affairs, 38 percent the same interest and 31 percent less interest than other people they knew. Those expressing more interest were predominantly from the better-educated. It was found that these people also had fathers who were employed in higher status occupations and had had more formal schooling. They explained their greater interest in terms of "keeping up with things" and possible family involvement. Among the many factors which appeared to have generated their initial interest in this field, the war, family discussions and school were mentioned most often.

Those expressing less interest in foreign affairs than their acquain• tances mainly said that their time was preoccupied with other things or that foreign affairs didn't concern them. Very few of the less interested respondents specifically mentioned any sort of active avoidance of informa• tion which would be potentially threatening or unpleasant but Metzner pointed out that such may well have been the case. An explanation for low world affairs interest in the public may boil down to little more than the fact that with some exceptions, people feel sufficiently comfortable with their present amount of information about the world. This may be due either to a preoccupation with other interests or an alienated attitude which makes them feel there is nothing they can do about it anyway. Nevertheless, some detail on the development of these attitudes may help us realize more fully the cumulative effect of the forces leading to the average citizen's uninformed and uninterested state.

Developmental Factors

In the rapidly expanding field of political socialization, comparatively little attention has been paid to the specific area of international issues. However, survey results indicate sufficient overlap in political and inter• national interests to warrant using the literature on political socializa• tion to provide valuable clues as to the transmission of interest about world affairs. Hyman (1959) provided the initial impetus in this area through a review of the fragmentary and incomplete literature that was then available.

Hyman concluded that the family unit was the primary agency of sociali• zation in the political area. High correlations were found between the party 48 affiliations' of children and their offspring, especially so when both parents were of the same political conviction. Intergenerational correlations were also found for interests and attitudes about political/electoral issues.

More recent investigators, using larger and better samples are far less convinced of the importance of parental influence. Jennings and Niemi (1966) did replicate the positive correlations that Hyman found; however, these correlations were so small (with the possible exception of party affiliation) as to preclude acceptance of Hyman's judgment. Even on the more behavioral aspects of political participation, such as conversation or mass media usage, there was very little congruence between the actions of parents and children. Moreover, broad social and political matters were reported as a source of conflict with parents by 15 percent of the students.

What makes these findings so hard to understand is that strong relations of all these indices with social class were found for both the parent and student samples, as they have been found so unfailingly in previous studies. The effects of "family attitudes" are scarcely up to the level that one would have predicted on the basis of social class alone. Whether other individuals such as peers, teachers, neighbors and other relatives, or their social interactions contribute more to the political orientation of the child is a question which only future research will reveal.

In any event, it is obvious that social class must somehow influence the effects such individuals do have. While the child may not directly inherit the political orientations of his parents (and the evidence to date does not rule out the possibility of a "sleeper" effect which emerges when the youth reaches adulthood), the indirect "class" effects of better teachers and facilities plus interaction with a wider variety of peer and neighborhood groups do have some effect on expanding the child's mental outlook. Child- rearing studies have shown that working-class parents stress authoritarian patterns of control in which the child learns to comply with authority at the expense of developing self-expression and the rational long-range problem-solving approach required for analysis of international issues. Hess and Torney (1965) conclude that the school is of primary importance in developing political interest and that the working-class parents are far less likely to reinforce what the child has learned in school. Never• theless, the authors find intelligence to be a far more satisfactory predic• tor of eventual interest than social class. But higher IQ children come disproportionately from the middle-class sectors of society, making this information of academic rather than practical importance.

More is known about the ages and stages through which political orien• tations develop (Hess and Torney, 1965; Greenstein, 1965). Youngest grade school children share an extremely positive attitude toward their country and its leaders, although the concepts at this age are vague and undifferen• tiated. The child seems to accumulate knowledge and orientation from the characteristics of political personages, through whom they come to under• stand the institutions and other workings of the political system. The 49 initially positive attitudes thus become transferred to the less personal aspects of the system so that the incidence of cynical political attitudes is far less than that encountered in adult samples.

Fairly stable party attachments develop in later elementary school years. Hess and Torney feel that the child's basic political orientation is well-fixed before the end of grade school. Other researchers claim that steady developments are found throughout the child's education and that these are worth attention as well. Quite dramatic divergences between the eventually interested and uninterested are said to occur about age 15. Still none of the research efforts to date offer much beyond educated guesses as to which ages or stages are most crucial.

Along with age, sex differences are also apparent, especially in studies of children's leisure time and mass media use. Although girls are often seen as more mature according to various standards, boys are more likely to read and enjoy history, biography, war news and political features. They are also more likely to discuss the news and show a consistent superi• ority in knowledge of political phenomena. Studies of children's "ideals" show strikingly similar sex differences: boys at all age levels are likely to choose public or historical figures as models. Girls are more likely to choose parents or teachers, figures of their more limited and immediate milieu. Unlike many previous investigators showing greater independence on the parts of male youths, Jennings and Niemi (1966) find no significant difference between the degree to which boys and girls share their parents' political orientations. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the above factors do play some role in the large sex differences in foreign affairs information items examined in Section III.

Hyman notes other experiences which would influence an individual's political development. Social and geographic mobility, for example, might place an Individual in a milieu of group norms quite different from those of his early formative years. It has been shown that upward mobility produces an attenuation of parental influence as the upwardly mobile will happily accept and absorb the norms of a higher prestige group. For foreign affairs information, such a phenomenon might be most pronounced for those college students from a working-class environment. Geographical mobility apparently can produce essentially the same findings. The predominant influences of environment or the larger political scene weaken the influence of previous norms. A minority would be particularly likely to find less reinforcement of previous norms in a larger group.

A final factor in the attenuation of parental norms is seen from the perspective of a changing social environment which Hyman calls the "generational complex." The social environment forever changes. The child may develop in a far wider and larger milieu than did his parents, and his ideology may differ accordingly. Thus the older generation is changing as a result of aging and cumulative experience; the young have been less exposed and sheltered from these same experiences, insofar as social change 50 is mediated and modified by parents. In part, too, the younger generation is molded by a different accumulation of experiences including an increase in years of formal education. Today's high school youth do appear to be more libertarian and internationally oriented than their parents on a number of political and social issues (Kent Jennings, personal communication), but how well these "untested" attitudes will hold up as these students enter the "real world" is another matter. Jennings also indicates that civil rights seems a bigger issue than Viet Nam or general international matters at this p o int in the ir 1ive s.

Thus, individuals during the formative years are exposed to a number of influences which can affect their orientation toward political and world issues. However, unless influenced directly or indirectly and rewarded for accumulating information and developing an understanding of world affairs during these years, it is unlikely that any of the future agencies of society will generate such an interest In them. While it is of course possible that later conditions (such as occupational or social position) can foster such an interest, a feeling of interest and concern would seem to be a necessary aspect of early development.

Without a base of interest in foreign affairs and the experience of rewards in its expression, it is likely that other concerns and interests will be adequate to encompass a person's attention. If anxiety is to be the motivation for foreign affairs interests there are a number of other concerns that can be a sufficient preoccupation. Chase (1962) reviews four recent nation-wide studies which indicate the extent to which personal problems lead the list of those that are of primary concern to people. When questions like "What kind of things do you worry about most?" are asked, personal financial problems are mentioned by 40-50 percent of these samples; health and other family problems by another 40-55 percent. Only 8-12 percent mentioned international or national problems, even in times of apparent crisis.

Havighurst (1961) has graphed an empirical picture of the complicated and important variable of "life style," which captures these findings in more parsimonious summary form. Four basic life styles were delineated: "balanced-high" (about 16 percent of the population), "home-centered high" (17 percent), "home-centered medium" (42 percent) and "low" (18 percent), the final 7 percent not following any of these patterns. Outside of the balanced-high group, which characterizes groups V and VI for the great part, interest and involvement outside direct family concerns is extremely limited. Hence, civic, social, national and even occupational matters become salient only as they impinge on fairly immediate family or personal matters. VII. PROBLEMS IN CHANGING PUBLIC RESPONSE

It appears that some proportion like 80 percent of U.S. citizenry see no real continuing connection between their concerns and the foreign policies and affairs of the country. Most people have become well accustomed to attaching the overwhelming proportion of their energies and interests to activities involving their families, their work, friends, clubs and local civic problems.

If one considers altering this pattern in the direction of more involve• ment in foreign affairs, several problems arise that well account for the failure of campaigns with that focus. Kelman (1965) has outlined a simple model of the motivational conditions required in order to change a person's attitudes. The first condition is arousal of an important goal for the individual. Absence of war is an important goal for most individuals but scarcely one that galvanizes day to day attention. Similarly, the goal of simply understanding what is happening and being able to talk about develop• ments is not one that gains much reinforcement in most social groups.

A second condition is that someone or some group must be seen as having the power to achieve the goal proposed. Even if one has confidence in the power figures of the day, their ability to achieve the complex goals of foreign affairs policy is not clear. If the confidence is to be placed in sectors of public opinion it can often be very discouraging.

While both of these conditions are difficult enough to meet, there is a third condition specified by Kelman which must be met before behaviors are changed. The methods proposed must be seen as the best method of achieving the goal. It may be that this is the area in which expertise is most readily accepted but there are numerous examples of disputes and resulting confusion over the effectiveness and merits of one or another proposed policy.

The classic article by Cartwright (1949) outlines more detailed principles of mass persuasion that bear review for those interested in making world affairs more salient in the public. They can be summarized and interpreted for the present context as follows:

1. The individual must be exposed to the messages which means the "news" must win the battle for attention with other items. 2. Messages are selected or rejected on the basis of an impression of their general characteristics and categories such as "propaganda," "official handout," etc. frequently inhibit attention.

51 52

3. The categories employed by a person in characterizing messages tend to protect him from unwanted changes in his thinking. 4. Even after reading or hearing" a message, it must be accepted" as a part of the person's cognitive structure. There is a con• siderable difference between telling a person something and having him pay attention, remember it, or accept it as true. 5. When a message is "received," it will be accepted or rejected or at least assimilated or distorted on the basis of its consonance with prevailing cognitive structure. 6. To induce a given action based on news and its interpretation, the action must be seen by the person as a path to some goal that he has. 7. A given action will be accepted as a means to a goal only if the connections "fit" the person's larger cognitive structure. 8. The more goals which are seen as attainable by a single path, the more likely it is that a person will take that path. 9. If an action is seen as leading to a desired goal, it will not be chosen to the extent that easier, cheaper, or otherwise more desirable actions are also seen as leading to the same goal. Much of the warfare of competing propagandists is in this area. 10. To induce a given action the same factors apply in a specific sense and a person should be in a situation requiring a decision to take, or not to take, a step of action. In the field of foreign affairs, few people find themselves in situations requiring decision.

Even among the most rational segments of society, tremendous difficulties need to be surmounted in changing everyday habits of behavior. Social scientists concerned with changing organizational behavior have found little effectiveness in sending one company executive or manager to special training centers to learn new management methods. Even when the manager is convinced of the importance and greater utility of these methods, he is likely to drift back to previous methods within a few weeks of his return to the company.

In a foreign affairs context, Cohen (1961) notes the same phenomenon occurring among a number of editors and journalists who attended a special conference on economic problems in South America. While apparently many were convinced of the urgency of the problem at the time of the conference, few followed through on their resolutions to focus newspaper attention on it. Similar difficulties at the public level are described by Hattery and Sharp (1962):

The survey... serves above all to document the difficulty of achieving desired objectives in adult world affairs education. In a very large measure indeed, the difficulty is due to the fact that adults are, to an extraordinary extent, impervious to promotional appeals which call upon them to shed deeply im• bedded attitudes and long-established habits. In a sense, 53

invitations to most persons to behave differently with respect to the discharge of civic functions are psychologically rejected even in the rare event that they are delivered personally.

Lastly the scope of these problems are well described by Hero (1959, IV):

At least two general problems make the task of educating the majority through mass media at least as difficult, if not more so, than that of broadening the opinionated. First, the majority is not much interested; the world outside seems remote from their daily lives—jobs, families, health, and standard of living—and they feel that there is little they could do about foreign policy even if they were informed. Their education and experience have not prepared them for utilization of their growing leisure for broadening their understanding in this field. And, since most of their associates are very much like themselves, there is little social pressure or expectation in the groups important to them to cause them to pay attention to world affairs. Few of their intimates are interested, either. Moreover, people who do not use information which they receive from media seem to forget it easily. The average American is not dissatisfied with his lack of under• standing and, therefore, does not make any effort to expose himself to material which will dissipate his ignorance. The evidence is rather convincing that media alone seldom stimulate interest in world affairs among those who are not already relatively concerned.

A second problem arises from the fact that, should the average American be momentarily interested enough to turn to serious world- affairs material currently available in print and on the air, he would have difficulty understanding it. Analysis of the world-affairs content of a number of media indicates that much of the language and level of taste is associated with college training and upper-middle- or upper-class experience. Furthermore, the subject matter itself is difficult to comprehend and put into context, unless the audience is familiar with what has gone before in international relations and with what is happening in related spheres. These problems are more complex and require subtler and more sophisticated solutions than are demanded of the average American in daily life. He lives and thinks in terms of concrete events in his immediate locale; ideas and abstrac• tions needed to grasp the more serious world-affairs content of the various media are not within his experience. Finally, most Americans do not habitually apply to their problems the rational, responsible analysis which is the primary attribute of serious discussions of world affairs in mass media. Appendix A

MAGAZINES CIRCULATION FIGURES AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL U.S. HOUSEHOLDS (1964)

1964* Circulation Percent of Percent of Increase Analytic Commentary Magazines (in thousands) Households Over 1958 Circulation

New Yorker 468 ( 0.8%) 11% Saturday Review 339 ( 0.6%) 101% Atlantic 278 ( 0.5%) 15% Harpers 274 ( 0.5%) 49% Reporter 174 ( 0.3%) 43% New Republic, National Review, Foreign Affairs^ National 30 to 80 • ( 0.1%) -21 to 167% Guardian, Commentary, Commonweal

News and Business Magazines

Time 2,904 ( 5.2%) 34% Newsweek 1,600 ( 2.9%) 42% UoSo News and World Report 1,282 ( 2.3%) 39% Business Week 412 ( 0.7%) 36% Fortune 383 ( 0.7%) 30%

Pictorial and General Interest Magazines

Look 7,470 (13.5%) 33% Life 7,156 (12.9%) 22% Saturday Evening Post 6,589 (11.9%) 27%

Other Relevant Magazines (not included in this study)

Readers Digest 14,523 (26.2%) 26% National Geographic 3,497 ( 6.3%) 56% Holiday 938 ( 1.7%) 2%

This Week 14,568 (26.2%) 25% Parade 11,425 (20.6%) 56% New York Times (1961) 1,293 ( 2.3%) National Observer 188 ( 0.

*N. W. Ayers and sons, Directory: Newspapers and Periodicals, 1958, 1964,

54 Appendix B-l

1957 Survey Research Center Media Questions

We're interested in where people get certain kinds of news and information, and how they feel about it. Let's start with newspapers:

1. What newspaper do you read?

If reads a newspaper

la. About how often do you read (name of paper)?

Name of paper

Daily, several times a week, weekly, less than once a week.

2. When you read the paper, what sort of items do you usually read first?

2a. What do you usually read next.

2b. And after that?

3. Of course, all people aren't interested in the same things in the paper, so I would like to get an idea of the kinds of things that interest you in the paper. For instance, how about ; do you usually read : all the way through, read some of it, just glance at it, or skip over 11

g. Stories about foreign events

4. Would you tell me which of these kinds of stories, that we've just men• tioned, you personally would like to have more of in the paper, less of in the paper, and which you think there is about the right amount of in the paper?

g. Stories about foreign events

15. Are there any magazines that you read regularly?

(If yes) 15a. Which ones are they?

24. Do you ever listen to the radio?

(If yes) 24a. On the average, about how many hours a day do you usual listen to the radio?

55 56

24b. What kinds of things do you usually listen to on the radio?

30. Do you ever watch television?

(If yes) 30a. On the average, about how many hours a day do you usually watch television?

30b. What kinds of programs do you usually watch?

40. From which of these sources do you get most of your general news-- newspapers, magazines, radio, television?

40a. Second most?

42. Have you read any books within the last year, including those small pocket-books with paper covers?

(If yes) 42a. About how many did you read?

42b. Were they mainly fiction-stories, or what were they? Appendix B-2

Schedule of Detroit Area Study Questions

1. I have some questions about the news and commentary carried by TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. First of all, about how often do you watch news or public affairs programs on TV (HAND CARD)...would you say several times a day, almost every day, once or twice a week, once or twice a month, less often than that, or never?

If watches TV news once a week or more often

2. What daily TV news programs do you watch--can you tell me the names of the newscasters, or the times and channels they are on?

3. And do you watch any weekly TV news programs, interviews with public officials, or special reports on public affairs?

If watches weekly TV news programs

4. Can you tell me the names of these programs, and the people on them, or the time and channel they are on?

5. Now I want to ask about radio news. Not counting five minute roundups of the major headlines, how often do you listen to news, commentary or public affairs programs on the radio? (HAND CARD) Would it be several times a day, almost every day, once or twice a week, once or twice a month, less often than that, or never?

If once a week or more often

5a. Can you tell me the names of the programs, newscasters or commentators, and the times and stations they are on? Include weekly shows along with the daily programs.

6. And now I'd like to ask you some questions about newspapers. First, are there any daily newspapers, either local or out-of-town that you read almost every day during the week?

(If Yes) 6a. Which ones?

7. And Sunday or weekly papers—are there any of these you read almost every week?

(If Yes) 7a. Which ones?

57 58

8. One of the things we are interested in is just how much attention people pay to different things found in newspapers. As I mention parts of the paper, I want you to tell me whether you usually read some stories or features like this, glance at the headlines and only read a story now and then, or don't pay too much attention to such things? (HAND CARD)

c. National news d. World news f. Editorials h. Political columnists

If usually reads any of these

About how often would you say you read ? Would you say (1) once or twice a month, (2) once or twice a week, (3) almost every day?

9. Now I want to ask about other things you may read. Are there any magazines you read, even if it's just now and then?

(If yes) 9a. Which ones?

9b. Any others?

9c. Of those you've mentioned which do you read almost every time it comes out, and which less often than that?

10. Many people read other things we don't usually think of as magazines, such as religious newsletters or magazines, newsletters from congressmen, clubs, or organizations, or small opinion letters sent out by individuals. Do you ever get any of these?

(If yes) 10a. What is that? (Any others?)

10b. Which ones do you read almost every time they come out and which less often?

11. We've been talking about what you read and listen to. All in all now, where would you say you get most of your news about what is happening in the world—from XV, radio, the newspapers or magazines?

11a. And which is your second most frequent source of information?

lib. And after that? 59

12. Keeping all of the things you read and listen to in mind, are there any news commentators, political columnists or writers that you feel have a better understanding than others of how things happen in the world and what should be done about them?

(If yes) Who are they? (Any others?)

(If more than one) 12b. Which do you most agree with?

13. About how often do you normally discuss world affairs or foreign countries with your family, friends or other people you know? (HAND CARD) Would you say several times a day, almost every day, twice a week, once a week, once or twice a month, less often than that, or never?

47. Now, what are the names of all the clubs and organizations you belong to?

48. I am particularly interested in knowing whether these organizations are concerned with world affairs and how the United States should treat other countries, or with private programs to further the economic, religious or cultural life of people in other countries.

How much concern does (CLUB) have with this type of activity? (HAND CARD) You can use the answers on this card.

The group's activity concerning other . countries is:

a. None to speak of b. Just a very small or occasional activity c. Only a minor, but continuing activity d. About equal to the other activities of the organization e. Not the primary activity, but still important f. A primary activity of the organization

If d, e, or f

48a. Tell me about that please.

49. How much do you feel that you personally can do to help (CLUB) to do do something in world affairs—nothing, a little, a fair amount, or a great deal?

50. How long have you belonged to (CLUB)?

51. About how many regular meetings does (CLUB) have in a year?

52. How many of these regular meetings have you attended in the last year? 60

53. As far as the international interests of (CLUB) go, have you spent any time in committee work or doing other things outside of regular meetings during the last year?

For each "Yes"

53a. And what kinds of things have you done in connection with (CLUB)?

If necessary

53a1 Is that a committee? 53a" What is the name of that committee, and do you have some officership? 53a"1 And you hold that position now?

53b. Averaging it out over the year about how many hours per month do you spend on this activity outside of regular meetings?

56. Now we have three short questions about some things you might not hear about from the newspapers or TV (HAND CARD). First of all, which of the countries on the card have communist governments, and which do not?

Egypt, Poland, Spain, Mainland China, India

57. Now which of the countries on this list (HAND CARD) are located in Africa? Again, name all the African countries on the list.

Ecuador, Ghana, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Morocco

58. Finally, which of the countries on this list have developed and tested their own atomic weapons? (HAND CARD)

West Germany, Algeria, France, Japan, England, Russia Appendix C

Questions on Media Preference Used in SRC Election Studies, Roper (1965) and Steiner (1960) a) SRC Election Questions

i) Media Usage—Total percent after the election answering "Yes" to the following:

1) How about television—did you watch any programs about the campaign on television? 2) Take newspapers—did you read about the campaign in any newspaper? 3) How about radio—did you listen to any speeches or discussions about the campaign on radio? 4) How about magazines--did you read about the campaign in any magazines?

TV Newspapers Rad io Magazines

1964 (N=1450) 89 79 48 39

1960 (N=1954) 88 81 46 45

1956 (N=1762) 74 69 44 32

1952 (N=1714) 53 79 70 41

61 62

ii) Media Preference--Percent making clear preference to the question:

"Of all these ways of following the campaign, which one would you say you got the most information from—newspapers, radio, television or magazines?"

TV Newspapers Radio Magazines

1964 I ( 7%) 81 13 6 0 100%

II (29%) 74 18 5 3 100%

III (13%) 66 24 3 7 100%

IV (27%) 58 33 3 6 = 100%

V (14%) 54 28 4 14 100%

VI (10%) 36 39 3 22 100%

(N=1334) 62 26 4 8 100%

1960 I ( 5%) 50 24 17 9 100%

II (26%) 73 20 6 1 100%

III (17%) 66 27 6 1 100%

IV (29%) 68 25 3 4 100%

V (13%) 56 30 6 8 100%

VI (10%) 54 24 6 16 100%

(N=1676) 65 24 6 5 100%

1956 (N=1548) 56 27 12 5 100%

1952 (N=1469) 36 26 32 6 100% 63

"I would like to ask you where you get most of your news about what's going on in the world today—from the newspapers or radio or television or magazines or talking to people or where." (Roper, 1965)

1959 1961 1963 1964

Television 51% 52% 55% 58%

Newspapers 57 57 53 56

Radio 34 34 29 26

Magazines 8 9 6 8

People 4 5 4 5

Don't know or no answer 1 3 3 3

"Now I would like to get your opinions about how radio, newspapers, television and magazines compare (HAND RESPONDENT CARD). Generally speaking, which of these would you say... (Steiner, 1960)

B. Which gives the most complete news coverage? E. Brings you the latest news most quickly? H. Presents the fairest, most unbiased news? 0. Which of these gives you the clearest understanding of the candidates and issues in national elections?

B. Complete news coverage? TV Newspapers Radio Magazines DK

1. 0-6 yrs grade school 41% 37% 17% 1% 4% 100%

2. 7-8 yrs grade school 27 44 25 1 1 = 100%

3. 1-3 yrs high school 23 58 17 1 1 = 100%

4. 4 yrs high school 23 58 16 2- 1 = 100%

5. 1-2 yrs college 12 63 18 6 1 = 100%

6. 3-4 yrs college 12 66 12 10 0 = 100%

7. Graduate education _8 66 12 12 1 = 100%

Total 20 58 17 4 1 = 100% E. Latest news TV .Newspapers Radio Magazines DK

1. 0-6 yrs grade school 40% 1% 55% 0 4% = 100%

2. 7-8 yrs grade school 47 4 48 0 1 = 100%

3. 1-3 yrs high school 38 3 58 0 1 = 100%

4. 4 yrs high school 37 2 58 0 3 = 100%

5. 1-2 yrs college 38 1 60 0 1 = 100%

6. 3-4 yrs college 31 2 62 0 5 = 100%

7. Graduate education 25 5 68 0 2 « 100%

H. Fairest news

1. 0-6 yrs grade school 28% 28% 22% 6% 16% = 100%

2. 7-8 yrs grade school 35 30 20 5 10 = 100%

3. 1-3 yrs high school 28 32 21 13 6 = 100%

4. 4 yrs high school 30 29 25 8 8 = 100%

5. 1-2 yrs college 26 21 28 10 15 = 100%

6. 3-4 yrs college 32 25 20 13 10 = 100%

7. Graduate education 11 19 31 29 10 = 100%

0. Election understanding

1. 0-6 yrs grade school 47% 30 7 1 15 = 100%

2. 7-8 yrs grade school 50 31 6 4 9 = 100%

3. 1-3 yrs high school 48 36 5 5 6 = 100%

4. 4 yrs high school 40 41 5 8 6 = 100%

5. 1-2 yrs college 39 40 2 15 4 = 100%

6. 3-4 yrs college 26 39 4 27 4 = 100%

7. Graduate education 18 32 3 40 7 = 100% REFERENCES

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