The fate of undocumented youth recently overwhelmed political dialogue on immigration and its effect on those individuals remains largely unstudied. This paper extends the scope of political information analyses from potential voters to undocumented childhood arrivals. Quantitative observations come from in-depth qualitative interviews in Los Angeles County, California and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. It finds important regional differences in the ability of immigration status to motivate cognitive engagement of politics. It questions the threat hypothesis, as highly politically knowledgeable DREAMers appear to reside in supportive environments. Such places help equip them with the ability to attribute blame and channel anger or enthusiasm. Findings suggest profound dissimilarities in the potential for political participation if and when DREAMer Latinos gain access to citizenship. / text

There are some subordinates that have a deep understanding of their supervisor’s world. More than others, they understand their supervisor’s work relationships, preferences, demands, and resources. The goal of this thesis was to predict and test how this collection of strategic and sensitive information, or follower political knowledge, develops. Using the active perspective-taking framework, I focused on a subordinate’s motivation, capacity, and opportunity to acquire follower political knowledge. In particular, I hypothesized that key individual, relational, and contextual factors would predict follower political knowledge. Two studies were conducted to test these predictions: a cross-sectional survey of 467 employees and a cross-sectional survey of 174 supervisor-subordinate dyads. Across studies, political skill, leader-member exchange, and supervisors’ trust were the strongest predictors of follower political knowledge. The implications of these findings present a case to be made for the role of follower political knowledge in effective followership. / October 2016

This dissertation examines the role of extreme media (i.e. political talk radio and cable news opinion shows) on the political attitudes of viewers and listeners. I investigate whether extreme media has both positive and negative externalities for democratic citizenship. Specifically, I use laboratory experiments, national survey data, and qualitative interviews to test the impact of extreme media on viewers' political knowledge, trust in government, efficacy, and political tolerance. I use laboratory experiments in controlled settings to uncover the impact of viewership on political knowledge, trust in government, and efficacy. I confirm these lab findings with the national survey data, by using propensity score matching and ordered probit models to demonstrate that exposure to extreme media produces political knowledge and efficacy, but decreases trust in government. I further use process tracing to ascertain the motivations individuals use to choose to view extreme media. Finally, through subject interviews conducted as part of the self-selection portion via a 1 x 3 self-selection experiment, I find subjects seek out entertaining media specifically from ideologically similar outlets. This project advances the media and politics literature by demonstrating the capacity for extreme media to alter political behavior, attitudes, and information processing.

A democratic system is stable or not relies on the political attitudes of the citizen. It is not enough to rely just on establishment of political system. More important is winning the support and trust of the general public. The trust on general public is the basis of legitimacy of ruling and it represents the level of trust of the general public to the government officials and public policy. The political trust refers to the attitudes of individual toward government official, decision of government, political figure, political phenomenon, and political code, political system as well as political structure. Whether people trust administration officials and public policy determines the level of support of people offered to present administration. In this paper, we adopted interview data in the project of ¡§Taiwan¡¦s Election and Democratization Study, 2003¡¨ in the effort to find out the difference in party identification, media contact and political knowledge based on individual background data and what are the connections between the above variables in one hand and the political trust provided to government agency and political figures on the other hand, and from which, it is hoped to find out the connection between political trust of general public of Taiwan and various factors, so as to provide governing agencies and political trust for reference in winning trust of the general public and the direction to endeavor. It is also hoped that the democratic politics of Taiwan will be more matured and secured.

Affective polarization is a relatively new concept that refers to feelings of sympathy towards partisans of a person's own political party preference and antipathy towards those who vote for and identify with opposing parties. This thesis aims to answer the questions if those who know more about politics also are more affectively polarized, and whether there is a difference between knowing about different types of political facts, and the predicted level of affective polarization. Using panel data from 35 different countries from Module 4 of the Comparative Study of Election Systems, I measure the affective polarization on an individual level, and whether answering correctly to different types of knowledge questions predict the respondents to be more or less affectively polarized. The results show that political knowledge significantly predicts higher levels of affective polarization, but that there is a difference between different types of political knowledge. Political knowledge typically learned from the media has a stronger factor in predicting affective polarization.

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Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Todd F. Simon / Since the 1990s, much discussion about the rise of the Internet within the People’s Republic of China has focused on the political consequences of the technology on China’s Communist Party. The popularization of Internet access was once regarded as a sign of significant progress in Chinese political democratization. Especially when considering the impact of Internet use on the Chinese younger generation, the importance of political issues spread through Internet should be more amplified. One interesting phenomenon that needs attention is the emergence of political soft news in recent years on the Chinese national social network that never arose before in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Different from any type of solemn formal political news that appeared in Chinese media, the soft news tends to emphasize entertaining aspects of political issues more and engages with high readability. It pays more attention to the gender, personality, and appearance--even the daily life of the leaders who were once the most mysterious and paramount group in Chinese political system. One important trait of this kind of news is that most news items emerged in social networks and websites that young adults are frequently exposed to. Along with the rapid rise of Chinese social media, will the major participants, Chinese young adults be strongly influenced by political soft news spread through the Internet? Will the young adults be attracted by the soft news initially and then try to know some further information about the government’s policies? Or, will they only dwell on the soft news? This research tries to explore and provide answers to these questions and focus on the impact of the soft news on Chinese young adults’ understanding of politics.

This study examines the impact of political information conveyed through computer-mediated social networks. Using a popular social networking website, Facebook, a randomized field experiment involving Georgia State University undergraduates explores the extent to which computer-mediated peer-to-peer communication can increase political knowledge. For this experiment two Facebook profiles were created, one to administer information about the 2009 Atlanta mayoral election and the other to administer timely entertainment information. Students were randomly assigned one of these profiles to “friend.” Students choosing not to “friend” their assigned profile were aggregated to create an additional control condition. Treatments were administered to those who “friended” their assigned profile for the seven days preceding the mayoral election. To assess the transfer of knowledge between the profiles and the students a subsequent in-person survey was conducted (N=374). Results reveal that being exposed to political information by a peer through a social networking website increases the probability of recalling at least some of that information by 18.2 percent. Notably, the same method of exposure to entertainment information produces no significant effects on the recall of that information.

What role does political knowledge play in campaigning for and participation in direct democracy? A foundational principle of democracy is citizen participation in decision-making. This foundation assumes that citizens are at least somewhat knowledgeable about government and able to make informed choices. This analysis examines the role that meaningful decisions play in direct democracy, because “for voters to make meaningful decisions, they must understand the options on which they are deciding” (Dalton 1988: 13). This analysis uses three different methodologies to investigate this relationship. First, through qualitative analysis and a mail survey of petitioners, this study explores how petitioners view and approach the public. This study finds that expectations of political knowledge affects how petitioners approach the public and how much time they spend educating the public about their initiative. Second, through statistical (multi-level regression) analysis, this study investigates the impact of the ballot language on participation in individual ballot propositions. This study finds that ballot language is a significant barrier to participation. Third, through experimental analysis, this study connects measures of political knowledge and participation on ballot propositions written by petitioners across the country. This study finds that when confronted with more difficult ballot language voters are less likely to participate. However, when controlling for political knowledge this effect is truncated. The findings of this analysis argue the elite bias of direct democracy in ballot language, accessibility, and motives of petitioners. The study of participation in direct democracy and political knowledge across American states advances the theoretical understanding of democratic participation, and furthers our understanding of the role citizen political knowledge plays in policymaking.

This dissertation seeks to improve our understanding of the process by which citizens' selective exposure contributes to attitudinal polarization and engagement in political activities. In this dissertation, I test two models that explicate the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization and participation. The knowledge model suggests that the effects of selective exposure on individuals' attitudinal polarization and political engagement are mediated by knowledge of candidate issue stances. The stereotype model proposes that selective exposure indirectly influences polarized attitudes and political participation via stereotypical perceptions of candidates (i.e., McCain's age and the prospect of a Black presidency). By posing issue knowledge and stereotypical perceptions as potential mediators, this study extends current literature to analyze why and how selective exposure leads to polarization and political participation. The results provide evidence that selective exposure influences individuals' stereotypical perceptions of the candidates' age and race, and these stereotypic perceptions influence attitudinal polarization and participation in campaign activities. There was no support for the knowledge model; selective exposure did not have a significant relationship with citizens' issue knowledge nor did it play a mediating role in the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization and participation. This dissertation thus challenges the argument that selective exposure is normatively desirable due to its contribution to citizens' greater levels of political participation. The findings of this study call into question such a contention because the results show that individuals who engage in selective exposure are motivated to participate in political activities by forming stereotypic perceptions of candidates rather than by gaining factual issue knowledge, which is in contrast to democratic theories' assumptions of informed citizenship. Turning to the role of exposure to dissonant media outlets, two contrasting roles were found. On one hand, results offer some evidence that dissonant media use contributes to gaining issue knowledge and inspiring citizen participation. On the other hand, some findings suggest that it reinforces, rather than attenuates, citizens' attitudinal polarization and stereotypical perceptions of candidates. Thus the findings from this study offer mixed support for encouraging citizen exposure to dissimilar viewpoints. / text