Eveland to present on Oct 10: "Questioning the Assumption of Uniform News Media Effects Across Time and Space"

Chip Eveland will present some of the work has has done with grad students Eliza Liu and Ivan Dylko. An abstract of his talk is below:

Most research on the effects of news media using survey data implicitly or explicitly assumes that the effects of news media is uniform across time and space. For instance, national survey data are employed without consideration of differences in the form and content of media available across media markets nationally, and state and local surveys are often considered to produce findings representative of research from elsewhere around the nation. Moreover, researchers tend to assume that the findings of a study in one year are comparable to findings from a study in another year. However, the quality and quantity of news content varies across media markets and has been shown to change over time as well. Theoretically, if the quality and quantity of news media content matters for news media effects, then the effects of news media use should not be uniform across time and space. In this presentation I will review two studies -- one comparing news media effects over time, and another comparing news media effects across communities in Ohio -- that test these assumptions. I will close by discussing a third study currently in progress that attempts to improve upon the first two tests.