ePub What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters download

by Scott Keeter,Michael X. Delli Carpini

Author:

Scott Keeter,Michael X. Delli Carpini

ISBN13:

978-0300072754

ISBN:

0300072759

Language:

English

Publisher:

Yale University Press (September 23, 1997)

Category:

Other

Subcategory:

Humanities

ePub file:

1107 kb

Fb2 file:

1939 kb

Other formats:

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Rating:

4.4

Votes:

320

Scott Keeter Michael X. Delli Carpini Humanities English

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Michael X. Delli Carpini is dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Delli Carpini provides a different take on what Americans know. It was previously thought they know very little about politics, in effect that they were ignorant

Michael X. It was previously thought they know very little about politics, in effect that they were ignorant. It turns out that the typical citizen may not be as informed as a political scientist, but they know bits of what is going on, so they are not ignorant either. In effect, they get the big picture and most of the important details, but do not really sweat the small stuff.

Delli Carpini and Keeter show us the contours of political knowledge and ignorance among Americans why these contours exist, and why they matter. -Jennifer L. Hochschild, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Princeton University. This will be a widely read and widely cited book. -Gerald Pomper, Rutgers University.

Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter demonstrate that informed persons are more likely to participate, better able to discern their own interests, and more likely to advocate those interests through political actions. Who, then, is politically informed? The authors provide compelling evidence that whites, men, and older, financially secure citizens have substantially more knowledge about national politics than do blacks, women, young adults, and financially less-well-off citizens.

What Americans Know about Politics and Why it Matters. 1996) Ch 6 Alvarez, R. Michael, and John Brehm. Hard Choices, Easy Answers. Chs 1-7 Paul Abramson et a. ’Sophisticated’ Voting in the 1988 Presidential Primaries. Alternative Contexts of Political Behavior: Churches, Neighborhoods, and Individuals JoP 55 (1993): 365-381 Diana Mutz.

The American public's cynical attitude toward politics is much discussed, but what do Americans . Two political scientists provide a detailed examination of who knows what, how much, and why it matters in American politics.

The American public's cynical attitude toward politics is much discussed, but what do Americans really know about politics? Two political scientists provide a detailed examination of who knows what, how much, and why it matters in American politics. Employing survey data of Americans for a nearly 50-year period and utilizing sophisticated statistical techniques, Delli Carpini (Barnard Coll. and Keeter (Virginia Commonwealth Univ

Michael X. Delli Carpini/Scott Keeter. Get started today for free. All Documents from What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. By Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

by Michael X. This book is the most comprehensive analysis ever written about the American public s factual knowledge of politics. Drawing on extensive survey data, including much that is original, two experts in public opinion and political behavior find that many citizens are remarkably informed about the details of politics, while equally large numbers are nearly ignorant of political facts.

MX Delli Carpini, S Keeter. Gender and American politics: Women, men, and the political process, 21-52, 2000. Effects of the news media environment on citizen knowledge of state politics and government. MXD Carpini, S Keeter, JD Kennamer. Journalism Quarterly 71 (2), 443-456, 1994.

In fact, Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter’s 1996 book What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters . The series lays out what the Constitution says; why it says it; how (and how well) it works now; and how that matters.

In fact, Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter’s 1996 book What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters found that the answer to the first part of its title has always been not much.

This book is the most comprehensive analysis ever written about the American public’s factual knowledge of politics. Drawing on extensive survey data, including much that is original, two experts in public opinion and political behavior find that many citizens are remarkably informed about the details of politics, while equally large numbers are nearly ignorant of political facts. And despite dramatic changes in American society and politics, citizens appear no more or less informed today than half a century ago. Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter demonstrate that informed persons are more likely to participate, better able to discern their own interests, and more likely to advocate those interests through political actions. Who, then, is politically informed? The authors provide compelling evidence that whites, men, and older, financially secure citizens have substantially more knowledge about national politics than do blacks, women, young adults, and financially less- well-off citizens. Thus citizens who are most disadvantaged socially and economically are least able to redress their grievances politically. Yet the authors believe that a broader and more equitably informed populace is possible. The challenge to America, they conclude, lies in providing an environment in which the benefits of being informed are clearer, the tools for gaining information more accessible, and the opportunities to learn about politics more frequent, timely, and equitable.

Qutalan

As a professor of American public opinion I think this is a great text on the effects of political knowledge on public opinion.

That being said, my students (college juniors and seniors) absolutely loathed the book. It is dense. It is old (most of the data used is older than my students!). I fully expect that upper-level college students SHOULD be able to handle this book, but mine seemingly struggled with it. In the future I will probably only select one chapter (on the consequences of political knowledge) to assign and then hit the other topics on my own w/ lectures or articles that contain more up-to-date examples.

Ienekan

Not what I expected to find, from the description of the book on line. Very disappointed in content-do not recommend.

invincible

Anyone interested in the knowledge levels of the American public, especially in terms of political opinions and where that type of knowledge comes from, will find this book very informative and rewarding. Delli Carpini and Keeter have accumulated a very well researched and documented mass of data concerning what the American people know about many different categories of politics. In an enlightening fashion they break down political knowledge not just into different categories of information, but also by demographic categories in the general population. We find that socio-economic status is as important to political knowledge levels as personal interest or media exposure, leading to occasionally worrisome conclusions about how average people can truly make a difference.
This book does sometimes lapse into unnecessarily complex statistical models rife with under-explained regression analyses and coefficients (which should have been relegated to the Appendix section), while the writing style tends to be repetitive and is generally very verbose. Meanwhile, the conclusive analysis of "why it matters" is a bit rushed at the end of the book. But regardless of those issues, this book shows convincingly that the American public's knowledge of their own nation's politics is both more complex than may be expected, but that their knowledge is not always put to the most effective uses. Happily, the authors show that citizens typically do not consign political perceptions into simplistic liberal vs. conservative and black-and-white ideologies, as you may guess from the behavior of politicians and the media. However, we can also see here that the knowledge of the American masses is not frequently put to the best of uses, either by themselves or their leaders. [~doomsdayer520~]

Kigul

This book is a very refreshing book on public opinion. Delli Carpini provides a different take on what Americans know. It was previously thought they know very little about politics, in effect that they were ignorant. It turns out that the typical citizen may not be as informed as a political scientist, but they know bits of what is going on, so they are not ignorant either. In effect, they get the big picture and most of the important details, but do not really sweat the small stuff. This means that they can handle most major decisions without needed to become a regular cliff claven on any topic because they know more about things than the elite think.

Majin

knowledge scales and political sophistication are key variables in social science studies that often are used without really thinking about what they mean or measure. This book provides insight into this problem and real solutions to solve it, in addition to the primary context of how informed americans are about politics. Great work and a must have for any collection.

ladushka

*What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters* is an important book in that it reveals how informed voters have more stable, consistent opinions and are much more resistant to irrelevant information (such as commentary in the media and campaign rhetoric, sound bites, and photo ops). It also reveals that informed voters hold opinions that more closely match those of the Founders of the United States -- including personal responsibility and limited federal powers -- than do those who are ignorant of the issues.

doesnt Do You

I thought it showed the ignorance of the American voter, and the dire need for voter education. In my opinion, the average American urgently needs voter education. I believe that voter education will produce a Democratic majority, and this book gave me data to back up my beliefs.

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