Political Context, Issue Salience, and Selective Attentiveness: Constituent Knowledge of the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Vote

According to the issue salience hypothesis, citizens tend to acquire information on subjects they perceive as important. However, past efforts to demonstrate this have been mixed. I argue that this is because scholars often fail to recognize the importance of overlapping group memberships. I maintain that different group memberships-a traditional proxy for issue salience-can cancel out effects if they are in conflict. Some research has also shown that cues in the political environment increase levels of political information. Extending this line of research, I hypothesize that the interaction of salience with environmental cues influences both information and participation levels. I find that an examination of the confirmation vote for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas largely confirms these hypotheses.